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[Music] so [Music] [Music] welcome to true crime garage wherever you are whatever you're doing thanks for
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listening i'm your host nick and with me as always is a man that's not going to be scared
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just because somebody's mind has jumped the tracks here is the captain but i'm definitely
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afraid of clowns it's gonna be seen it's good to see you thanks for listening thanks for telling
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a friend [Music] today we are still sipping on don't worry my mom said it's cool
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bourbon barrel aged imperial birthday cake stout and it doesn't have to be anybody's birthday to celebrate and
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drink a few of these but it's 12 abv so drink these at home in your garage we put a four and
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a half bottle caps on this one let's give some thanks and praise where it is most certainly do
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right here first up we have a big cheers to beth and cleveland ohio that big we like your chip goes to melanie
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in winfield west virginia next up we have a double fisted cheers to trish and nicole
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in canonsburg pennsylvania and a big shout out to andrew from oregon next it cheers to abigail in milan
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tennessee we also have daniela in astoria new york and last but certainly not least we have
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sally and dorset united kingdom everyone we just mentioned they helped us out with this week's beer
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fund and for that we thank you yeah bwwr you and beer run get you some thanks for listening thanks for telling
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a friend make sure you're subscribed and make sure you tell your friends to subscribe and that is enough
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of the business all right everybody gather round grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true crime
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[Music] where we left off yesterday captain is with the accidental or what appears to be an accidental
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death of ron gillespie driving his truck august 19 1977. am i saying 100 that there was no foul play involved no
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i don't think anybody can say that for certain however the evidence shows and stacks up that
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this does appear to be an accident and if there was anybody else involved the police the sheriff's department and
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bci could not find any evidence of such right and the police have to rule this an accident based
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off the evidence and when people talk about a cover-up again what would be their motive what
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would be the whole police department and the sheriff and everybody else involved coroner
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everybody else involved what would be their motive to cover up this accidental death for the
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superintendent or a bus driver doesn't make a lot of sense to me that there would be
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a cover-up and in regards to sheriff dwight radcliffe i want to point something out here
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this name may sound familiar to our long-time listeners because we gave him a shout
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out in episode 396 in may of 2020 when dwight radcliffe passed away we gave him a shout out because dwight
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radcliffe was not only the sheriff of pickaway county he was the sheriff from 1965 until 2013.
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he was the longest serving sheriff in the entire country in the united states and i
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understand that that does not make him a perfect man nor a perfect sheriff however what i see here captain when we
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reviewed the information is rather than looking for reasons that this was a cover-up
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what i found were reasons that the sheriff's department was looking to prove that there was no foul
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play to themselves right by sending the gun to bci sending the ammunition to bci had there been foul play or had they
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suspected foul play they would have followed up on that yeah because they want to solve why these
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individuals are getting harassed by this letter writer and again let's go back through a couple
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pieces of evidence his blood alcohol level was .16 family is surprised they go hey
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we're surprised by this because he's not a heavy drinker well if he's not a heavy
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drinker then .16 he might not be able to operate a vehicle to the best of his ability
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also not wearing a safety belt yes basically thrown from his truck maybe if he's wearing the safety belt he
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makes it through the accident and to be clear no one should be operating a vehicle
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with a 0.16 especially here in the state of ohio where they've decided .08 half of that is past the legal limit
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now the next stop in our timeline would be 1983 per the unsolved mysteries timeline that we
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reviewed earlier 1983 in february is when the attempt is made on mary gillespie's life when
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she finds the nasty sign that has words and statements so nasty and terrible on it that she has to tear it
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down and if the booby trap would have worked it would have triggered the trigger
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on that gun and fired a shot in the direction of her and her head as she removed that
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sign however that is six years later that's it's 77 the time of ron gillespie's accident
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it's 83 with the attempt on mary gillespie's life there is a lot that goes down during
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that span of time and we're going to go through that and this whole time captain
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that whole time frame there are letters that are continuing there are suspicions
