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[Music] something pretty disturbing happened in Circleville starting small and flourishing over
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[Music] decades residents began to receive letters but accused the citizens of being involved in some pretty terrible
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things embezzlement domestic IC violence Affairs and even murder the Circleville letter writer
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knew everything about everyone and knew everyone's Secrets they were vicious and ugly somebody with some
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severe psychological problems I would Hazard to guess the threatening Anonymous letters
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kept coming hundreds of them most were postmarked from Columbus Ohio about 30 m North which is where I grew up and where
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I was living in March of 1977 when small town Circleville began to feel Under Siege when just a walk to
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the mailbox could trigger Terror especially in the case of one woman who lived here a school bus driver by the
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name of Mary Gillespie Mary Gillespie goes out to her mailbox she receives a letter she opens it it's an anonymous
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letter distinct handwriting writing and it's telling her to end the affair with the superintendent of the
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school there Gordon Massie Mrs glaspie stay away from Massie I've been observing your house and I
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know you have children it's your daughter's turn to pay for what you've done I shall come out there and put a
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bullet in that little girl's head [Music] these letters were being sent to newspapers elected officials private
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citizens and they're all saying the same thing that basically Gordon Massie the superintendent he needs to be exposed he
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needs to be fired her husband Ron begins to receive them as well Mr Gillespie your wife is seeing Gordon Massie you
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should catch them together and kill them both he doesn't deserve to live well he got letters saying that if
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he didn't do something about this Affair his life would be in danger we know what
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kind of car you drive we know where your your kids go to school by August of 1977 everything
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changes when Ron Gillespie gets a call late one night enraged he picks up a gun gets in his truck and drives off and
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told the daughter that he was going to confront the letter writer he was traveling at a high speed lost control
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of the truck went off the road hit a tree and was killed the letter writer had made
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threats to Ron Gillespie that he could end up dead then he ended up dead was Ron Gillespie's death an accident or was
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he murdered murdered this case has really left its Mark yeah and it's destroyed a lot of people I think there
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was a big cover up turned out to be quite a mystery do you think you know who wrote those
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Anonymous letters yes I do [Music] [Music] Circleville Ohio has the look and feel
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of a quaint Midwestern town in many ways it's sort of an allamerican town still has a pretty rural character
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to it and some families have been there for decades its major attraction says journalist Martin yant is the annual
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Pumpkin Show let's give him a big hand of Applause guys well it was a good place to
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live fairly peaceful till all this stuff started Janet Cassidy is talking about that barrage of anonymous poison pen
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letters that began arriving in mailboxes all over Circleville in 1977 small towns have big secrets buried
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deep under those freshly mowed lawns it caught the attention of Marie Mayu who researched the story for her podcast
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whatever remains this Anonymous author was hellbent to expose every little ugly Secret in
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Circleville at first the writers fixated on the married school district superintendent Gordon Massie was a well
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thought of man in Circleville and his rumored relationship with the school bus driver Mary Gillespie was a wife and a
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mother they were accusing her of adultery you've got the superintendent possibly having an affair with a school
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bus driver wasn't that kind of the talk of town yeah it was definitely JW White D grew up in
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Pickaway County with her sister Janet have you seen Mary's picture she was Miss Jackson she looks really attractive
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there yes she was Mary married her high school sweetheart Ron gesp and you wouldn't find a better person than
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Ronnie gpie the couple had two children and settled in Circleville I mean this had to be very
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awkward for Mary Gillespie for her children for for Gordon Massie for his wife for his son it must have been awful
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I mean it was just sort of this all invasive poison there was nobody that was off limits to this letter writer and
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it wasn't just a campaign of letters there were phone calls and offensive signs that began appearing along Mary's
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bus route Ron would have to go out and he would have to find and pick up all the signage about his wife and kids
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around Circleville determined to stop the riter the Gillespies brought their letters to the Sheriff's office there
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was an ongoing investigation they were tapping phones they were watching houses they tried to work with the USPS to
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check the mail but the letters continued and small town Circleville was consumed
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with speculation was the writer male or female did the writer live in town then in August 197 7 Mary left her
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husband and children at home and drove to Florida with her sister-in-law Ron had told her he knew who the letter
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writer was and he was going to take care of this problem while they were in Florida they were in rot when they
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learned that Ron had crashed his truck into a tree after getting that mysterious phone
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call the coroner ruled his death an accident but Ron's brother-in-law Paul fresh hour believed he had been murdered
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mured although a number of people told me that he was not a heavy drinker he had almost twice the legal limit of
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alcohol in his blood also suspicious under Ron's body police found a 22 caliber revolver the gun had been fired
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once so then the question was was he shooting at the letter writer the sheriff didn't give that any Credence at
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all but Paul fres kept pushing the Pickaway County Sheriff to take a closer look Pam Stanton was close to the fresh
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hours he wanted the truth about Ron's death he wanted to know who was writing the letters
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too the attacks on Mary Gillespie and Gordon Massie didn't stop now letters were also being sent to local businesses
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government offices schools and people who lived in the area this person was at that point pretty Unbound
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not afraid to say anything and it scared a lot of people you know is he coming after me or she coming after
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me Mary had always denied having an affair with Massie but after Ron's death she says they began seeing each other
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and that's when the threats against her became even more vicious everyone knows what you have
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done if you don't believe us just make them mad and find out for yourself Robin Yokum writes Mysteries
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but back in the early 1980s he was a crime reporter for The Columbus Dispatch there were obscenities and and threats
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to uh do harm to Mrs Gillespie's daughter it's your daughter's turn to pay for what you've
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done on February 7th 1983 Mary Gillespie was driving her empty School Bus heading
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to pick up kids it's 3:30 p.m. she's about to turn left here on Five Points Pike when she
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looks over there and sees a handmade sign on a fence it talks about her 13-year-old daughter and it's obscene so
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she pulls the bus over here but when she goes over there to try to pull the sign
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off the fence she realizes that it's rigged to wine in a box she says she takes that box home she then opens it
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and gets a shocking surprise it was a gun and it was ready to go off when Mary brought the box to
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the Sheriff's Office investigators quickly realized it was a booby trap Yokum was in The Newsroom when word got
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out and I remember the excitement from a newspaper perspective it's a great story
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a woman who had been the target of all these letters finds a a booby trap with a 25 caliber handgun rigged to it all
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reporters would want to cover that story especially if there was a dramatic twist
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and when did Paul fresh hour become the suspect pretty quickly there's small town
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Intrigue a seemingly omnipresent unknown villain extracting revenge on the people
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of Circleville by uncovering their secrets a mysterious death an elaborate attempted
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murder to this day there's a fierce debate about who that V villain is or was so we'll take you back through the
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evidence and the theories and you could decide this sounds like something out of
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an Agatha Christie novel doesn't it it does there's a cast of characters the letters would keep coming and then the
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inevitable attempted murder but it is very much an Agatha Christi feel to it and just like one of christe's mysteries
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the gun found in the booby trap provided the first clue f firearm examiners at BCI Ohio's Bureau of criminal
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investigation were able to restore the partially filed off serial number and when they traced the gun it came to a
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co-worker of Paul's he said yeah I sold that to Paul fresh hour on the surface says Martin yant it
