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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 that accused the citizens of being involved in some pretty terrible
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things embezzlement domestic 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 30 m North which is where I grew up and
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where 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 W in 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 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 aair his life would be in danger we know what kind of car you drive we know where your
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your kids go to school by August of 1977 everything changes when Ron Gillespie gets a call
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late one night enraged he picks up a gun gets in his truck and drives off and told the daughter that he was going to
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confront the letter writer he was traveling at a high speed lost control of the truck
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went off the road hit a tree and was killed the letter writer had made threats to Ron Gillespie that he could
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end up dead then he ended up dead was Ron Gillespie's death an accident or was he murdered murdered this case has
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really left its Mark yeah and it's destroyed a lot of people I think there was a big cover up turned out to be
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quite a mystery do you think you know who wrote those Anonymous letters yes I do
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[Music] [Music] Circleville Ohio has the look and feel of a quaint Midwestern town in many ways
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it's sort of an All-American in town still has a pretty rural character to it and some families have been there for
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decades its major attraction says journalist Martin yant is the annual Pumpkin Show let's give a big hand of
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Applause guys well it was a good place to live fairly peaceful till all this stuff
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started Janet Cassidy is talking about that barrage of anonymous poison pen letters that began arriving in mailboxes
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all over Circleville in 1977 small towns have big secrets buried deep under those freshly mowed lawns it
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caught the attention of Marie Mayu who researched the story for her podcast whatever remains this Anonymous author
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was hellbent to expose every little ugly Secret in Circleville at first the writer seemed
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fixated on the married school district superintendent Gordon Massie was a well thought of man in Circleville and his
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rumored relationship with a school bus driver Mary Gillespie was a wife and a mother they were accusing her of
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adultery you've got the superintendent possibly having an affair with a school bus driver wasn't that
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kind of the talk of town yeah it was definitely Jim White head grew up in Pickaway County with her sister Janet
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have you seen Mary's picture she was Miss Jackson she looks really attractive there yes she was Mary married her high
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school sweetheart Ron GES and you wouldn't find a better person than Ronnie gpie the couple had two children
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and settled in Circleville I mean this had to be very awkward for Mary Gillespie for her
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children for for Gordon Massie for his wife for his son it must have been awful I mean it was just sort of this all
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invasive poison there was nobody that was off limits to this letter writer and it wasn't just a campaign of letters
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there were phone calls and offensive signs that began appearing along Mary's bus
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route Ron would have to go out and he would have to find and pick up all the signage about his wife and kids around
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Circleville determined to stop the riter the Gillespies brought their letters to
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the Sheriff's office there was an ongoing investigation they were tapping phones they were watching houses they
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tried to work with the USPS to check the mail but the letters continued and small
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town Circleville was consumed with speculation was the writer male or female did the writer live in
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town then in August 197 7 Mary left her husband and children at home and drove to Florida with her sister-in-law Ron
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had told her he knew who the letter writer was and he was going to take care of this problem while they were in
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Florida they were in rot when they learned that Ron had crashed his truck into a tree after getting that
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mysterious phone call the coroner ruled his death an accident but Ron's brother-in-law Paul
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fresh hour believed he had been murdered mured although a number of people told me that he was not a heavy drinker he
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had almost twice the legal limit of alcohol in his blood also suspicious under Ron's body police found a 22
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caliber revolver the gun had been fired once so then the question was was he shooting at the letter writer the
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sheriff didn't give that any Credence at all but Paul fres hour kept pushing the
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Pickaway Sheriff to take a closer look Pam Stanton was close to the fresh hours he wanted a truth about Ron's
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death he wanted to know who was writing the letters too the attacks on Mary Gillespie and
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Gordon Massie didn't stop now letters were also being sent to local businesses government offices schools and people
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who lived in the area this person was at that point pretty Unbound not afraid to
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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 T 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 is or was so we'll take you back through the evidence
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and the theories and you can decide this sounds like something out of an Agatha Christie novel doesn't it it
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does there's a cast of characters the letters would keep coming and then the inevitable attempted murder but it is
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very much an agath Christi feel to it and just like one of christe's mysteries the gun found in the booby trap provided
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the first clue f fire arm examiners at BCI Ohio's Bureau of criminal investigation were able to restore the
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partially filed off serial number and when they traced the gun it came to a coworker of Paul's he said yeah I sold
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that to Paul fresh hour on the surface says Martin yant it was shocking because Paul fresh hour and
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his wife Karen Sue had been close to Mary Gillespie and her late husband Ron Karen Sue's brother it was kind of an
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extended family that seemed to socialize together but by 1983 when Sheriff's investigators went to talk to Karen sue
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the fresh hours were in the midst of a contentious divorce Karen Sue gave them quite an ear fool she told investigators
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that Paul had become infuriated with Mary Karen said that Paul had thought the world of Ron and Mary before Ron
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died but after his death Paul hated Mary hated her over the Massy deal and then Karen Sue told them that her estrange
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husband was behind circleville's Anonymous letters she had found one letter torn up