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that are going on in town about who could have tried to kill ron gillespie or who was responsible for
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that truck accident who is responsible for these letters and how long are they going to continue
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for mary gillespie that has claimed that there is no affair happening but now her husband has passed away and
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the superintendent he is now going to get a divorce we could assume if he had a nice relationship
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before these letters that these letters made his relationship a lot more complicated yes
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regardless of the dynamics of that relationship i would guess so now it's the late 70s when gord massey
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and his wife split up and at some point gordon massey and mary gillespie say yes we did have a
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relationship their statement has always been that the relationship started after the letters a better date
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for when that relationship started i don't have for you it's never been provided as far as i could find
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other than the simple statement of we didn't start up this relationship until after the letters started so the other
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statement would be it would be after ron gillespie's passing you can question that as much as you
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want i'm fine with it i think that there's plenty of room for speculation there that can be a hard
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thing to believe i have seen situations like that witness situations like that in
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in my own life so i can believe them i don't 100 percent believe them however i don't look at this situation and see
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mary gillespie being responsible for ron's death and i don't see what others are looking
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for whether they say well mary or even gordon massey could be sending these letters
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when the letter started well that doesn't make any sense why would gordon massey threaten his own
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career his own job by sending these letters they were sent to his boss before they
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were in sent to mary gillespie mary would be threatening her marriage or threatening her job as well
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if she were sending the earlier letters yeah and again it's a small town so you screw up it's not just as easy as
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getting a job somewhere else you you become a stain on that community the other person that we mentioned in yesterday's
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episode captain that was possibly tied or at least suspected to by the gillespies anyway
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to be involved in these letters is david longberry david longberry resigned from his
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position with the west fall school district as a bus driver he resigned in october of 1981
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october 22nd actually of 1981. this whole time again the letters continue now two of the people that have
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been very central to this story all along are paul fresh hour and his wife who is also
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ron gillespie's sister karen fresh hour to this point their only involvement in the story
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because on our timeline we've not gotten to the attempted murder yet is that they have been trying to help
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the gillespies through their problem through this issue of receiving these strange and
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threatening letters we did say yesterday that the letters what we do know when they were
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being mailed were coming from columbus ohio from postal hub 430. see bus shout out to my favorite postal carrier
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in columbus tim williams mr speedy delivery himself pretty badass on the keyboards as well paul fresh hour and
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his wife karen lived in grove city ohio they were super tight with the gillespies
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paul worked for budweiser at the anheuser-busch plant in columbus ohio he worked there
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as a quality control officer or agent whatever you want to call them in 1982 him and his wife
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karen and paul they filed for a divorce it was an early 1983 in february when the attempt is made on mary
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gillespie's life and i think we should go through that because there's a lot of questions there
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and you post some of those questions yesterday first off we need to paint the picture
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she's still driving her bus route at this point mary is correct the sign that she discovers is at the end of the
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day okay this is not on her morning route this is in the afternoon a description of this sign should be
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as such it's a nasty sign that she just she sees spots and decides she's going to take it down
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however it's rigged to this booby trap right it's a very crude booby trap she doesn't know that though at the time
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correct that's exactly right but what does it say anyways i don't know what the sign says
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yeah i don't believe there's a sign until people tell me what what it says so until they tell me what
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it says nasty sign don't buy it what do you mean don't buy that there was a sign or a
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booby trap no i believe there's a booby trap i don't believe there was this horrible i
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mean supposedly there was a bunch of signs and it was there they were all on this uh street but it
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wasn't a main street right no this was a main street this is actually not terribly far
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from the accident site of where ron gillespie was killed well what street was it on i don't have
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that in my notes so but the but but you're also getting the that there was more than one sign there
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was no the information i have states that there was one side see what i heard was that there were signs