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was shocking because Paul fresh hour and his wife Karen Sue had been close to Mary Gillespie and her late husband Ron
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Karen Sue's brother it was kind of an extended family that seemed to socialize together but by 1983 when Sheriff's
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investigators went to talk to Karen sue the fresh hours were in the midst of a contentious divorce Karen Sue gave them
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quite an ear fool she told investigators that Paul had become infuriated with Mary Karen said that Paul had thought
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the world of Ron and Mary before Ron died but after after his death Paul hated Mary hated her over the Massy deal
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and then Karen Sue told them that her EST strange husband was behind circleville's Anonymous
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letters she had found one letter torn up in a commode and she had found a couple of
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other letters hidden in the house when investigators went to see Paul fresh hour Marie Mayu says he was very
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Cooperative did he demand to have a lawyer no he answered all of their questions and readily admitted the gun
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belonged to him well they asked him how the gun ended up in the booby trap and he said I don't know fresh hour told
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investigators his gun had been stolen weeks earlier and allowed them to search his house and his car he even gave them
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samples of his handwriting it definitely does seem like he has absolutely nothing
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to hide at that point he denied being the letter writer and said he had nothing to do with the booby trap but he
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failed a polygraph so Paul fresh hour was arrested for the attempted murder of Mary
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Gillespie were you surprised when he was charged with attempted murder yes yeah I
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was this was the man Pam Stanton called Uncle Paul and says their families were so close she thought of him as a second
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father I mean was he worried his life was on the line his freedom yeah he was scared anybody would be fresh hour was
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never charged with sending any of the threatening harassing letters but in Circleville there was an assumption that
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the letter writer was finally behind bars on October 24th 1983 Paul frar went on trial at the Pickaway County
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Courthouse in Circleville there was a big deal Robin Yokum didn't cover the trial but he followed all the news
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coverage you know he was The Mastermind behind this alleged booby trap but almost everything focused on the letters
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first up was the intended victim Mary Gillespie she testified about finding the booby trap and then over defense
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objections she was asked about the anonymous letters she had received how damaging was that to Paul
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fresh hour at his trial that was very very damaging the defense argued there was no direct
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threat to Mary's life in the letters so they weren't relevant to the case but the judge allowed in 39 of them it was a
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break for the prosecution who claimed the writing on the booby trap shared similarities to those letters
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the letter and the writing that was on the 2x4 was the same block handwriting sort of the same Cadence and the same
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message as the anonymous letter writer the state brought in the BCI handwriting analyst who compared the writing on the
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booby trap to the letter sent to Mary and then to samples of Paul fresh hour's handwriting they had handwriting
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analyses that indicated that the letters could have been written by Paul Frau and
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a second expert originally a defense witness agreed I mean that's pretty damaging isn't it when a witness hired
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by the defense ends up testifying for the prosecution I can only imagine it was something you'd want to
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avoid it was far more difficult for the prosecution to prove fresh hour made the
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booby trap was Paul fresh hour's fingerprints found on the gun or the box that held the gun no and they didn't
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have a whole lot of evidence about the booby trap other than he admitted it was his
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gun there was circumstantial evidence fresh hour had taken the day off from work the same day the booby trap was
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found and that box that held the gun an industrialized chalk box like this one was easily found at anheiser Bush where
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Paul worked they had his gun in the booby trap and they had the chalk box so they thought they had plenty of
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evidence but no one saw fresh hour near the booby trap he had a pretty good Alibi for most of the day Paul fresh
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hour didn't take the stand but multiple defense Witnesses testified to seeing him at home he was having work done on
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his house the reason he said he took the day off as the trial progressed I'm thinking a lot of this stuff just
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doesn't add up you know where are the fingerprints where's the physical evidence but it was enough evidence for
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the jurors they found Paul fresh hour guilty of attempted [Music] murder how did you hear the
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verdict even after all this time it's still hard isn't it I got home and everybody was
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just a basket case and they were crying everybody was upset he received the maximum sentence 7
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to 25 years in prison when Paul fresh hour was convicted did everybody in town breathe
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this sigh of relief the letter writer is caught if it's over I think that's that's a fair assessment they've linked
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him to the letters they linked him to the booby trap we're going to get this guy out of our community get him in
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prison everything will kind of go back to normal except it didn't because the letters never stopped
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[Music] Paul was living a a pretty good life had never had any problems with the law
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basically he lost everything lost his home lost his job went to prison it was inconceivable to Paul Fresh's family and
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friends that the man they so admired could be convicted of attempted murder it's just Preposterous there's no way he
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wasn't dum enough put his own gun in a booby trap and anybody could have gotten that
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gun and even today former investigative journalists Martin yant and Robin Yokum question whether fresh hour's verdict
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was fair can I tell you I'm 100% sure that he didn't do it no I can't if I can tell you had I been sitting on that jury
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I I would have never sent a guy to prison based on that flimsy evidence the more I got involved in the case the more
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I saw there were just too many question marks at trial the prosecution had branded Paul fres hour the Circleville
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letter writer but once he was locked up how did menacing Anonymous letters keep coming I'm not done about one or two
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letters there were hundreds of letters that went out after he was in prisoned the Pickaway County Sheriff couldn't say
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how fresh hour was able to write and send those letters but he was certain Paul was re responsible the prison
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Warden disagreed his Warden insisted that would be impossible they kept him in isolation
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they did not allow him to have pens or paper he was strip searched all his incoming and outgoing mail was inspected
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there is absolutely positively no way Paul freshire was writing those letters and smuggling him out from prison no way
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after yokam and yant wrote articles about Paul fresh hour they also received letters and
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inexplicably so did Paul fresh hour behind bars letter writer bragged about setting him up he said when we set him
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up we set him up good and who did Paul think had set him up Karen sue his ex-wife his ex-wife Paul fresh hour's
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lawyer raised that very possibility during his closing argument who hated Paul enough to try to get him into
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trouble if you read the divorce decree who stands to profit financi eventually if Paul is convicted goes to
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prison Pam Stanton says that during that divorce battle Karen Su lost her home custody of their daughters and was
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living in a trailer on Mary Gillespie's property Uncle Paul's out of the picture
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she got it off and Karen Sue was one of the first to link Paul to the anonymous letters remember she told investigators
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that she found some at their home including that one in the commode Karen tried to piece it back together when
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Paul was not at home and said she could make the name of glesby out on the letter could she show them these letters
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no she didn't keep the letters does that make sense not to me why wouldn't she run off right away to the Sheriff's
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Office and say look this is from my husband he's the letter writer she didn't do any of that until after the
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booby trap was found do you believe that Paul freshh hour did set up the booby trap and tried to kill Mary Gillespie
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nope I don't I think somebody stole his gun to set him up and it worked in the early 1990s when Martin
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yamp began investigating fresh hour's case he discovered evidence and police reports of an alternate
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suspect there was another bus driver who saw what I think is very significant was
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something that never came up at trial and it points in a whole different direction investigators never followed
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up but yant did the female bus driver told him that 20 minutes before Mary found that booby
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trap she had driven by the same spot she said she saw a man standing beside an El
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Camino that looked like this one but the man turned away from her and acted like
