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Starting In March of 1976, an anonymous letter writer had tormented 43 year old Gordon Massey and 32 year old Mary Gillespie. The author accused Gordon of sexually harassing his employees and accused Mary of having an affair with him. The local sheriff, Dwight Radcliffe didn't help. Neither did Mary's own attempts at stopping the harassment campaign. After five months of almost constant letters, Mary was more stressed than ever. By the end of the summer she was dying for a break. Her husband, 34 year old Ron probably encouraged her to take a much needed vacation. On August 19th she flew down to Florida with her sister in law Karen Sue Freshour and two other girlfriends. That same night Ron was home alone with their children, 8 year old Tracy and 14 year old Eric. Tracy was still awake at 10pm when she heard the phone ring and her father answer it, Tracy couldn't make out the words the but she heard her father's voice rise in anger from the next room. He was shouting at whoever was on the other end of the line. When the call ended, Ron told his daughter he knew who the letter writer was and he was going to make it all stop. Ron hurried up the stairs and grabbed his.22 caliber revolver. He said goodbye to Tracy and Eric and ran out the door. Then he he climbed into his red and white 1971 Ford pickup truck and sped down the driveway. It would be the last time his kids ever saw him. About 10 miles from his home, Ron's truck had zoomed off the road at Five Points Pike, a curve he'd driven hundreds of times before and slammed into a tree. Ron, who wasn't wearing his seatbelt, was thrown halfway through the windshield. And at 10:30pm about 30 minutes after Ron left home, a passing driver called the police to report the accident. Ron was taken in an ambulance to the nearest hospital, where he was declared dead on arrival. While hospital staff notified Ron's family, officers from the sheriff's department scoured his truck for clues. Although it looked like an accident, they couldn't be sure, especially because his daughter Tracy mentioned that he'd been on his way to see the local letter writer. The police found that Ron's gun had been recently fired. One bullet was missing from the cylinder, and there was a spent casing. But there was no bullet hole in the truck and no rounds were found at the scene. Which meant that if Ron had confronted the Circleville writer, their meeting had taken place before the accident. But the medical examiner didn't factor Ron's personal affairs into his report. Dr. Ray Carroll, the town's physician and coroner, ran some tests and found that Ron's blood alcohol level had been 0.16%, twice the legal limit. For Dr. Carol, it was cut and dry. Ron's death had been an accident caused by drunk driving. But not everyone agreed. Ron's brother in law, Paul Freshauer, was convinced that foul play had been involved. He wondered if someone had either tampered with Ron's car or driven him off the road. And at first, Sheriff Radcliffe seemed to side with him. But then Radcliffe suddenly changed his tune. When Paul contacted him again, the sheriff insisted that Ron had simply gotten drunk and crashed his truck. Supposedly, his only suspect, who most people assume was Mary's fellow bus driver, David Longberry, took a polygraph and passed. Which meant, according to the sheriff's Office. The case was closed, but Ron's family didn't buy it, and neither did the community. Everyone who knew Ron said he wasn't a heavy drinker. It seems strange that he would have been drunk that night. It was also odd that his gun had been fired, and yet no one knew when or at whom. The whole thing was suspicious. And as word spread through town, residents began to whisper a darker theory. Ron had been murdered by the Circleville letter writer, and the sheriff was was involved. It's not clear if people suspected that the letter writer had driven Ron off the road or killed him in some other way, but Sheriff Radcliffe dismissed these rumors as idle gossip. However, that only seemed to make the writer more upset, because soon the sheriff started getting his own anonymous letters demanding an investigation into the accident. But it wasn't because the author wanted to take credit for Ron's death. In their letters, the writer hinted that Gordon Massey was somehow at fault. At first, the author accused Radcliffe of protecting Gordon and covering up evidence to make Ron's death look like an accident. But as time went on, the allegations became even more explosive. The writer claimed Radcliffe was corrupt and called him a tyrant and a predator. And things only ramped up from there. What had begun as a focused attack on Gordon Massey and Mary Gillespie now expanded to terrorize the entire Circleville community. Over the next six years, hundreds more people in Circleville and surrounding Pickaway county would find threatening letters in their mailboxes. Some were written on paper, others on index cards. Some letters used a fake return address, while others had not. None at all. But they all used the same distinctive block lettering and were postmarked from Columbus. Many had some sort of threat, and at least one envelope actually contained arsenic. As for the content, most contained secrets, usually sexual, that the author threatened to expose unless the recipient did as they said. At least one person was told how to vote in an upcoming election. The alleged secrets themselves varied wildly in their credibility. Some were clearly false, like the woman accused of abusing her daughter despite not having any children. But others turned out to be chillingly accurate. When the writer accused Ray Carroll, the county coroner, of sexually assaulting children, most people dismissed it as another wild allegation. But years later, Carol would indeed, indeed be exposed as a serial child predator and stripped of his medical license. Unfortunately, the