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on both sides of the street multiple you know a couple here a couple there like definitely trying to get
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her attention or anybody's attention that would go down that road that could be the case then the issue
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then becomes for me and i think other people will feel this way as well if the booby trap was
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intended for mary gillespie the more signs that you put up makes it a little dicey that it's going to
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hit its intended target the information i have states that it was one sign in a very specific location
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that she would have passed through and she would have seen the sign and anybody driving in the area should have
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seen this sign as well the way that it's described is that she sees this sign and that the crude booby
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trap was set up as such that if she pulled the sign out or i guess anyone for that matter
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pulled the sign to tear it down it would pull on a string that would pull the trigger on this gun that is
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aimed at the person that would be tearing off the sign however she doesn't tear off the sign
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it's attached to a you know like a post she pulls the stake or post out of the ground and then sees the string that is
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tied to this other staker post right takes that down as well now on the second post we have
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what's described as a box inside the box is where she finds the gun that has the booby trap now there's a
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couple different versions of what happens after she takes this down in every version she takes both of these
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items and brings them back onto her bus in some of the versions of the story she then discovers
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that the gun was rigged up to shoot whoever would tear off the sign and other versions and i think this is where
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it comes into question where you brought up her own personal vehicle the majority of the versions of this
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story is it's not discovered the booby trap anyway until she gets home and she's done with work and as soon as
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she discovers this booby trap she gets in her car and now she's driving off and she's going to report
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this to the authorities well i also think that maybe that's the reason why people think there was
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multiple signs was because like you said she had to take down two posts well and there's some dramatizations of
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this story that do show multiple signs i think the reason why they showed that is to increase the threat level
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some would say till midnight michael scott the office the other situation too is this was not
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the first day nor first time in fact in years this has been going on for years where people were posting
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these nasty signs and we mentioned yesterday ron would drive around looking for them
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which let's see when i used to teach guitar lessons we would send a guy out at night once it
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got dark and he would put you know guitar lessons call this number all around circleville because normally
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if people you know if if we put them out during the day they were going to be taken during the day
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but if we put them at night at least the morning traffic would see them well a lot of these signs had to do with
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her whatever relationship with gordon massey which is not that big of a deal at this point they're both
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not married yeah but it's it's one of those relationships oh well you're as you're together
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you can keep rubbing it in their face that the the letter writer can keep rubbing that
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that in their face see i told you i was right from the beginning yeah but that's not the issue the issue
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is what people what is being posted is that there's some kind of relationship between gord
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massey and gillespie's daughter who at this time would only be 13 years old so mary gillespie is tearing these down
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not to save her own name nor gord massey's name she's doing it in defense of her own child
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to me it seems like this individual if the letter writer is connected to whoever's putting out these signs
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then their their target all along has been the superintendent it's difficult to say
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i don't i don't know how to answer that or respond to that statement with words i don't think you're wrong
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the problem becomes that there are so many people that this thing let's just call it a thing because
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we don't know what it is we don't know if it's multiple people we don't know if it's one
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individual and if it's multiple people we don't know if they know who the others are
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that are doing this terrible stuff right it seems to be targeting a lot of people
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from what i can see and yes it does seem to be that this started with gordon massey but i have some strong opinions
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on who i think the writer is and i think we can address that once we get through the events of 1983
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because the way that the story goes per unsolved mysteries and the local legend and the story that's repeated
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over and over and over again for the most part to this day is that they trace this gun back to paul
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fresh hour paul says yeah that's my gun but it was stolen from my residence the issue then becomes well
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why didn't you report it stolen well i didn't know it was stolen until now right okay well if that's a good
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defense i know that this is not a homicide that it was an attempted murder but if a homicide was committed with my gun