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he was going to the bathroom so she didn't get a good look at him the description didn't seem to match Paul
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fresh hour she said he was a large man with Sandy hair and Paul was not large and he had very dark hair and wasn't
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Karen Sue at that point dating a man who was large with Sandy hair yes and what about the
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elkino there's no evidence that any inquiries were made about who might have an El Camino didn't in fact Karen Sue's
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brother have an El Camino that's what I've been told but Marie Mayu believes trying to connect the booby trap to
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Karen Sue is tenuous at best there's someone who looked like the man she was dating driving a car that looked like it
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could have been her brothers none of that points back to Karen Sue I don't believe that she framed her husband for
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this or was responsible for it 10 years after Paul fresa went to prison the Intrigue surrounding the case caught the
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attention of the television series Unsolved Mysteries but in December 1993 before filming even began the show
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received a postcard with an ominous threat forget Circleville Ohio if you come to Ohio you elos will pay the
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circle well writer it didn't deter the show from going to Circleville even Paul fresh hour who had just been released on
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parole agreed to talk I'd really like to see some really look at this case on the
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letters reopen the letter part of it and get in find out who wrote the letters Pam Stanton says Karen Su was not happy
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that Unsolved Mysteries was in town or that Pam agreed to be interviewed I got a phone call and her telling me it would
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be in my best interest not to go Karen Sue didn't participate in the program but according to Pam she kept track of
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everyone who did she sat in a car on the other side of the the intersection and took pictures of
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everybody going in and out for the interviews if true Marie Mayu says that doesn't prove anything what's more Karen
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Sue has never been considered a suspect by police I think she's a a very convenient villain we reached out to her
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but she did not respond to our requests for an interview there are so many twists and turns in this case all of a
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sudden something will surface makes you rethink what you were thinking Martin yant is right and there's another twist
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to come after Paul fresh hour went to prison how do you think the letters continued
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it took nearly 20 years but in 1994 the Circleville letters abruptly stopped when Paul fresh hour was
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released from prison did people when he got out still think he was the letter writer yeah
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there he was very hurt and he was hurt with what it did to his family a very unil War had been raging for years
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between Paul fresh hour and his ex-wife Karen Sue even their two daughters were divided over their dad and caught in the
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middle was their son Mark he was so loyal to his mom but he loved his dad too but with Sue you were going to be
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her son or his son Pam Stanton says Mark chose his mom and never once visited his
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his father in prison he wouldn't tell me why he just said he couldn't it was Paul fresh
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hour's gun discovered in the booby trap that helped land him behind bars he did tell some people that the gun had
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been stolen according to Martin yant fresh hour strongly suspected that the thief was his own
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son and I did interview one man that said he specifically told him that he thought it was Mark the
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son and this was before there was any talk of a booby trap before the booby trap fresh hour kept his suspicions
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about his son to himself says yant family loyalty meant more to him even though his son had totally rejected
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him why didn't he say more why didn't he point the finger at his son Paul get his
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son in trouble oh no Uncle Paul had never done that but he knew he would he could go to prison I don't care Uncle
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Paul would have died before he'd have seen Mark go to jail all this destroyed Mark the divorce the letters it all
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destroyed him in a way that could never be fixed Just Before Sunrise on September
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11th 2002 in Portsmouth Ohio a man's body was found floating in the scota river it was 39-year-old Mark fresh hour he
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had shot himself his mother Karen Sue later told police her son had suffered for years
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from depression and I firmly believe when Mark took his life he could not deal with the guilt any
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longer if Paul fres actually had nothing to do with the booby trap is it also possible he had nothing
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to do with the letters as he told me I didn't write the letters I didn't do this even after he got out of prison he
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approached the FBI and asked them to investigate the case the FBI never responded says jant but today nearly
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three decades later one of its former star profilers agreed to examine the Circleville letters for 48 hours Mary
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eleno tul has explored some of the darkest Criminal Minds from the Green River Killer sir you the unber to the
00:31:04
unibomber whoever the writer is they're flying under the radar screen coming across as very normal and people would
00:31:12
not suspect them who was the cille rider or were there multiple Riders otou believes one
00:31:22
solitary author churned out every letter when you have one person person and one
00:31:28
person only who has that secret that person can take the secret to the grave number one do you think it's male
00:31:35
or female can you tell right and I knew that would be one of your first questions when it comes to a letter
00:31:40
writer gender is very difficult to discern that's because the writer was clever consistently deceptive and
00:31:48
manipulative says otol you see the manipulation continue throughout these letters she went all the way back to the
00:31:56
writer's first letters in 19 1977 hunting for hints about gender and found some the letter writer kept
00:32:04
referring to I'm the boyfriend of a woman they wanted to make you believe I'm not a woman I'm a
00:32:15
man and seeing how they were trying to hide who they were makes me think there could be a good possibility it's a
00:32:24
female altogether ool inspect Ed 98 letters finding the word choices and the grammar
00:32:34
revealing how educated is this writer can you tell I would say this is not a highly educated
00:32:42
person because of the quality of the sentences and how they were put together significant says otoul considering that
00:32:49
Paul freshh hour had a job as a manager at anheiser Bush and a master's degree she says there were other identi
00:32:57
identifying Clues from the anonymous writer and as you read these letters you can see the letter writer is really
00:33:04
having a good time what does that say about that person the letter writer is pretty
00:33:10
callous and this person would have to know I'm hurting people and that's okay with
00:33:19
me a sign the writer might have been suffering from a personality disorder says OU meaning that he or she knew the
00:33:28
difference between right and wrong but simply chose wrong so that would suggest to me that in their regular everyday
00:33:37
life they sought ways to be a bully to be intimidating if that's the case Pam Stanton says that does not sound like
00:33:48
her Uncle Paul did he have a like a dark side to him or anything never Uncle Paul
00:33:55
was never bitter never angry do you think the letter writer was Paul fresh hour right now I have my doubts sitting
00:34:05
here today I'd say I can't rule him out but I'm looking at other reasons that tell me it it might in fact be somebody
00:34:13
different and otoul does not believe the secretive writer would risk exposure by
00:34:20
setting a booby trap in a public place that suggests to me that may have been done by somebody else who took took
00:34:27
advantage of this situation the mystery seemed to only deepen but one expert is convinced she
00:34:36
does know the identity of the Circleville Rider 100% [Music] sure could there have been copycat
00:34:48
letter writers see the letters for yourself on Facebook at 48 hours [Music] when the 1980 Robert bredford prison
00:35:10
drama Brew Baker needed extras in the Columbus area Paul fresh hour channeled his experience as a former prison guard
00:35:18
to play one on the big screen little did he know he'd eventually serve a decade for attempted
00:35:26
murder and although never charged with terrorizing Circleville with the letters he had to live with people believing he
00:35:35
was the writer but not sisters Janet Cassidy and June Whitehead what is one thing that you really want to see
00:35:43
corrected I don't think Paul was guilty I think he served those 10 years in prison I don't think he was guilty of
00:35:50
the attempted murder and I don't really think he was the letter writer and with former FBI profiler Mary
00:35:59
Ellen ool believing the writer could be someone other than Paul fresh hour it calls into question the testimony of
00:36:07
those two handwriting experts at his trial linking him to the letters so 48 Hours turned a forensic
00:36:15
document expert Beverly East looking for her independent analysis I don't want to
00:36:22
hear the story cuz the documents tell me the story that story says e Begins by identifying distinct writing patterns in
00:36:30
Paul fresh hour's known writing in this case letters he wrote to a friend the G in Grimmer is a very unusual G looks
00:36:40
like a six a number six and that's unusual that's very unusual she then studied a selection of 49 of the
00:36:48
anonymous letters spanning from when they first started in 1977 through the 1990s and found that unusual G shaped
00:36:58
like a number six in several of the Circleville letters including one scent while Paul was in prison so Gillespie
00:37:08
Gillespie get in Gillespie and Gordon you've got that number six e says numbers can tell a story of their own
00:37:17
numbers don't lie numbers don't lie pointing to this ZIP code written by Paul there's this ambiguous number three
00:37:26
that might also be be a two it's like he's not sure if it's 42112 or 43113 in the anonymous letters on the
00:37:37
ZIP code I found the same mistake while e admits that there are writing patterns in the anonymous
00:37:44
letters that don't look like Paul's after showing us almost 100 examples of his distinct qus that she
00:37:53
was able to identify she's convinced one person was responsible I would go into court and
00:38:02
swear on the Bible on the evidence I found and when you say you'd swear in the Bible what would you say I would say
00:38:09
one person wrote all of these and the one person is this person Paul fresher Paul
00:38:16
fresher and if you saw that a document examiner today thought in fact he did write those letters would that change
00:38:25
your mind no and there is historical basis for skepticism you know that some document
00:38:36
examiners have been wrong in the past you know I canot speak for others there are always going to be times where
00:38:42
people are inaccurate and it's not because the science is not accurate it's because that particular examiner has not