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in a commode and she had found a couple of other letters hidden in the house when
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investigators went to see Paul fresh hour Marie Mayu says he was very Cooperative did he demand to have a
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lawyer no he answered all of their questions and readily admitted the gun belonged to him well they asked him how
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the gun ended up in the booby trap and he said I don't know fresh hour told investigators his gun had been stolen
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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 fres 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 went on trial at the Pickaway County Courthouse
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in Circleville it was a big deal Robin Yokum didn't cover the trial but he followed all the news coverage you know
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he was The Mastermind behind this alleged booby trap but almost everything focused on the letters first up was the
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intended victim Mary Gillespie she testified about finding the booby trap and then over defense objections she was
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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 fres 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 freshh
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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 freshh 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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a sigh of relief the letter writer is caught is 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 Fresa'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 dumb 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 about one or two letters
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there were hundreds of letters that went out after he was imprisoned the Pickaway County Sheriff
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couldn't say how fresh hour was able to write and send those letters but he was certain Paul was resp responsible the
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prison 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 Yokum 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 freshh 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 finan 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 unle Paul's out of the picture she got it off and Karen Sue was one of
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the first to link Paul to the anonymous letters remember she told investigators that she found some at their home
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including that one in the commode Karen tried to piece it back together when Paul was not at home and said she could
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make the name of glesby out on the letter could she show them these letters no she didn't keep the letters does that
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make sense not to me why wouldn't she run off right away to the Sheriff's Office and say look this is from my
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husband he's the letter writer she didn't do any of that until after the booby trap was found do you believe that
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Paul fresh hour did set up the booby trap and tried to kill Mary Gillespie nope I don't I think somebody stole his
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gun to set him up and it worked in the early 1990s when Martin yamp began investigating fresh hour's
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case he discovered evidence and police reports of an alternate suspect there was another bus driver who
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saw what I think is very significant was something that never came up at trial and it points in a whole different
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direction investigators never followed up but yant did the female bus driver told him that
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20 minutes before Mary found that booby trap she had driven by the same spot she
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said she saw a man standing beside an El Camino that looked like this one but the
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man turned away from her and acted like he was going to the bathroom so she didn't get a good look at him the
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description didn't seem to match Paul fresh hour she said he was a large man with Sandy hair and Paul was not large
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and he had very dark hair and wasn't Karen Sue at that point dating a man who was large with Sandy hair yes and what
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about the elino there's no evidence that any inquiries were made about who might have
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an El Camino didn't in fact Karen Sue's brother have an El Camino that's what I've been told but Marie Mayu believes
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trying to connect the booby trap to Karen Sue is tenuous at best there's someone who looked like the man she was
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dating driving a car that looked like it could have been her brothers none of that points back to Karen Sue I don't
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believe that she framed her husband for this or was responsible for it 10 years after Paul fresh hour went to prison the
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Intrigue surrounding the case caught the attention of the television series Unsolved Mysteries but in December
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1993 before filming even began the show received a postcard with an ominous threat forget Circleville Ohio if you
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come to Ohio you elos will pay the circle writer it didn't deter the show from going to Circleville even Paul
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fresh hour who had just been released on parole agreed to talk I'd really like to
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see someone really look at this case on the letters reopen the letter part of it
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and get in find out who wrote the letters Pam Stanton says Karen Su was not happy that Unsolved Mysteries was in
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town or that Pam agreed to be interviewed I got a phone call and her telling me it would be in my best
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interest not to go Karen Sue didn't participate in the program but according to Pam she kept track of everyone who
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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 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 there
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yeah he was very hurt and he was hurt with it did to his family a very unil War had been raging for years between
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Paul fres hour and his ex-wife Karen Sue even their two daughters were divided over their dad and caught in the middle
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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 her son or
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his son Pam Stanton says Mark chose his mom and never once visited his father in
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prison he wouldn't tell me why he just said he couldn't it was Paul fresh hour's gun discovered in the booby
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trap that helped land him behind bars he did tell some people that the gun had been stolen according to Martin yant
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fresh hour strongly suspected that the thief was his own son and I did interview one man that
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said he specifically told him that he thought it was Mark son and this was before there was any
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talk of a booby trap before the booby trap fresh hour kept his suspicions about his son to himself says yant
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family loyalty meant more to him even though his son had totally rejected him why didn't he say more why didn't he
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point the finger at his son Paul get his son in trouble oh no Uncle Paul had never done that but he knew he would he
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could go to prison I don't care Uncle Paul would have died before he'd have seen Mark go to job all this destroyed
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Mark the divorce the letters it all destroyed him in a way that could never be fixed Just Before Sunrise on September