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and a a good defensible excuses well it was stolen but i never reported it stolen
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and everybody just went along with it then we all would use that excuse all the time
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it's not believable and then dwight radcliffe the sheriff at the time sits paul down paul says hey i agreed to
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do this and he shows me some of the letters in the envelopes that are coming from the
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circleville writer and says you know what try to mimic this try to write like this copy it and then
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sheriff radcliffe uses this as further evidence that he was not just the person that owned the gun that belonged in the
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booby trap but the writer the letters in the envelopes coming from the circleville
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writer matched what was written on the sign of the set booby trap and paul could not be eliminated as that writer
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in fact radcliffe takes it a step further and says that this is proof that he was
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the writer so not only is he the attempted murderer but he's also the circleville writer
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they take him to trial and in october the trial lasts about one week paul does not testify on his own behalf
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and he is sentenced to seven to 25 years in prison which is the maximum sentence
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at that time then he gets jammed up even further because he can't get paroled because the letter writer continues to
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write these letters and send them to businesses churches individuals mary gillespie
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she gets more the school board keeps getting more letters in fact paul freshauer himself gets a
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letter and we know unsolved mysteries gets a letter yeah it's like oprah you get a
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letter you get a letter you get a letter look underneath your chair and so radcliffe tells the warden hey
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you can't let this guy out he clearly has not learned his lesson he's still writing these letters
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well that you know they did the investigation to see if there was a way basically for him to
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get a letter out there's that's easy to do it's easy to do do we know do you know what
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prison he went to well he was in lima ohio so this would be a maximum security prison
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at the time and but the letters were still coming from columbus yes which makes it difficult one but the
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other thing too it doesn't make it impossible i mean we have no but the the tricky thing captain
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becomes they monitor in these prisons they monitor the in-going and outgoing mail no i understand that but what i'm
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saying is if the mail was still coming from columbus you would all you'd have to do is bribe
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one of the officers to take the mail for you and then that officer might think well i
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get i gotta read the letter beforehand all he all he's doing is talking some [ __ ]
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and i know he's harmless because we have him locked up i'm just saying it wouldn't be that
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far-fetched to for to have him bribe somebody to hey if i write a couple letters will you drop
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them off for me no and i'm glad you bring that up for a couple reasons because i'm on your side
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i want to say this though i believe the warden exactly as the warden said in his statement in his
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letter that i did an investigation and it is my opinion as the warden of this prison that paul
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fresh our is not mailing these letters through my prison walls i believe that statement 100
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because they are checking the incoming mail and the outgoing mail and even when the letters continued the
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warden said cool i'll play along paul you want to keep playing your game i'll put you and lock you up in solitary
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confinement and he kept him in solitary time and time again three different times and the letters
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continued during all those times but again i'm with you i've seen shawshank redemption i've read the book
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red in there said you know what whatever you need i can get for you guys and what did he do he got him and i know
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that's fictional but let's throw this little wrinkle in there paul fresh hour at one point in his life worked as a
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corrections officer in a prison in the state of ohio not at the lima prison he worked at the
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ohio penitentiary which is in franklin county he worked that job i don't know for how many years
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i believe it was less than 10 this was after he got out of the military after he went to college
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i always think it's funny when they they get flipped to the other side like for so many years i was the
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officer now i'm i am the prisoner so if anybody could figure out how to do it it
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would be somebody in paul's situation somebody who had worked as you said both sides both sides of the bars
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the other issue though also becomes it doesn't have to be paul fresh hour writing these actual letters that
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continue during this time to be connected to paul it could be somebody for him on the outside that
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doesn't need nor require any information from paul at all and just keep sending them
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on his own or her own to try to make it look like paul is innocent because what did
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they tell us at trial what did they tell us in the papers he was the writer not only was he the
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attempted murderer but he was the writer that they're one in the same so if the letters