00:38:49
done due diligence to arrive at the opinion that they should do you can't be wrong you because
00:38:58
somebody's life and livelihood is at the end of your opinion so I am not wrong while studying the thousands of
00:39:08
pages in the case File Marie Mayhew made a discovery that supports e findings investigators have found Paul fresh
00:39:17
hour's fingerprints on about a dozen letters postmarked while he was incarcerated those fingerprints are
00:39:26
there and they're his do you think that Paul fresh hour is the Circleville letter writer yes I honestly
00:39:34
do former FBI profiler marelen o tul says she cannot explain those letters but she also cannot ignore that during
00:39:44
fresh hour's decade in prison the Phantom writer mailed hundreds of letters if a crime continues on and you
00:39:53
have someone in custody for a long period of time you you have to say somebody else is sending these letters
00:40:00
they're not happening by Magic somebody else is writing the letters if in fact Paul fresa was the letter writer is it
00:40:08
possible that he mass-produced letters went to prison and then had somebody else send them while he was
00:40:16
in anything is possible that would have to be investigated and rolled out Paul freshh hour died June 28th 2012
00:40:27
and at age 70 still fighting to prove his innocence instead What's Left Behind is an unfinished portrait was Paul fresh
00:40:37
hour the successful loving family man he appeared to be or a cruel even dangerous
00:40:45
criminal mastermind whatever your conclusion Paul fresh hour predicted when interviewed by
00:40:53
writer Robin Yokum 35 years ago that his is notoriety as the Circleville letter writer would long outlive him when I'm
00:41:04
dead and in my grave people are going to believe I'm sending those letters unfortunately Paul died and
00:41:12
we'll never know we'll never know [Music] a modern-day Indiana Jones hid a treasure chest and left Clues if you've
00:41:34
been brave I give you title to the gold but was the cost of the quest too high this treasure hunt did claim at least
00:41:40
five lives if he could have stopped this madness it wasn't worth it 48 Hours next
00:41:45
on CBS and streaming on Paramount Plus [Music] [Music] Mary Louise day was a a girl that lived
00:42:20
in Seaside in about 1981 she disappeared what do you mean she disappeared she disappeared off the face
00:42:33
of the [Music] earth I just knew something was wrong in the house Mary day is my
00:42:53
sister one day Mary was in California and then she was gone laying about one night with Kathy I
00:43:04
asked her you know I was like what happened with Mary you know and she was like sh don't say anything we're not
00:43:11
allowed to talk about Mary when I was 18 and I was like I can you know go and try to find
00:43:23
her it was a very hard case to deal with other than the family nobody knew she was
00:43:32
gone didn't seem to really concern them she started running away you turn around she was gone you turn around she
00:43:40
was gone I've never seen a case like this my mother told me that there were a lot of places in California that you
00:43:51
could bury a body and they'd never be [Music] found I started believing she was murdered the dogs went into the backyard
00:44:06
we just had an indication from the cab dogs that there was human remains there and our guys started digging and
00:44:15
and uh my heart was pounding we were looking for a little girl's body and we found a little girl's
00:44:23
shoe [Music] William told me that uh he didn't kill Mary day but his wife told him that he
00:44:42
was possessed that night and that he had a demon inside of him I've never heard anybody say that
00:44:52
before this is a crazy [Music] case Mary disappeared no trace of her for 22 years and then what happens and
00:45:11
then when I get a phone call he told me uh hey uh Captain he says you sitting down he said got to let you know that
00:45:18
they say that they uh they found Mary day and I'm like this case just gets weirder and
00:45:25
weirder [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Seaside California Detective Joe bertina
00:46:30
first heard the name Mary Louise day back in 2002 he'd been asked to lead the investigation into her
00:46:38
disappearance the case was a tangle of weaves that went all different directions Mary was 13 years old when
00:46:46
she vanished in 1981 seemingly Without a Trace there was no evidence that she was
00:46:54
alive Joe's boss at the time was Steve cirone not a trace of her as an adult no social security record of her having a
00:47:03
job getting uh welfare benefits we have nothing on this person's identity she didn't exist she didn't
00:47:11
exist Mary's existence came close to being completely erased there's no record that her stepfather William H or
00:47:20
her mother charlot had ever reported her missing it's hard to believe allowing a
00:47:25
child to walk away or a child go missing and it's not reported I can't remember a time when a child was not
00:47:34
reported by the parents I couldn't understand how a mother could not go to the ends of the Earth to find her
00:47:51
child it was this woman Sher kelgar Mary's sister who finally got authorities on the
00:47:58
case I wanted to know what happened to my sister Mary Sherry was 10 when Mary went
00:48:05
missing as an adult she filed a missing person's report and told the police about Mary's troubled childhood the
00:48:13
information we have through the sisters is that it was a very dysfunctional household in their early days Mary day
00:48:21
middle sister Kathy and Sherry were in and out of a foster home their mother could not take care of them Sherry was
00:48:30
adopted by the Foster family we were separated when I was 6 years old Mary and Kathy were returned to
00:48:40
their mother Charlotte by this time Charlotte had married William hul and the couple had two kids of their
00:48:48
own H was a soldier the family moved around a lot from Base to Base at one point detectives say Mary's
00:48:59
stepfather had been reportedly physically abusing her children's Protective Services had
00:49:08
taken custody of Mary she was eventually turned back over to the family in my opinion the system
00:49:17
failed at the time Mary disappeared hul was assigned to Fort or on the California coast north of
00:49:25
montere they were living in Seaside which is kind of a military town at that time and that's where she was last
00:49:34
[Music] seen Sher who kept in touch with her birth family later visited them when I
00:49:43
went to visit my family I asked them uh what had happened to my sister Mary Kathy I was like shh don't say
00:49:51
anything we're not allowed to talk about Mary but Kathy did say her mother sh told them Mary had run
00:50:00
away at the time I wasn't sure what I thought except that it didn't make sense to me when Sher grew up she filed that
00:50:12
missing person's report by the time Seaside Police launched its investigation in 2002 there was little
00:50:20
to go on the neighbors barely recall the family living there nobody really knew this family and they sure didn't know
00:50:29
Mary day Mary had never been enrolled in school in California and her parents never told anyone she was
00:50:41
gone bertina says they had at least one reason to keep quiet Mary had been getting government checks because her
00:50:49
birth father had died in an accident they were taking on Mary's Social Security checks cashing them
00:50:59
detective vertina it's March 3rd 2003 camera bertina went to the seaside home Mary's last known
00:51:10
whereabouts he brought Kathy with [Music] him pictures used to be there all us Kathy was just 11 when she last saw
00:51:27
her sister that day lives in my head a lot it feels like you're opening up a scab
00:51:32
you're opening up and it it hurts Mar here this Mary's in mine Mary was at home along with Kathy
00:51:45
when the rest of the family went out they came home later that evening and while they were gone the dog became
00:51:55
sick and was dying in the kitchen area when William saw that he immediately accused Mary of poisoning
00:52:05
the dog he started yelling at us and I got scared all hell broke this is the corner where he was
00:52:18
Hitler and the fight was back here I can hear her yelling there's nothing we can we can
00:52:33
do he hit her last time I saw her she had the blood coming down her [Music] mouth Kathy said after Mary disappeared
00:52:53
her parents ordered the kids to stay away from one particular area of the backyard I'm not supposed to come over
00:53:00
this far you weren't supposed to come over here who told you that my father the clues were adding
00:53:10
up and detectives felt they could be dealing with something much more Sinister than a runaway teenage
00:53:23
girl they brought in a team of cadaver dogs dogs trained to find human remains as the dogs went into the
00:53:35
backyard they each hit on one particular spot near a tree we started to dig as a father my heart was
00:53:48
pounding and as we dug I saw a little girl shoot my heart started pounding even more and I
00:54:05
thought here we are we found her [Music] in 2003 the missing person's case of Mary day was quickly becoming a homicide
00:54:34
investigation with police facing the Grim task of digging in the dirt with the caber dogs
00:54:43
alerted and we kept digging and there was no body I said well we must be here and then and they
00:54:49
kept digging they were sure that a body had been there they were positive they said you know our dog dos don't lie and
00:54:57
four of them independently hitting on the same spot before we dug the dog handler said it's been moved at this
00:55:04
time there was no question that the parents were the suspects in the possible homicide of a little girl from
00:55:14
1981 we knew that we had to find the [Music] parents they found them in Kansas it was more than 20 years after
00:55:27
Mary disappeared her stepfather William H had left the Army and was now at a Kansas
00:55:35
prison working as a corrections officer he and Charlotte were still together she agreed to talk with local
00:55:47
detectives about the daughter who vanished so long ago you don't have whoops and chains do
00:55:53
you oh absolutely not I remember watching the interview and realizing that she had something to tell
00:56:03
us you know life is full of regrets if you go back and say you know if I had did this and this and
00:56:12
this her body language and then her sinking down in her chair and saying words to the effect of uh you know
00:56:18
sometimes you do things in your past and then comes back I knew that there was something there when was the last time
00:56:24
you heard from Mary 8 month last time she ran away Charlotte said Mary running away was no big deal she did it all the
00:56:34
time oh what a mess it was like trying to get a Nightcrawler out of a wormhole just grabbing it it was gone grabbing it
00:56:43
was gone I mean how many times did she run away you know all these questions I can't answer okay when you was back in
00:56:55
California m did you guys take any kind of steps to find her we should have we should have but you didn't my
00:57:04
husband said we filed a police report with the Selena Police Department if we did I don't
00:57:12
remember there is no record of a report I couldn't understand a parent um number
00:57:19
one not reporting their child as runaway uh but number two treating this case the
00:57:25
status of their missing daughter as basically no big deal it didn't seem to really concern
00:57:32
them they were not really really surprised at us being there detective bruttin later questioned
00:57:41
Mary's stepfather William I just asked him tell me about the last time that you saw Mary he told
00:57:48
me that well he was going room to room checking eyes with the kids and he discovered Mary wasn't in the bedroom he
00:57:56
tell Charlotte she panics he panics to call the police and he knew I wasn't buying that I said William she runs away
00:58:03
all the time why did you panic I never got a good response the detective pressed Hol and
00:58:12
brought up the story of the sick dog and he said five or six times you know she did she poisoned my dog and I was really
00:58:19
angry she tried to run out of the house I didn't want her to go so I caught her before she got out of the front door
00:58:27
she was kicking me punching me so I pushed her and when he's doing this he's making
00:58:36
a a choking yeah just your he's yeah with his hand and it's like a hand strike that I've seen before it's a
00:58:42
martial art technique so I asked him where did you hit her with that and he said well in the upper
00:58:48
chest I said could it have been the throat he said well it may have slipped off and hit her hit Mary in the throat I
00:58:55
wanted to know on a scale of 1 to 10 his anger when he had done this when he had
00:58:59
struck Mary and he said on one a scale of 1 to 10 I was a 15 I said you're this angry I think you may have killed
00:59:11
her and he looked at me and said no I didn't kill her but the next day my wife Charlotte
00:59:19