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11 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 hour actually had nothing to do with the booby trap is it also possible he had had
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nothing to do with the letters as he told me I didn't write the letters I didn't do
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this even after he got out of prison he approached the FBI and asked them to investigate the case the FBI never
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responded says yant but today nearly three decades later one of its former star profilers agreed to examine the
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Circleville letters for 48 hours Mary eleno tul has explored some of the darkest Criminal Minds from the Green
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River Killer sir the unber to the unibomber whoever the writer is they're flying under the radar screen coming
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across as very normal and people would not suspect them who was the Circleville Rider or
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were there multiple Riders OU believes one solitary author churned out every letter when you have one person person
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and one person only who has that secret that person can take the secret to the grave number one do you think it's male
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or female can you tell and I knew that would be one of your first questions when it comes to a letter writer gender
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is very difficult to discern that's because the writer was clever consistently deceptive and manipulative
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says otoul do you see the manipulation continued throughout these letters she went all the way back to the writer's
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first letters in 19 1977 hunting for hints about gender and found some the letter writer kept
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referring to I'm the boyfriend of a woman they wanted to make you believe I'm not a woman I'm a
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man and seeing how they were trying to hide who they were makes me think there could be a good possibility it's a
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female altogether ool inspect Ed 98 letters finding the word choices and the grammar
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revealing how educated is this writer can you tell I would say this is not a highly educated
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person because of the quality of the sentences and how they were put together significant says otol considering that
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Paul freshh hour had a job as a manager at anheiser Bush and a master's degree she says there were other identi ifying
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Clues from the anonymous writer and as you read these letters you can see the letter writer is really having a good
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time what does that say about that person the letter writer is pretty callous and this person would have to
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know I'm hurting people and that's okay with me a sign the writer might have been
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suffering from a personality disorder says otoul meaning that he or she knew the difference between right and wrong
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but simply chose wrong so that would suggest to me that in their regular everyday life they sought ways to be a
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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
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was never bitter never angry do you think the letter writer was Paul fresh hour right now I have my doubts sitting
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here today I'd say I can't rule them out but I'm looking at other reasons that tell me it it might in fact be somebody
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different and OU does not believe the secretive writer would risk exposure by setting a booby trap in a public place
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that suggests to me that may have been done by somebody else who took took advantage of the
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situation the Mysteries seem to only deepen but one expert is convinced she does know the identity of the
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Circleville Rider 100% [Music] sure could there have been copycat letter writers see the letters for
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yourself on Facebook at 48 hours [Music] when the 1980 Robert bredford prison drama Brew Baker needed extras in the
00:35:12
Columbus area Paul fresh hour channeled his experience as a former prison guard to play one on the big
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screen little did he know he'd eventually serve a decade for attempted murder and although never charged with
00:35:30
terrorizing Circleville with the letters he had to live with people believing he
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was the wrer 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
00:35:58
marelen UL believing the writer could be someone other than Paul fresh hour it calls into question the testimony of
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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
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hear the story cuz the documents tell me the story that story says e Begins by identifying distinct writing patterns in
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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
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like a six a number six and that's unusual that's very unusual she then studied a selection of 49 of the
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anonymous letters spanning from when they first started in 1977 through the 1990s and found that unusual G shaped
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like a number six in several of the Circleville letters including one scent while Paul was in prison so Gillespie
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Gillespie get in Gillespie and Gordon you've got that number six e says numbers can tell a story of their own
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numbers don't lie numbers don't lie pointing to this ZIP codee written by Paul there's this ambiguous number three
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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
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ZIP code I found the same mistake while e admits that there are writing patterns in the anonymous
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letters that don't look like Paul's after showing us almost 100 examples of his distinct works that she
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was able to identify she's convinced one person was responsible I would go into court and
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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
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one person wrote all of these and the one person is this person Paul fresher Paul
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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
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examiners have been wrong in the past know I canot speak for others there are always going to be times where people
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are inaccurate and it's not because the science is not accurate it's because that particular examiner has not done
00:38:49
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
00:39:07
pages in the case File Marie mayew made a discovery that supports e findings investigators have found Paul freshh
00:39:17
hour's fingerprints on about a dozen letters postmarked while he was incarcerated those fingerprints are
00:39:25
there and they're his do you think that Paul fresh hour is the Circleville letter writer yes I honestly do former
00:39:36
FBI profiler marelen ool says she cannot explain those letters but she also cannot ignore that during fresh hour's
00:39:45
decade in prison the Phantom writer mailed hundreds of letters if a crime continues on and you have someone in
00:39:54
custody for a long period of time you you have to say somebody else is sending these letters they're not happening by
00:40:01
Magic somebody else is writing the letters if in fact Paul fres was the letter writer is it possible that he
00:40:10
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 fresh hour died June 28th 2012
00:40:27
at at age 70 still fighting to prove his innocence instead What's Left Behind is
00:40:34
an unfinished portrait was Paul fresh 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 goal 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
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