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continue then maybe they got it wrong with the attempted murder right let's dig through this attempted murder
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charge a bit more because there is some evidence that magically has lost its way
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today when this retelling of the story continues [Music] [Applause] [Music] that's nice
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[Music] [Applause] [Music] huh lower back i didn't go anywhere well you should have tall cans in the
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air cheers to everybody back side to side oh by the way if you would like to receive
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some mail from us make sure you sign up on our mailing list that's right that's right we will try
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not to send any booby traps so here's some issues with paul's guilt and with his
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innocent or innocence that we should point out first off we had several people at his
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trial that testified as to eyewitnesses of what they saw that day where the sign
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and the booby trap was set up yeah but we have issues we always seem to have issues
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the issue became a couple of things one paul did not go to work that day we know
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he worked in columbus so that would have been a really good day for paul fresh hour if in fact he was
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innocent to go to work yeah i know you know it would have been a 20 30 minute drive for him
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the anheuser-busch plant is north columbus it would have been an hour for him to
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get to this location and he worked long days as a quality control officer he worked 50 hours a
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week up in north columbus yeah but if he didn't go to work and he's coming from his home in grove
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city that's correct i'm sorry i was i thought you meant if he was at work but yeah so it would have been a great
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alibi had he been at work now he did have an alibi for portions of that day the question then became when in fact
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was the sign in the booby trap set up because there are other people that say hey i saw a
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tall sandy-haired man in a yellow el camino parked right in that general area and this was
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before the sign was visible to anyone else there were other eyewitnesses however
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that put paul in the general area of circleville and danville around the time that it is believed that
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the sign and booby trap were set up so more for him being in the area rather than
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against and of course the damning evidence is that he did not go to work that day
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there's also a lot of stuff going on in paul's life leading up to february of 1983.
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in 1982 he and his wife karen divorce and it's not a good one it's not a clean break it's not nice and
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neat for everybody well then why not shoot her one problem has always been for the case against paul fresh hour as
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setting the booby trap attempting to kill his one-time sister-in-law is that he's this nice quiet man he
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would never do anything like this however at the divorce proceedings it's presented at that trial at that
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court case paul beat up his wife when he suspected that she was running around on him and he beat her up pretty
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bad and we know this because we have the police report she has a black eye she receives several
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stitches and this is not a he said she said situation because in the court proceedings his own
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attorney tells the court it's okay paul never meant to do that he lost control but he's gone to counseling
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since and he's gone because he is sorry for what he did that's admitting that he was violent
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against his own wife yeah piece of [ __ ] they divorced in 1982 and at some point paul moves on he has a
00:28:06
girlfriend which becomes his wife before february of 1983. paul somehow even with the violence is
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awarded the children and the house during the divorce and karen goes to live in a trailer at the back of mary
00:28:25
gillespie's property there are signs that are being posted in darbyville and circleville leading up to the booby
00:28:34
trap sign that are now making nasty statements about karen freshhour saying that she's a lesbian and naming
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the woman that she is supposedly involved with even though she has a boyfriend mm-hmm and she goes
00:28:47
over you have a boyfriend and a girlfriend at the same time that's true i mean i mean all of the stories we cover you
00:28:56
can have a husband or a wife and a boyfriend or girlfriend at the same time i'm pointing part of
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this out though because there are a lot of people that believe that karen fresh hour could have been
00:29:05
the letter writer well i mean just because there's some nasty signs about her it's like you gotta take a couple for
00:29:10
the team my look when i look at these letters i mean just going off i want to know your opinion
00:29:18
to me the the the writing seems a little feminine um possibly that's you're pointing out
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something that's good that we have not pointed out that the letters are not identical no
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there's several different styles of writing in the handwritten letters there's also
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some that are typed some are on postcards some are on these little weird looking
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tag things some are on signs as we've pointed out but yeah it's like even though they're
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they're using they're almost like creating their own different fonts but even the one uh font
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where they're using like really boxy letters it still looks like more more likely that a female
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would have wrote that than a man i don't think you in my opinion i can't apply gender to any of the right that's
00:30:06
because you're not an expert okay so once you become an expert in junk science i'm just i'm in a room full of