told me that that night she saw Satan in my eyes and she said I was possessed by
00:59:25
a demon and then it dawned on me that he's admitting but not admitting that he killed her and I said okay William I
00:59:35
believe you you didn't kill her but what about that demon inside of you could that demon have killed
00:59:43
Mary and he looked at me and he said yes the demon could have killed her when he
00:59:48
walked out did you think you were letting a killer go yeah yeah Joe said yeah we don't have of a
00:59:56
body but he said this this guy came so close to confessing that it was as close as he's ever had anybody come is that
01:00:03
enough to go to a prosecutor and say I don't know if we're ever going to get the body but we we have a lot of the
01:00:09
pieces of the puzzle yeah uh the da wasn't ready to file at that time did you think there was enough I thought
01:00:17
there was probably enough um I was not worried really because I thought we are building the case here
01:00:26
and then just as the detective's confidence was growing the case took an unexpected turn remember police had no
01:00:35
record of Mary Louise day as an adult there were no credit cards no driver's license or ID recorded
01:00:45
anywhere there hadn't been a trace of Mary in more than two decades until police in Phoenix Arizona
01:00:54
made a traffic stop I got a phone call I was at home I left work and he told me uh hey uh C he says you sitting down I
01:01:02
said what happen he said no he says I'm just going to let you know that a Phoenix Police Department in Arizona
01:01:09
pulled over a car and they say that they uh they found Mary day what do you make of William and
01:01:19
Charlotte's stories here's Charlotte's unusual response to police searching for her missing daughter on Facebook book at
01:01:26
48 [Music] Hours November 2003 Phoenix Arizona it was a routine traffic stop a pickup truck with stolen plates when
01:01:45
police ran the IDS of the passengers one of them hit a woman named Mary day he said Joe
01:01:53
guess what uh Mary day has been Val and I I was stunned investigators had put Mary day into a missing person's
01:02:02
database long ago she identified herself with a phoenix identification card or Arizona
01:02:10
state identification card back in California Detective Joe bertina felt like a ghost had just
01:02:19
appeared in his mind Mary day had been murdered more than 20 years earlier at the home of her parents you talked to
01:02:28
William and Charlotte in April of 2003 and then 7 months later or so a woman named Mary Louise day just falls out of
01:02:38
the sky I was stunned his boss Steve cirone could not believe it Joe went down there and he
01:02:48
met her and he sent a picture of her and we went what wait a minute no all right
01:02:55
and it looked like it could be her and I said said wait a minute all these other
01:02:59
bits of circumstantial evidence the father almost confessing to almost confessing to the murder of a of a
01:03:06
little girl and now here was this woman 700 miles away with a valid Arizona state ID
01:03:14
strangely that ID had been issued only 3 weeks earlier while the homicide investigation was underway well you must
01:03:21
have found the timing awfully suspicious yes it was very suspicious when detective Brina went to Phoenix the
01:03:30
woman he was sure had been murdered told him she had run away from her mother Charlotte and stepfather William when
01:03:37
she was a teenager she'd basically lived under the radar and by her wits ever since but she seemed hesitant and her
01:03:46
story seemed sketchy later in a phone call Mary told Bera she had some awful me memories did
01:03:56
you want to talk about what happened that last night it hurt I'm sure it does but what happened that last night I'm so
01:04:04
confused anymore I don't know it's real or not I remember youing my head into the is that when you started bleeding no
01:04:18
already Bing hit my head into the coffee table I think I out maybe that's why I put all the pieces together tell you but
01:04:26
she didn't remember anything about the sick dog was that Troublesome to you that was
01:04:33
yeah investigators say it was hard to pin down much of anything about her past two decades they began to wonder if the
01:04:42
woman with the freshly minted ID was really who she claimed to be you refused to call her Mary Louise de you called
01:04:49
her Phoenix Mary in phone conversations Phoenix Mary was sounding increasingly frust
01:04:56
frustated can I thr one question ask you if you don't mind go ahead Mary if you would have found my body how was you
01:05:02
going to be able to prove who the hell I was DNA oh so since I'm still alive yall
01:05:09
can't prove who I am there's no record of you ever being anywhere it's like you haven't existed up until
01:05:18
now off on just dat and then yall can do detecting from there I said all right let's get a DNA test on
01:05:29
this woman let's let her prove that she's the daughter of Charlotte we're going to disprove that she's married of
01:05:34
course because there's no way that her DNA is going to match except it did match I really fell on the floor I
01:05:44
couldn't believe it the DNA came back positive to being a daughter of Charlotte the case was closed
01:05:56
Sherry invited her long lost sister to move in with her in most cases that would be the end of the story but not in
01:06:05
this case so now DNA matches case closed yeah well if it were that simple right once Phoenix Mary moved in Sher
01:06:16
started to have her own doubts the first thing I noticed was she it sounded like
01:06:22
she had some weird Midwestern southern accent it's weird to me the detectives had
01:06:28
noticed that too that's an interesting dialect you have Mary what do you mind I don't know if I've ever quite heard that
01:06:36
particular manner of speaking they you go try to prove who I am huh yes ma'am we are Phoenix Mary also said she never
01:06:45
used her real name nobody know me as Mar I gave that name up years ago what name would they know you by Monica
01:06:57
it's a name she said she made up I did notice that she had magazines in the name of Monica
01:07:05
Deo Sherry's sister Kathy was also unnerved no that's not Mary why what makes you so
01:07:13
sure something's off you're telling me that your gut is saying it's not her my gut she says the
01:07:22
woman claiming to be married didn't even remember that their birtha left them an
01:07:26
inheritance they could collect at age 18 it was their shared Escape Plan and they
01:07:32
had a code word for it was there a a code word or some sort of secret between you and Mary yeah it was
01:07:41
it was called mohawk mohawk was your secret word yep and Mary did something else strange
01:07:50
she wrote a note to detective bertina she emailed Joe in her email said something to the effect of I've
01:07:59
been lying to you about who I am and that was new information oh my God I said this is a whole new ball game still
01:08:09
the case remained [Music] closed but then in 2008 Steve cirone now seaside's police chief got a phone call
01:08:25
from investigators at the army base in Fort Ord another set of cadabra dogs have been working on an unrelated matter
01:08:33
and had found something Ford was a huge place and he said look we brought the kadab dogs out here and they went over
01:08:42
hundreds of homes and he said we got a hit on one of the homes you'll never believe who was living in this house he
01:08:51
said William hul and his family lived in this [Music] house in 2008 caver dogs alerted near a
01:09:18
second home where the hols had lived the house they had moved to shortly after Mary disappeared so what do you thinking
01:09:25
that a body has been moved by this family from one location to another yeah once again police dug and once
01:09:35
again they came up short was Mary moved twice was this little girl who may have been killed back in 1981 was her body
01:09:42
moved twice although the case had been closed sir conone felt something was seriously
01:09:49
wrong I don't know I don't know but we have to investigate this he hired Mark Clark a retired homicide
01:09:58
detective from nearby Selena's California absolutely the most bizarre case I've ever come up against reviewing
01:10:06
the evidence collected over the years Clark was convinced there was a murder and missed opportunities there's so many
01:10:15
parts about this thing that could have solved this case back then that is really frustrating he believes they let
01:10:21
the parents off the hook too soon mom and dad say she ran ran away don't ever talk about her again they tore up her
01:10:27
pictures threw away her clothes and that was it most damning he says are Williams
01:10:34
own words his comment was I couldn't have killed Mary my body would have done it but it
01:10:40
wouldn't have been me would have been that demonic personality cuz I blacked out Clark says he would have arrested
01:10:46
William Hull you just admitted T to homicide and we're letting him go Clark also focused on that shoe
01:10:56
detectives found another detective asked Kathy about it they first asked did you
01:11:02
guys ever wear canvas tennis shoes and Catherine said kids and she said yes and he pulled out the shoe and it's pretty
01:11:10
chewed up but you can tell that it's a tennis shoe with a canvas body to it and she said exactly
01:11:16
that and he consulted with the Body Farm a renowned research facility that studies what happens when bodies
01:11:24
decompose he says they found soil samples consistent with a body being buried what do you think happened to
01:11:35
Mary Lou day she was killed in 1981 and uh probably around July Clark believes the woman now claiming to be Mary day is
01:11:45
an impostor there's just too many things that point to Phenix Mary day being somebody else but what about that DNA
01:11:54
test showing she's Charlotte hul's daughter well Mark Clark has a theory that he says explains it all even if it
01:12:01
is a little far-fetched he says Charlotte Hull had another daughter a secret daughter born before Mary and
01:12:09
given up at Birth Clark believes Phoenix Mary is that secret daughter so you think Phoenix Mary is the actual sister
01:12:19
of Mary Louise day who goes missing back in 1981 yes he looked into Charlotte's background
01:12:28
there's some circumstantial evidence that Charlotte had a couple of marriages where she would be involved in
01:12:36
extramarital Affairs and become pregnant from those Affairs Clark says the GS could have
01:12:44
reached out to Charlotte's secret daughter when they felt they were in trouble I believe she was somehow sought
01:12:51
out by Charlotte and William to pose as Mary day to avoid prosecution it was an elaborate plot he says the holes knew
01:13:03
that police were investigating Mary's disappearance and they asked her secret sister to assume her identity cirone
01:13:10
says the hols had the wherewithal to do it what if they took the birth certificate of Mary which they probably
01:13:17
had and the soci security card for Mary what if they gave those cards to the other sister and said you're now
01:13:30
married CLK says the scheme put an end to the investigation and also put money in Phoenix Mary's pocket there was an
01:13:38
inheritance we thought the motivation would be the inheritance because she could collect that inheritance with a
01:13:46
crude interest that inheritance was now worth roughly $60,000 Cherry helped Mary get her cut
01:13:55
we reached out to William and Charlotte H through a relative they said they had no
01:14:01
comment Mark says the impostor Theory accounts for a lot of inconsistencies for example Mary's odd
01:14:08
southern accent the accent was really thick Sher and Catherine both said that Mary day never had an accent she has a
01:14:18
Southern accent it's a pronounced southern accent can I go one place T next if you don't mind go ahead Mary if
01:14:25
you would have found my body how would you going to be able to prove who the hell I
01:14:30
was Mary did claim that she had spent some time in the South as an adult but was only there briefly as a child when
01:14:38
experts say it would have given her that accent and I let four separate Southern
01:14:43
dialect experts listen to the interview and they all concluded that it would have taken living her her formative
01:14:52
years up to nine or 10 in the South to acquire this SN accent and there was that email that Phoenix Mary sent saying
01:15:01
she wasn't who she claimed to be after about a year of living with Sherry Mary moved out on her own but the mystery
01:15:10
just wouldn't Die Another detective was about to take a crack at the case we have to be very careful all of
01:15:21
us in law enforcement not to make our story fit our ideas were what we believed [Music]
01:15:44
happened in 2017 Sher K calgaro still wanted answers about the woman claiming to be her sister uh basically everyone
01:15:53
that's ever met her uh has a lot of doubts I have my own doubts we took Sherry to visit Phoenix
01:16:00
Mary in Missouri where she'd been living for a few years I'm hoping that she will
01:16:06
admit she will confess to us who she really is okay good luck bye bye Mary was living here and suffering from late
01:16:23
stage cancer she wasn't up for any more visitors that day as Mary's help was failing the new
01:16:35
acting chief of Seaside Police was determined to solve the case once and for all Judy the laws chipped away at the
01:16:43
idea that Mary day was murdered for starters additional test showed Mary's DNA matched not only Charlotte but also
01:16:53
the birth father and then there was that little girl's shoe I put it in the palm of my hand and
01:17:00
I mean it fit in the palm of my hand it was very small had a hard time believing
01:17:06
that a 13-year-old would have to be I mean I saw her stature in the picture she wasn't that short the also traveled
01:17:14
to Mary's home she says Mary herself filled in the gaps she wanted to convince us she was Mary and it seemed
01:17:24
sincere Mary said she began calling herself Monica when she ran away because she
01:17:30
didn't want police to take her back home Mary also mentioned a new name Mory a woman she knew in those early days on
01:17:39
her own in California the laws track down Mory Kimmel I got her when she was 15 very
01:17:48
naive and in innocent about her almost like childlike at the time more had two young
01:17:55
daughters of her own she just won my heart and my girls loved her you know that that may have
01:18:04
been the only and the best family life she ever had in her entire life I'm realizing that now you know I wanted to
01:18:11
nurture her you know but after about a year one day Mary was gone I was heartbroken B discovered that Mary had
01:18:26
moved around a lot City to City living on the margins honestly when I talked to her
01:18:33
she just seemed like a Survivor she also solved the mystery of why Mary suddenly
01:18:39
got that Arizona ID she needed state aid to pay for surgery she had her gallbladder taken out that led her to
01:18:47
obtain her proper driver's license or ID in the name of Mary Lou day a local nonprofit at helped Mary track down her
01:18:56
real birth certificate the law chalks up Mary's foggy memory to trauma and a lifelong
01:19:03
battle with alcohol those gaps in memory to me can be legitimate especially if someone's
01:19:11
been an alcoholic from the time they've been a teenager as for that email Mary sent to detective vertina saying she'd
01:19:19
been lying about who she was vela's Mary sent a follow-up email right writing quote I'm not sure myself what I was
01:19:27
trying to say in that email again from someone who was still a severe alcoholic in using and then vas came up with the
01:19:36
Smoking Gun one of Mor's relatives had a photograph the picture really did it it's Mary she says and it was taken at
01:19:46
least a year after the alleged murder we took the photo to trace see it I see this a state-of-the-art facial
01:19:56
recognition Company CEO Shawn Moore so we're going to look at the results of our face matching algorithms on the
01:20:03
images that you all sent us okay and it's it's trying to see what it's trying to see the probability that we're
01:20:10
matching a young picture with one of the older pictures so if this is the same person correct it's a probability that's
01:20:16
it's the same person the top photo is Mary before she disappeared the other photo is the one that Judy vas dug up
01:20:24
what are the numbers telling you and the numbers are telling us that it's the same person he says that's a
01:20:30
99% probability with that photo Judy vage submitted her report and closed the merry day
01:20:38
investigation this time for good after all these years the woman at the center of this case finally agreed
01:20:50
to meet with me this is the Mary that I'm met fragile but not feeble it was clear from seeing
01:20:59
her in person that this was a woman who had not had an easy life still she didn't seem to be trying to hide
01:21:06
anything in fact she said it's very frustrating trying to prove who you are when there is no
01:21:18
proof Sherry is finally at peace was all of a sudden it felt like I had a weight
01:21:25
lifted off my shoulders it was just like it's done this is hurt that's pretty much the end of that story it's not that
01:21:33
simple for Mark Clark I've seen the report I'd be lying if it didn't make me second guess my investigation even
01:21:43
though he can't prove his theory he can't quite shake his old hunch that Mary is an impostor do you believe that
01:21:51
William H murdered Mary Louise day based on the evidence I've found [Music] yes as for Steve
01:22:04
cirone I will admit that once I read Judy's report and I saw that picture I definitely leaned towards the identity
01:22:13
of Mary as being Mary Louise day the little girl that we were looking for still he says he is certain of one
01:22:24
thing thing those Kadabra dogs were on to something they were positive positive positive they said you know our dogs
01:22:40
don't lie they don't lie who was buried in those grave sites [Music] do you believe that the woman claiming
01:23:04
to be Mary day was really her hear more about investigator Julie vas's meeting with Mary at 48
01:23:13
hours.com known as the Doomsday mom her two children murdered Lori started referring to her children as zombies
01:23:21
inside the lorri bow de Bell trial how the jury found her guilty 48 hours Saturday on
01:23:27
CBS listen to the My Life Of Crime podcast with me Aon [Music] morard I think Forest wanted to become a
01:23:51
legend and I actually think he succeeded he was described as a modern day Indiana
01:23:58
Jones Forest came up with the idea to hide a bronze chest filled with gold somewhere in the Rocky
01:24:06
Mountains I bought this beautiful little treasure chest and I started filling it
01:24:10
up with wonderful things there's 265 gold coins hundreds and hundreds of gold nuggets he wrote a 24 line poem guiding
01:24:20
people to the location of the treasure that's exactly it he created effectively a treasure map in the form of that
01:24:28
poem I'm going to read the poem so here it goes as I have gone alone in there and with my treasures
01:24:36
bold I can keep my secret wear and hint of riches new and old there'll be no paddle up your creek just heavy loads
01:24:46
and water high so here may all and listen good your effort will be worth the cold if you've been brave and in the
01:24:54
would I give you title to the gold and I read that poem and oh God it was like a
01:25:01
hook no place for the meek the bug got in me and I couldn't let it go I tried to climb up into that cave there I
01:25:09
couldn't sleep I thought it was the coolest thing I'd ever heard how much was that treasure worth I I think that 1
01:25:15
million is a pretty good Mark to [Music] use I made at least 85 tricks I didn't find the treasure yet we had so
01:25:28
much fun it was crazy since there's a mountain Li in the area we don't want to take any chances
01:25:35
so bring in our gun I have spent over 2,000 hours this is where I ran into my rattlesnake searching for Forest fence
01:25:44
treasure well I made it hard deliberately if it was easy anyone could do it for at least five people the search
01:25:55
for fen's Treasure was the last thing they ever did yes unfortunately you know this treasure hunt did claim at least
01:26:02
five lives Randy Bilu was the first Paris Wallace also died in the ri Grand River Eric Ashby died in the Arkansas
01:26:16
River there was a gentleman who was hiking in Yellowstone and ended up falling off of a cliff
01:26:25
two men who went out with snowmobiles I've got them in sight still one of them froze to death and the other one was
01:26:33
hospitalized Forest Fen was a bad person if he could have stopped his Madness before it became what it
01:26:45
became it wasn't worth it how does Forest Fen respond to that by to some degree digging in his heels
01:26:54
he didn't like the idea that anyone would tell him to bring his hunt to an end because of a few
01:26:59
deaths and he said that if somebody was murdered because of the hunt that would probably be too much
01:27:09
[Music] [Music] [Music] hiat topa Ridge near Dinosaur National Monument 53-year-old Mike sexon froze to
01:28:03
death this is the last known photo of him taken in March 2020 as he hiked in that remote area Days Later Mike's body
01:28:13
was airlifted off the Mountaintop hey he's coming up all right he's about halfway Mike became the fifth person to
01:28:21
die while searching for Forest f hidden treasure Mike was full of life Mike was an adventurer and always smiling always
01:28:30
laughing big deep chuckle friend Liz key struggles to reconcile Mike's love of adventure with his terrible loss I'm
01:28:39
glad that he took this adventure I am very sad that he's gone I miss Mike every day I miss his hugs when I'm
01:28:49
stressed I miss his support I miss his voice his laughter Beth Van o today is forced to
01:28:59
cope without her longtime boyfriend Mike had been her Rock after she suffered a brain injury he was more than just my
01:29:09
partner he was in some ways my caretaker after Mike's death Liz felt compelled to
01:29:15
send Forest Fen an anguished email how many people have to die before your game is done I receive
01:29:23
an email back and and he just gave his condolences to Beth Forest F was a very complicated
01:29:32
person Dan barbaresi explores fen's complexities in his new book Chasing The Thrill Obsession death and glory in
01:29:41
America's most extraordinary treasure hunt he believed in stories that were bigger than just your run-of-the-mill
01:29:48
standard tale and he dreamed big he believed in big things and F had lived a big life
01:29:55
beginning with his days in the Air Force when he was shot down twice in Vietnam and later as the owner of a well-known
01:30:03
Southwestern Art Gallery how did a retired fighter pilot reinvent himself in Santa Fe New Mexico with not just an
01:30:12
art gallery but one of the most famous art galleries in America I think he would tell you at least about the show
01:30:19
you can put on and there's no question Fen put on a good show his Gallery attracted
01:30:27
celebrities like Jacqueline Kennedy Onasis Steve Martin and Ralph Lauren but there were recurring Whispers
01:30:36
that Fen may have built his impressive collection by plundering ancient Native American pblos there were certainly some
01:30:44
questions about how he came in possession of some of those artifacts over time in 2009 long after Fen had
01:30:50
sold his Gallery his home was raided by federal a from the Bureau of Land Management and It ultimately turned out
01:30:57
that Fen was not charged with anything in that case the next year Fen self-published
01:31:04
his Memoir The Thrill of the chase to get families into the Great Outdoors Fen put a little incentive
01:31:11
inside his Memoir that distinctive 24 line poem he claimed it contained clues that would lead one clever person to the
01:31:21
10x10 in chest of gold he'd hidden somewhere in the Rocky Mountains if you can follow the clues in the poem to the
01:31:28
treasure chest you're going to be amazed at what you find then launched a modern-day treasure
01:31:35
hunt but it was slow goinging at first it felt like a small little treasure hunt for a few people who knew about it
01:31:44
when did that change and why it got noticed by the larger media there were a few big pieces one in
01:31:53
hemispheres magazine when in Newsweek I think the name of that reporter was the same as my name whatever it was was a
01:32:00
very hard name to pronounce but I'm pretty sure it was Tony that much I've got It's pronounced deople by the way it
01:32:06
really started to raise the profile of it in a significant way it wasn't long before tens of
01:32:12
thousands of people were on the hunt in 2015 months before any of the Searchers died Ben spoke to CBS news about the
01:32:21
likelihood of anyone finding his treasure it isn't impossible but you're not going to stumble over it you have to
01:32:27
deliberately go to it FN said the spot he chose was so beautiful he could imagine it as his
01:32:36
final resting place the original version of the poem actually talked about his bones being there next to the treasure
01:32:42
chest itself Fen dropped that idea The Searchers had their own reasons for going on the hunt and it became clear
01:32:49
that many were seeking more than a box of gold I think a lot of people really wanted to be part of something bigger
01:32:55
than themselves maybe there was something missing in their lives and for others it was that they felt that people
01:33:00
hadn't believed in them to the extent that they should have Searchers shared their passion and
01:33:06
began to compare so-called solves their interpretation of the clues in the poem it was all online until some got the
01:33:15
idea to meet in real life so of that was born fenur exactly what it sounds like it's a forest Fen jamere
01:33:24
each summer fen's fans flocked to Santa Fe where Forest Fen was their star attraction I think I described it as as
01:33:32
meeting a beetle you know it was that kind of thing everybody just lined up literally to get their their brief