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experts i just don't i happen to be not be one of them so the the thing here though captain would you agree
00:30:19
that no would you agree that saying that paul fresh our was not the letter writer
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does not then make him innocent of the attempted murder charge yeah but it's also i mean the the reason
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why karen makes sense is because she would have opportunity to get his gun all they did was uh basically
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shave off like part of the number but that would have to mean there'd be some reason why
00:30:52
mary gillespie's sister wanted her dead if in fact it was actually rigged up in a way that it would work
00:30:58
right you know that's where this story gets really complicated the case does get very complicated
00:31:04
because there's about 8 000 different rabbit holes that you could go down and the problem with this case is
00:31:12
the people again i keep going back to who is central to this story and it's the fresh hours it's the
00:31:18
gillespies it's gordon massey and it's the school board where it all kind of starts and the
00:31:24
victims if there are real victims are ron gillespie mary gillespie and at this point karen gillespie you
00:31:32
can say whatever you want to say about karen gillespie and people can think whatever they want to think
00:31:37
i'm telling you her husband beat her up we know that to be a fact because we have a police report it's presented
00:31:44
in court proceedings and through his own attorney admits to it yeah so what you're saying
00:31:50
is karen is telling us that uh paul right correct paul with the shitty mustache and the half mullet he beat her up so
00:32:01
again if maybe look maybe she was the letter writer and it was just she was getting kicks telling people hey
00:32:09
you're not supposed to be doing this you're doing this maybe she loved her sister but said hey you're doing wrong
00:32:15
because i love my brother-in-law he's a good guy and you're cheating on him bad for you right
00:32:21
but then your husband beats you up maybe and let's look if it happened once you start up in 1982
00:32:29
right the letters start in in 76 early 77. i understand that just i know i'm just
00:32:36
pointing it out for all involved okay again i'm not an expert i just that's what i'm saying i'm trying to
00:32:40
keep up you try you when you get your certification on the wall then we'll let you speak okay follow me
00:32:48
on this though you pointed something out really interesting was this booby trap even gone to work
00:32:58
it seemed like it would hypothetically right but it didn't what a great way to frame the son of a [ __ ] that has
00:33:08
beat you probably multiple times you see what i'm saying you're now done you're you're out of the relationship
00:33:15
for all you for all we know he can't let it go he he might still be harassing her here
00:33:21
and there and she goes hey i'm going to set this trap up with his gun and he's going to go
00:33:30
to jail for this i agree if paul fresh hour was set up it had to be somebody extremely close to him somebody that had
00:33:50
note the thing is you know that we're right you're talking to a you're talking to a
00:33:56
room full of people and i don't mean here in the garage i mean i don't believe for a second that there
00:34:03
was anything short of at least half a dozen people writing these letters really because why would karen fresh our
00:34:11
why would she be the original letter writer i don't believe the person that started the letter campaign
00:34:16
and back in 77 was the same person that was still writing the letters in the late 90s yeah if
00:34:21
there's hundreds maybe a thousand of these letters yeah you're gonna have multiple
00:34:25
writers because also it'd be so easy like you hate your job your boss is a little bit of a [ __ ]
00:34:31
muffin so you're like hey i'm going to write them a note get all my grievances out get my point
00:34:37
across and they'll just assume it's a part of these other letters so i'm covering i'm going to be covering
00:34:44
myself up well the issue for me becomes with karen being the letter writer for the
00:34:49
entire campaign if if she's upset about an affair why wouldn't she just tell her
00:34:58
brother there's no point in mailing a letter to gord massey and take it a step further yeah but if
00:35:06
you start with that hey i know hey you stay away it's easier to send them a threatening
00:35:12
letter but not say stay away from you would you not want your brother to to know
00:35:17
you just want the affair to end and it's it's probably maybe it's better he doesn't know
00:35:22
yeah yeah because where my mind goes is you just tell the if you really care about them you just
00:35:27
tell them hey i think this is going on or i know it's going on because of a b and c the other tricky
00:35:33
thing too is somebody definitely had some kind of insider knowledge of the the school buses the high school
00:35:42
the superintendent and the employees there i don't know unless she's being fed that
00:35:48
information from mary gillespie i don't know that karen would know that information
00:35:54
and it's equally difficult to believe that paul freshauer would know that information
00:35:59
where i don't think that paul i think that paul was the letter writer for a portion
00:36:04
of this story but i don't think that he was the letter writer when it first started
00:36:08
but that's what i'm saying with so many letters it's it's it really puts law enforcement
00:36:15
or any armchair detective at a loss i mean you're going to be chasing your tail we have businesses that were written to
00:36:25
we're talking about three or four lines sent to him on on basically a post-it note right
00:36:32
i think a lot of those are just random people that knew hey as long as i go up to
00:36:38
columbus and send it from columbus people are going to assume this shit's coming from
00:36:44
the circleville letter writer well in some cases they're just simply placed in mailboxes they weren't mailed at all
00:36:50
right the early letters were all coming from columbus the letters the majority of the letters that were
00:36:56
being sent and received while paul was in prison are coming from columbus but not all 1000 are actually
00:37:04
mailed and through the through the system itself well the but the reason why you want to
00:37:09
tell your brother-in-law is that you're well it's your brother it's not your brother-in-law
00:37:14
if you're karen yes if you're karen then it's your brother is your you're now taking um
00:37:24
guilt away and and people that are they're obviously if they're having this affair
00:37:32
they have guilt because they're obviously not telling people they don't know exactly what they want
00:37:37
to do with their lives or kind of using their spouses as they continue to have this affair and
00:37:42
you're just you're now just creating pain where if you can get to your sister-in-law if you can get to the
00:37:50
other guy that's having the affair and you can get one of them to see the light that maybe the affair
00:37:57
will just stop he doesn't have to know about it he doesn't have to be in pain about it
00:38:03
um and they could just move forward but you end up telling him anyway well because nobody
00:38:10
nobody did anything see what i'm saying so you kind of gave them the chance and they didn't and so
00:38:17