01:33:37
moment with farest F people use the word eccentric but I don't think that's the right word for him he was just his own
01:33:42
man Sasha Dent was living in Albuquerque when she took up the chase I probably searched for Forest F's treasure about
01:33:49
300 times she became an Insider forest was such a a major part of my life and Sasha saw firsthand the good that came
01:33:59
from Fen game there was account after account of families who were brought together because of forest fence
01:34:06
treasure hunt there were relationships built on the treasure hunt and marriages and that includes her own
01:34:15
[Music] marriage Beauty another of F's favorites was was ktia lus a singer songwriter who
01:34:26
knew F in the '90s before he wrote his Memoir when she later came across Finn's book well Gold Fever struck that very
01:34:36
night I couldn't sleep all night long I'm either Google or thing Googling reading the book again underlining
01:34:44
highlighting she estimates she spent $775,000 over 7 years of searching it was a great time she says even during
01:34:54
some dangerous moments I had a very close encounter while I was searching for the treasure with a
01:35:02
cougar and I just froze but then I lifted up my hoodie really tall and made myself
01:35:11
bigger I went marching really strong and did like a pseudo chant really loud hey
01:35:18
oh yeah hey hey hey [Music] Kata came away unscathed but others were not so lucky
01:35:30
this is not some dis aied hunt where at the end of it everything turns out okay the reality is if you don't take this
01:35:35
thing seriously it will get you look just to the right of that tree off in the dist I see it you see it
01:35:54
that's where we're going for 5 years no one could find the location of F's treasure but the Searchers had become a
01:36:01
tight Community if it's snow covered it's pointless I think we were like a support group for each other you're
01:36:08
among people who get that it's not just about the money he says it cannot be stumbled upon it's about being the one
01:36:14
who cracked the code I have looked and I have looked and I have look and the other people they get it I know at least
01:36:20
probably 30 places where it's not you would talk about your solve as they called it but you never gave the exact
01:36:29
location I told you we're not going to be in Yellowstone the distances didn't work out really well for me Toby Unis
01:36:36
hosted a popular YouTube show about the hunt everybody believed they were going to find their treasure there was no
01:36:44
acceptance of the idea that someone else would find the treasure and divorced grandfather Randy
01:36:51
Bilu was convinced he had as good a chance as anyone I met Randy a couple times at some of the fen
01:37:01
Gatherings Randy was always my protector Randy grew up on Long Island New York and his sister Kathy lebold remembers he
01:37:10
loves sports and animals Randy learned of fen's treasure in 2013 and started searching the next year I think he was
01:37:19
excited about the adventure of the hunt and um he thought if he found the treasure that he would use the money to
01:37:26
help his family and if you knew Randy you knew Leo his long-haired Jack Russell Leo was his best buddy and he
01:37:34
took him everywhere Randy and Leo moved to Colorado to be closer to the search area and at the beginning Cathy says he
01:37:42
was good about letting his family know when he was going out on the trail but later that
01:37:49
changed I think he thought he was getting really really close to it and and um he just wanted to you know excite
01:37:57
us all with the news that he had found it on January 5th 2016 Randy and Leo headed out to the Rio Grand northwest of
01:38:06
Santa Fe with a small raft temperatures hovered around freezing he was gone for 10 days before
01:38:14
he was reported missing I had a sinking feeling that something was really very wrong flight nurse Aaron Johnson was
01:38:22
part of a medical helicopter crew sent out to look for Randy on the initial search they found
01:38:29
nothing and headed back up River and that's actually when we found his raft it's a raft it's uh
01:38:38
blue they landed on a Sandy Bank of the river and were in for a surprise there was a small dog that was there and
01:38:48
barking at us he had a sweater on which was pretty dirty but I'm quite certain that that sweater saved his life there
01:38:57
were three of us on the ground the whole time aside from the raft and his dog we
01:39:02
could find really nothing else no backpack nothing Leo seemed frightened but Aaron
01:39:10
eventually coaxed him to eat a cliff bar the pilot had on board and at the point
01:39:15
where we had to leave I had a big thick jacket and I just threw it over him and scooped him up and brought him on the
01:39:22
helicopter Kathy saw the heartbreaking news on TV only Leo had been rescued it was
01:39:33
uh probably one of the worst days of my life the treasure hunting Community got word of this and many of these people
01:39:42
wanted to help determined to find ry's Body drone Pilots shot hours of footage that was
01:39:50
posted online so the treasure hunt community could go through it frame by frame looking for signs of
01:39:57
Randy other Searchers put boots on the ground it was rugged I mean it was harder than any treasure searching any
01:40:08
of us had done it was rough we searched very very hard every day for over a month Boris Fen wrote in a helicopter to
01:40:18
look for Randy Fen also met with Kathy when she came to Santa Fe Fen was sympathetic but told her he wasn't
01:40:26
willing to call off the treasure hunt I think a lot of people could argue that his priorities are perhaps not what they
01:40:31
should be that instead of the people or the human cost he cared a lot more potentially about his treasure hunt and
01:40:38
the treasure hunt was everything to fend even though it put his family at risk forest was harassed over the years his
01:40:47
family was harassed there's a man who's done prison for stalking forest's granddaughter
01:40:53
get on your knees get on your knees and this man Robert Miller was arrested for burglary in 2018 at fen's Santa Fe home
01:41:01
so what the hell is going on I thought the poem directed me into here I thought it said poem yeah the the treasure map
01:41:09
the treasure punt you know so you came on the property cuz of Po are you serious yeah what did his family think
01:41:17
about all this uh I think his family had a hard time with it honestly even with all of that Forest saw how much good his
01:41:25
treasure hunt did for how many people and he know that the good far outweighed the bad the search for the treasure
01:41:33
continued as did the search for Randy 6 months after he went missing his body was found on the
01:41:42
riverbank obviously we were devastated that he wasn't alive he was a great father grandfather
01:41:52
and uncle Uncle to my son with Randy gone Leo was adopted by none other than Aaron Johnson Leo the
01:42:01
nurse who rescued him good boy in the 5 years with his new family the ultimate rescue dog has even learned some new
01:42:09
tricks okay turn around Kathy is happy he's found a new home good boy but she thinks about her brother every day I
01:42:18
wished he' hadd been more careful I wish he hadn't gone out that day but you know
01:42:23
he was enjoying what he was doing Randy was not the last to die searching for fen's
01:42:29
[Music] gold the next year the hunt claimed three more lives he had become obsessed by V's
01:42:43
treasure and that was the only thing that mattered to him in June 2017 a year and a half after
01:43:05
Randy Bilu died three more men lost their lives in a matter of weeks Jeff Murphy was searching in Yellowstone
01:43:14
National Park very tragically just misstepped and ended up falling off of a cliff and passing
01:43:22
away around the same time writer Dan barbaresi went on his first search with his treasure hunting partner Jay rer
01:43:30
what was it like going from four months of research on a computer to being out there in the wilderness the first thing
01:43:39
that stood out to me how much bigger a point on a map is in real life you know you look on a map oh this isn't that big
01:43:47
I can cross this area with just my finger alone once you're actually out in the wild you see how big those distances
01:43:52
are and how much land there actually is out there pretty quickly it really hits you in the face pretty fast reality
01:43:59
wasn't the only thing hitting Dan and Jay in the face we're out there thinking that we're
01:44:05
you know adventurers explorers and all of a sudden it starts hailing and we very quickly realized that we had
01:44:11
absolutely no idea what we were doing days later in that same exact area a Colorado Pastor named Paris Wallace
01:44:20
set off to search the Rio Grand near the town Junction Bridge As you move through
01:44:25
life there are those points where you have to seek God to find out what he wants you to do and he crossed the river
01:44:34
by himself and it was high waters then paris's body was recovered 4 days later a few miles down river his death
01:44:45
spurred the New Mexico State Police Chief to ask Fen to call off the hunt Fen refused there was a huge amount of anger
01:44:54
at Fen over this I mean you can understand why I mean this is a treasure on it doesn't need to exist and yet he
01:44:59
wouldn't stop it even after multiple people had died that's a pretty hard stance to
01:45:05
take Fen Justified continuing the hunt by pointing out that any outdoor activity came with risks in the
01:45:13
summertime we jump in a swimming pool but if somebody drums in the swimming pool should should we drain the pool or
01:45:20
should we teach people to swim that's the way I feel about it and the treasure Community rallied around Fen in support
01:45:27
of the hunt here I go 99.9% of people who go out looking for his treasure make it home safely
01:45:36
with tons of memories and new experiences to treasure and fan did keep warning Searchers to be safe be more
01:45:45
careful be more mindful he constantly reminded everyone to not go anywhere a 79 or 80-year old man couldn't go many
01:45:53
Searchers Dan says set off on the Treasure Trail with great excitement but sometimes were unprepared for how Wild
01:46:01
the Wilderness can be Searchers like Eric Ashby understood the risks and were willing to take them fear was not part
01:46:10
of his game he didn't know how to be afraid Paul Ashby raised his son Eric as a single father in the mountains of
01:46:18
Tennessee Eric grew up playing sports riding motorcycles and was taken by the quest at the center of the Lord of the
01:46:26
Rings trilogy Eric was a great kid everybody who knew him loved him in 2016 Eric moved to Colorado he told his dad
01:46:36
he was headed west to take part in his own Quest F's Thrill of the Chase he became
01:46:46
obsessed dad I can do this was he motivated by the money the treasure represented or by the recognition
01:46:56
solving it oh sincerely the recognition the money to him was totally irrelevant Eric told his father he was
01:47:03
going out to search the Arkansas River outside Canyon City Colorado more than a week later Paul got a phone call from a
01:47:11
woman who said her name was Becca she told me on the phone Mr Ashby your son is drowned he
01:47:20
says I'm sorry Mr Ashby your son is dead and she hung up Becca turned out to be Rebecca n who had worked with Eric she
01:47:28
and three men were with Eric at the river and they had drawn up this contract outlining exactly how they'
01:47:35
split the treasure she later told police what happened that day he said he had swam the river that we were about to
01:47:43
cross 10 times before and so you know we we figured though we should be sry Becca said they'd bought a
01:47:50
two-person raft But Eric got in alone and had no life preserver so he just um jumped out it looks like he had made it
01:48:00
to the Rock but then they didn't see him anymore and that was right where the Rapids you know would have taken him
01:48:07
Becca told police two of the men went down river to look for Eric where they saw a photographer who told them he
01:48:14
called 911 the photographer also captured this photo of Eric's empty raft hearing
01:48:22
someone had called police Becca and the others went back to their car and went home a decision Becca tried to explain I
01:48:31
want to know why why no one stayed there to tell us this information because again
01:48:36
now e in hard to see what we should have done but in the moment we never been involved with anything like that Eric
01:48:44
stepped in a situation that was impossible nobody could have done it the thing that makes it worse is that nobody
01:48:52
stopped him and that it was just a case of oh well Eric was worth so much more to
01:49:05
me than oh well after Eric's body was recovered Paul traveled to the river to see where
01:49:17
his son had died I took the Excursion train that comes down the Gorge and one of the company managers was on the train
01:49:26