you also can't know that mary would open the letter address to her you see what i mean it gets very
00:38:24
complicated very quickly when you try to assign a certain person to being the letter writer
00:38:29
no no yeah no and it works that way for every single person you try to apply it to
00:38:37
not just karen it works that way for paul for mary for gordon for a lot of other people
00:38:43
involved and i think the reason why it works out that way is a the letter writer constantly contradicts
00:38:49
themselves the threat to gordon massey hey if you don't do this i'm going to go to the
00:38:53
school board but then you don't give him time to do anything about it you just go to the
00:38:57
school board hey if you don't marry if you don't come out with this affair i'm going to go to the school
00:39:03
board well you've already gone to the school board uh and then you tell the husband but
00:39:09
what's the husband supposed to do he's not he's supposed to end the affair it seems to be the original letter
00:39:17
writer was more concerned about ending the affair rather than actual consequences for any of these people
00:39:24
well i actually think that like i said there's there's probably a lot of letters that we've never seen that
00:39:30
the public has never seen because nobody came forward and said hey i got this letter
00:39:35
talking about this affair i had uh with so and so because they never came forward with that letter
00:39:42
and i think if we had all those early letters we'd have a better idea of who was who was writing these
00:39:49
but again the problem with this case is once you get all these letters out there
00:39:54
and like i said if i think my boss is the biggest you know douche in the world right
00:40:01
i can write him a letter in this style and and get away with it and how many other
00:40:07
people in that town decided i can do the same thing now take that same logic and go
00:40:15
in 82 i'm beat up by this little [ __ ] of a man that thinks he can put his hands on women whenever he wants
00:40:25
and uh i'm tired of his [ __ ] and maybe he's threatening her even afterwards and decides to set him
00:40:31
up it's not impossible i find i find it difficult there again to believe that karen would
00:40:37
be the letter writer based off of the nasty things that were said about her on the side no no did you not hear
00:40:44
what i said has nothing to do with her being the letter writer it's now opportunity oh some people are
00:40:51
questioning whether paul is the letter writer let me set up this scenario using his gun that i stole from him
00:41:00
right and make it seem like these signs were set up and it didn't seem like there was a lot
00:41:06
of eyewitnesses that saw those signs there's some reports of oh yeah i think i might have saw this i might saw this
00:41:12
but but then she collects that evidence and what did she find a booby trap that does not work for
00:41:19
whatever reason and she takes it back and just so happens to be paul's gun and what a great way for
00:41:28
you know karen or possibly mary and karen to set up uh so this son of a [ __ ] goes to jail
00:41:36
see what i'm saying oh i agree beat up my sister and she came to me and said hey we're gonna
00:41:44
i got this little ruse because they're not gonna put him behind bars they're not gonna protect me i'm gonna
00:41:50
protect myself i could totally see going okay yeah that makes a lot of sense and then it's his gun and if they think
00:41:57
he's the writer this guy goes to jail i get what you're saying and many people have thought that
00:42:03
and it's certainly an interesting angle to look at many people have said you know what maybe paul is innocent here
00:42:08
and maybe paul's the actual hero and karen is the villain all along that we should have been looking for
00:42:15
when we thought paul was the villain well i mean paul's paul's a villain in my eyes i mean you
00:42:20
don't put your hands on women there's a couple things that get again conveniently left out from the story
00:42:26
along the way one the incident of paul actually being a violent man on record when people say he's not capable of such
00:42:34
horrible things so the gun itself is lab tested so they can come up with the serial number to
00:42:41
trace where it came from they cha they trace it to a sale at a pawn shop in columbus
00:42:46
and it's proven that that pawn shop sold the gun to paul fresh hour that's not really in question because
00:42:52
paul admits to the sheriff yes in fact that is my gun but it was stolen and i don't know when
00:42:58
it was stolen why didn't you ever report it stolen uh i don't know why because i think no
00:43:04
it was stolen yes that's fair right however he does say that his home was burglarized
00:43:10
so i again i that's where he loses me a little bit is there a report of this burglary
00:43:18
it was there an insurance claim of this burglary those are things that i could not find
00:43:22
if he chose not to report the burglary why the other thing that gets lost along the
00:43:28
way is when we go back to the writer and and when we look at paul's guilt again we've
00:43:35
both agreed that whether whether or not he was the writer at any time during this story
00:43:41
has little to do with him actually being guilty he doesn't have to be the writer and be
00:43:47
guilty of this attempted murder the thing that gets really tricky with this when you think about how many possible
00:43:55
writers there were along the way is we have a situation where four people readily admit we were receiving letters
00:44:06
ron and mary gillespie and the four of us took action we took actions into our own
00:44:12
hands and decided we are going to send some anonymous letters to the person we think is writing them to us
00:44:18
right there we see a chain of events that sets into place multiple writers how many other people received
00:44:25
letters and thought they knew who was sending them the letter and anonymously wrote them and then that
00:44:31
person anonymously writes somebody else and then somebody else and it continues on and on and on a
00:44:38
great this reminds me of another great book needful things where somebody does something wrong to
00:44:44
one person they assume somebody else did it to him they wronged that person and then that person wronged somebody
00:44:51
else and somebody else and then somebody else and the circle and cycle continues and it grows and it gets more
00:44:58
vicious as it goes oh again that's the funny thing about where it happened circleville the
00:45:05
difficult thing against paul fresh hour is one he admitted that with that group of
00:45:13
four that they sent several letters anonymous letters later according to dwight radcliffe
00:45:21
sheriff dwight radcliffe paul fresh hour this is before he was convicted before his trial during
00:45:27
interrogation admits to dwight radcliffe as to sending 40 to 50 of the 1000 circleville writer letters this is
00:45:38
magically left from the story as well paul fresh our his original statement to the courts against the
00:45:46
charges of attempted murder of mary gillespie he pled innocent by reason of insanity
00:45:52
on august 8 1983. he later changed that to simply innocent and he decided to fight the charges
00:46:01
and lost in court at the trial karen his wife who may not be innocent we don't know i i can see your point
00:46:10
there captain and other people have brought up that scenario as well but karen testifies in
00:46:17
court that on more than one occasion she caught paul with strange letters one that he had ripped up and tried to