with me and he went into the bar the lounge car and come back with a beer he says this is for you and your
01:49:36
son and we shared our last beer right there Paul says he never heard from forest Fen if you had been able to reach
01:49:47
Forest F what would you say to him say Mr f is this something one you're going to have to go to whoever our maker is
01:49:55
and say yes these people were drowning or dying falling off cliffs whatever and I could have stopped it and I chose not
01:50:05
to I was honestly surprised that it didn't end in that summer of 2017 but the hunt did not
01:50:12
end and in March 2020 a fifth man died about 2:00 in the morning I looked up the stars were out I
01:50:22
looked over you know to my left and there was Mike it was like oh I I I remember telling myself oh no
01:50:29
Mike what do you think of forest fen's decision to continue the treasure hunt learn more about the search for the
01:50:36
treasure at 48 [Music] hours.com Mike was the kind of guy that walked into a room
01:50:49
smiling and made everybody feel better just by coming around Beth Van o says her longtime boyfriend Mike sexon knew
01:50:58
about Randy Jeff Paris and Eric the others who died while searching for fen's Treasure I think Mike knew of the
01:51:06
danger he just maybe ignored a little bit of it or thought he could get around it it had been nearly 3 years since any
01:51:18
Searchers had died I think people thought that maybe they had gotten past that point where people aren't going to
01:51:24
die anymore looking for this Mike was convinced he knew where the treasure was along the Colorado Utah
01:51:32
border in Dinosaur National Monument he made nearly a dozen trips there but he needed someone with a four-wheel drive
01:51:40
truck to help that's how his poker buddy Steven inow got involved with the hunt I
01:51:45
was very excited to be with Mike on these trips I just enjoyed traveling with him this is the first time St even has
01:51:53
spoken publicly about their ordeal that began in late February 2020 the men rented snowmobiles in Denver and set off
01:52:01
for Mike's spot the snow bills proved to be too heavy for the depth of snow that
01:52:07
we had Mike and Steven got stuck but managed to call 911 is anybody injured no no we're not injured just
01:52:16
stuck looks like I've got a pretty good location on you I'm going to get you some help headed your way okay
01:52:23
they were rescued but the close call didn't deter the pair from going back out just a few weeks later on March 17th
01:52:31
2020 days into the covid pandemic Mike was adamant that he wanted to make another trip before the quarantine
01:52:41
started Mike and Steven drove to Salt Lake City where they rented snowmobiles they thought would be better on the
01:52:48
terrain on the second day in the wilderness they left their truck 5 miles from the main road and headed off for a
01:52:55
day trip on the snowmobiles we left a lot of our Provisions back of the truck thinking we're just going to be gone 3
01:53:02
or 4 hours we take off the snow bills and we're on the South Side of the Mountain this time and we ran ask noow
01:53:08
it became dry they left even more supplies on the snowmobiles and set off on foot with a
01:53:16
sled to carry home the treasure which Mike believed was close we had some some candy bars a couple of energy bars and
01:53:25
uh maybe a gallon and a half of water between the two of us it didn't look that far away but it proved to be a
01:53:31
ridge over Ridge over Ridge that took a lot longer than I thought it was going to take by 6 o00 on Wednesday I was kind
01:53:39
of nervous I hadn't heard from him when the men hadn't returned the snowmobiles Wednesday night the rental
01:53:47
company called the police who called Beth and Steven's wife not knowing was just the worst just the most awful
01:54:00
thing Mike tried to hike to Higher Ground to get a cell signal but hours later returned
01:54:08
unsuccessful at that point both men were so exhausted all they could do was lay where they
01:54:15
were the next day it began to snow they had no more water I remember my hands and knees eating the
01:54:25
snow crystals and blood was dripping from my mouth staining the snow I cried for help I asked God I asked Jesus just
01:54:32
anyone call 911 we need help desperate for hydration Steven began drinking his own urine and felt
01:54:41
warmth spread throughout his body and I I could just feel that was a moment that
01:54:47
I'm going to live and I told Mike he's got to quit eating the snow when he was shivering and told him what he needed to
01:54:52
do and he said he'd rather die on Friday we could hear helicopters on the other side of the Mountainside
01:54:59
and we knew they were out searching for us and so that gave us hope but we never
01:55:04
saw the helicopter that night I woke up about 2:00 in the morning and Mike was about 6 feet away from
01:55:10
me he's on his hands and knees with his arms cued around his head his head flat on the ground and he had no shirt on and
01:55:18
so I knew he had died and I knew why I hypothermia people suffering from extreme cold can feel hot in the moments
01:55:29
just before they die I I remember telling myself oh no Mike later that Saturday Steven heard the helicopters
01:55:36
again louder this time and saw them down in the canyon below with all the strength he could muster he grabbed the
01:55:44
orange sled and he waved it toward the helicopter and then just like in the movies the helicopter rose up above the
01:55:51
cliff and I knew I was saved and I passed out next thing I knew two guys were picking me up asking me if I could
01:55:58
walk I couldn't even stand and I I just remember Whispering goodbye Mike Mike was later taken off the
01:56:06
mountain in a body bag Beth got the devastating news that afternoon I mean you can say I love you but until
01:56:16
somebody's really gone and you can't say it anymore you just don't realize you have more
01:56:25
than that to say a year later Beth and Mike's friend Liz key finds solace in that last photo
01:56:35
his Grand the look in his ey am yes this is where I want to be I am very sad that
01:56:41
he's gone but I'm glad that he he did what he loved to do Mike was the fifth person to die
01:56:53
seeking fenn's treasure he was also the last because only 3 months later Forest Fen made a stunning
01:57:03
announcement the message was very short and simple it said the treasure has been
01:57:13
[Applause] found early last summer just as thousand of treasure Hunters were about to begin
01:57:24
looking yet again for Forest F's chest of gold they got a piece of news that left
01:57:31
them reeling my heart stopped honestly I was like oh my God uh I cannot believe this has actually happened did somebody
01:57:38
really find it or you know and if so who the news broke on June 6 2020 when Fen made the stunning announcement in a
01:57:48
brief post he sent to a Blog used by the searcher Community Fen wrote the treasure has
01:57:56
been found and had not moved from the spot where I hid it more than 10 years ago I do not know the person who found
01:58:04
it but the poem in my book led him to the precise spot overnight the Gold Rush that had
01:58:12
sustained The Searchers was over and many were left feeling a bit cheated we didn't have a name we didn't
01:58:24
have where it had been found we didn't have any other any other information other than it had been found where he
01:58:30
had left it and is it really really really true that they found it I want to see you know so the guy did send
01:58:38
pictures for the first time Searchers could see Forest pouring over the contents of his famous Treasure Chest it
01:58:45
look pretty authentic to me you know very authentic but like everyone else Kia yearned to know the finder's solve how
01:58:57
had he deciphered those clues in the poem The Finder wouldn't say but a month later Fen revealed the treasure had been
01:59:05
found in Wyoming then 2 months later on September 7th 2020 Forest Fen died at his home where
01:59:19
he had just turned 90 years old I I find myself thinking of forest often and um I
01:59:26
miss our conversations very [Music] much the finder may have remained Anonymous forever except for a lawsuit
01:59:36
that required the fen family to reveal his name the finder knew it was only a matter of time so he came out to Dan
01:59:44
barbaresi who wrote an article for outside magazine who did find the treasure a man named Jack Stu found the
01:59:52
treasure and he was uh you know a medical student who had gotten obsessed with this Chase uh around 2018 he you
02:00:00
know was very very committed to his Sol hey guys this is Jack in this online message to other Searchers our challenge
02:00:08
is to try not to make guesses Jack Stu had shared his approach to cracking fence poem it is simple and clear and
02:00:18
straightforward you need simplicity in yourselft Dan says Jack had been searching for at least two
02:00:28
years and then one day in a Wyoming Forest Jack says he uncovered the chest it had almost been covered by leaves and
02:00:37
debris but Jack said the lid was still visible he became very paranoid that somebody was going to stumble upon him
02:00:44
in that moment Jack says he High tailed it to Santa Fe where these photos were taken they seem to back up back story
02:00:53
but Fen Watcher Toby Eunice was skeptical here is my theory the hunt was moving forward forest was
02:01:03
aging the family forest's family was frustrated with a state of the surch their houses had been broken
02:01:12
into their children had been threatened with kidnapping they were never lovers of the forest Fen treasure hunt Toby has
02:01:20
no evidence but believes that that Fen knowing he had only months to live looked around for someone who was close
02:01:27
to finding the treasure Toby believes Fen reached out to Jack but I imagine this is how it went I want you to know
02:01:36
that I'm dying I want you to know that I don't want to leave this treasure hunt to my family and I'm going to ask you
02:01:43
for a favor Forest had a a saying that he used often there's an old saying two people can keep a secret if one of them
02:01:50
is dead Jack refused our request for an interview but denied he had any help from Fen as he wrote
02:01:59
online I am not and was never employed by Forest nor did he pick me in any way to retrieve the treasure I was a
02:02:09
stranger to him and found the treasure as he designed it to be found I do not believe it is part of a
02:02:16
conspiracy engineered by Fen to give Jack the treasure or anything else of that sort Dan is in a unique position
02:02:23
because he's the only journalist who has interviewed Jack Jack even allowed Dan to examine the treasure these photos
02:02:32
have rarely been seen you were able to actually hold the treasure to touch it to see it in person yes you know I have
02:02:39
seen and touched and felt and gone through the chest it was kind of an incredible moment honestly Jack told Dan
02:02:44
he will not reveal the exact spot where he found the chest because he fears it would become a tourist attraction
02:02:53
that would ruin the area's Serenity and natural beauty I think we will never find out
02:03:02
truly where it was found and there could be another reason fen's original intent to lay down and
02:03:10
die at the very spot where he hid his treasure I don't want to be buried if I had my way I'd lay down
02:03:21
under the tree go and uh just like a big old Buffalo lays down and dies Go Back To Nature become
02:03:31
become part of the Earth again jack says he offered to put F's ashes in that special spot but will not
02:03:40
say if the family accepted his offer Dan says he doesn't know what Jack intends to do with the treasure whether he will
02:03:48
sell at peac meal or as one or per perhaps lease it for display what is in the end the legacy of forest Fen I think
02:03:58
the legacy of forest f is extremely complicated I think that there were a lot of good things that happened because
02:04:03
of it there were also some really bad things that happened because of it but if you're Paul Ashby who lost his only
02:04:09
son Eric to the hunt one of the five menant to die chasing the thrill fen's Legacy is not complicated at all he was
02:04:19
Reckless he was willing to ignore the fact that people were dying because all these other people worshiped
02:04:30
[Music] him a lot of people still do look up to Forest Fen and maybe that's not so
02:04:43
surprising when you feel a dream you know Live Your Dream Out follow your heart and okay so I didn't find the
02:04:50
treasure but I found many Treasures this in itself is the biggest treasure of all
02:04:56
that I found so many magical wonderful things I could never replace um without that treasure hunt I'm so grateful for
02:05:05
Forest thank you thank you Forest [Music] CBS next Saturday 48 Hours brings you backtack episodes all summer long this
02:05:28
week killer contestants he is the serial killer that we always suspected him to be you just want to wake up and have it
02:05:33
not be real 48 Hours Crime Time double feature next Saturday 98 Central on CBS and streaming on Paramount Plus