00:46:24
flush down a toilet one that she found stuff between the mattresses she thought that paul was
00:46:32
the letter writer but she also didn't think that he was doing it since 77. i wonder if there's a situation here
00:46:41
captain where paul fresh our went off the rails do we have a situation where his life is spiraling
00:46:49
out of control and he uses this already existence of the letter writer in the letters
00:46:55
themselves as something easy for him to step into to take advantage of a situation
00:47:02
he loved ron gillespie there's no doubt about that that's his own words that i'm
00:47:06
using there he says that ron gillespie was his best friend he's convinced that somebody
00:47:13
killed or ron gillespie was involved in some type of foul play that led to his death
00:47:20
is there a chance that he ultimately believed mary gillespie was somehow responsible for the death of his best
00:47:27
friend and then after his nasty divorce and after he is brought into the light and shown
00:47:33
to be who he really is uses this writer as an opportunity to attack his to further attack his ex-wife by posting
00:47:46
nasty signs about her and attack mary gillespie posting signs about her and sending nasty letters
00:47:53
along the way david longberry who we've mentioned several times in these episodes
00:47:58
he's not without fault here he's not just another innocent person along the way he in the 90s was accused of raping
00:48:07
or sexually assaulting an 11 year old girl and he went on the run i couldn't find
00:48:14
exactly what happened to him or confirmation of such but the story has always been that he
00:48:20
hung himself somewhere in texas i happen to wonder captain i'm not gonna sit here and
00:48:25
pretend to know who the writer was i'm not gonna sit here and pretend to say that paul
00:48:30
was 100 guilty or that ron gillespie died 100 in a in a one car accident that involved
00:48:37
nobody else but it looks to me to be a situation where paul was guilty of what he was charged with
00:48:45
and ron's unfortunate ending was probably just an accident i also think that there's a good strong
00:48:52
chance david longberry who resigned in 1981 and who worked for the school system in
00:48:59
76 and 77 78 and leading up to 1981 knew the inner workings of such he may have been the writer or one of
00:49:07
the writers in the beginning i think paul was probably one of the writers at some point along the way
00:49:14
maybe in 82 83 maybe he figured out a way to continue to write them or had someone on the outside
00:49:21
that's the other thing here too that i think gets missed people assume because the letters
00:49:26
continued that it couldn't have been paul they also assume that he had to have been getting letters out of prison he
00:49:32
doesn't somebody could have helped him on the outside with getting no information from
00:49:36
paul at all no help from paul at all mm-hmm nothing oh well even when people say well he got
00:49:40
a letter i mean if he was the letter writer he could just go well look guys i got a letter
00:49:46
so i just yeah it's he does this hey guys i got a letter i just finished writing it
00:49:57
no but but that's what makes this case so complicated like like what you're saying is there
00:50:03
one writer or multiple writers and are the writers even aware of each other or are they all using each other as a
00:50:12
pawn to not be caught as the main writer and a lot of times we should point out the light the
00:50:18
writer's not committing any actual crime right to send somebody a letter saying hey i know your secrets
00:50:25
that's not a crime sounds like a good time you have this whole situation with this car accident
00:50:31
was that caused or was it an accident was it so that there that becomes a twist and then you have this whole possible
00:50:41
booby trap that was set up and then how many other little stories that have just been left behind in the
00:50:48
past of the circleville letter writer of other possible wrongdoings happening one of
00:50:56
the stories that has been left behind and i would like to highlight it before we wrap up here today captain
00:51:01
is that in march of 1992 chief mckean he's the police chief in grove city where paul fresh our
00:51:10
one time lived he actually went back there and lived after he got out of prison and he passed away while still living in
00:51:18
grove city all those years later but in march of 1992 the police chief of grove city
00:51:23
receives a letter that says that mary gillespie is responsible for the letters but includes this tidbit of information
00:51:32
whoever killed ron gillespie is also the person who killed a woman named vicky koch
00:51:39
i agree with all the people out there that say that this mystery is super intriguing and super fascinating
00:51:46
what i don't love and i know that they're pushing a different product we have true crime here
00:51:53
in the garage but what is often said is that the circleville letter writer is the greatest mystery
00:51:59
in the history of the state of ohio or one of the greatest mysteries in the state of ohio i would like to
00:52:06
point out regardless of whatever this letter said i don't have the exact wording in
00:52:11
front of me that was received by the grove city police department but it did say whoever killed ron
00:52:17
gillespie also killed vicky koch vicki koch her murder is still unsolved to this day and she was killed
00:52:27
in pickaway county and this is from dave yost the ohio attorney general's list of unsolved
00:52:34
homicides their database the details of the case are this on august 14 1980 vicky koch was reported missing
00:52:43
from her residence in circleville ohio vicki was last seen by friends on or about
00:52:49
august 10 1980 after attending an event in ross county ohio on friday august 15 1980 her vehicle was
00:52:58
found parked approximately five blocks from her residence unoccupied neither residents nor her vehicle
00:53:05
revealed any evidence of a struggle or altercation on september 17 1980 a nearly skeletonized body was
00:53:13
discovered in an area of madison county ohio the remains were identified as vicky koch through dental records the
00:53:21
cause of death is listed as death due to violence again her case is still unsolved
00:53:28
to this very day and she was a teacher working in that area back in 1980 before she went missing
00:53:38
when we highlight mysteries of ohio or anywhere for that matter i think we need to sift through some of
00:53:46
the sensationalized and some of the ones that are filled with bright lights and shiny objects
00:53:53
and confusing rabbit holes and look to the real cases like that of vicki coach thank you our friends for joining us
00:54:12
again for another fascinating case if you need more true crime garage in your ear balls check out
00:54:19
our bonus show called off the record that's on stitcher premium colonel do we have any recommended
00:54:26
reading for this week this week we are recommending a great ohio true crime book it's titled murder
00:54:33
and mayhem in dayton in the miami valley this features several different true crime stories
00:54:38
from the miami valley area of ohio which has a rich but gruesome and bloody history
00:54:45
so check out murder in mayhem in dayton and the miami valley by up and coming true crime author sarah
00:54:52
kushel find that great title and others on our recommended page at truecrimegarage.com much love to you
00:55:01
guys see you here in the garage next week and until then be good be kind and don't litter
00:55:30
[Music] you