statute of limitations had passed by that point, so he was never charged for his crimes. The writer seemed to have an almost supernatural awareness of private conversations and hidden affairs, and it was just a matter of time until things boiled over. It was like psychological war. Warfare Marriages grew strained under suspicion. Friendships dissolved. Business relationships crumbled. The mere possibility of being targeted kept residents on edge. Meanwhile, Sheriff Radcliffe found himself in an impossible position. Victims were hesitant to come forward. Even if the allegations weren't true, they risked being judged by friends and neighbors. And that wasn't the only challenge that Sheriff Radcliffe faced. At the time, DNA testing wasn't widely available. Still, testing for fingerprints was possible. From what we can tell, Radcliffe's department attempted to test several letters and envelopes, but the results were inconclusive. This seemed to indicate the sender had been careful to wear gloves or limit their prints in some other way, which meant there was still no physical evidence linking the letters to any suspect. Through it all, the writer's favorite targets remained Gordon Massie and Mary Gillespie. Letter after letter accused them of orchestrating Ron's death, of carrying on their affair while his blood was still fresh on the road where he crashed. And actually, they were right to a degree. There's no proof that Mary and Gordon were having an affair. When the letters began, began, both of them publicly denied it. But in 1979, Gordon and his wife Clara got divorced. And not long after that, he and Mary were seen going on dates. This only angered their anonymous foe even more. The relentless campaign stopped being about exposing their relationship. Now it seemed designed to push them to the breaking point. In the early 1980s, things escalated. Crude handmade signs started appearing along Mary's bus route featuring the same accusations about her love life. They also had the same distinctive block lettering and strange diction as the letters. The author taped them to walls, storefront windows and newsstands. He or she always placed the signs overnight, so no, no one ever saw them doing it. Hurtful allegations littered the streets of Circleville for all the world to see. Then, in 1983, the signs took a sickening turn. They called out Mary's daughter Tracy, who was still only a teenager at the time, and accused her of sleeping with Gordon Massie as well. The messages were lewd and graphic. Mary kept her eyes peeled and tried to tear down the signs before the rest of the town could see. But before long, these baseless accusations were the least of Mary's worries. On the morning of February 7, 1983, 40 year old Mary was driving her usual route when she spotted another sign near a rural intersection. This one contained particularly vile comments about Tracy and Gordon. Furious, Mary pulled pulled the bus to the shoulder and walked toward the fence post where the sign was attached. She ripped it down and was about to tear it to pieces when something Caught her eye. It was a string connecting the sign to a small wooden box a few feet away. Mary stopped, studying the setup more carefully. Something felt wrong. She approached the box and looked inside. Nestled between several signs Styrofoam blocks. Was a handgun. The string was rigged to the trigger. If she had yanked the sign off like she intended, the contraption would have shot her. Mary carefully collected all the pieces. The sign, the box, the gun, the string and placed them in her bus. As soon as she finished her route, she drove straight to the sheriff's office. The booby trap represented a terrifying escalation. This wasn't just intimidation anymore. Someone had actually tried to kill her. Fortunately for Mary, it hadn't gone as planned. And now the police had a vital clue. When investigators examined the pistol, they discovered someone had tried to scratch off its serial number. But they didn't do a very good job and the forensics team was able to reconstruct construct the missing numbers. The trail led them to a man named Wesley who worked at the Anheuser Busch Brewery in Columbus. When police asked him about the gun, he said he'd sold it to his supervisor months ago. When he told the officers his supervisor's name, they stopped in their tracks. He said it was Paul Freshour, Mary's former brother in law. Foreign. 1976 the people of Circleville had been tormented by an anonymous bully. What started as scandalous allegations and veiled threats ramped up to real violence. After seven years, it seemed like the harassment campaign would never end. But after a few failed murder plot against 40 year old Mary Gillespie, on February 7, 1983, the Sheriff's Department finally had its first real lead. Mary's former brother in law, 41 year old Paul Freshhour. This came as a shock to both Mary and Paul. From the beginning, he'd been the one pushing Sheriff Dwight Radcliffe to take the letters seriously. Despite the evidence against him, Paul inspired insisted he was innocent. In fact, he was so confident that he agreed to talk to detectives without a lawyer present down at police headquarters. Paul admitted that the gun belonged to him, but he denied having anything to do with the murder plot or the letters. Paul said he normally kept the weapon in his garage, but noticed it had gone missing a few weeks ago. He believed it was stolen, but didn't know exactly when. It was certainly possible. The issue was Paul had never reported the theft, so there was no way to verify his story. To make matters worse, he had gaps in his alibi for February 7th. The day Mary found the booby trapped sign, Paul explained That he'd taken the day off from work, which his boss at Anheuser Busch confirmed. He'd spent at least part of the day at home, where a contractor was doing some repairs. But there were still several hours the police couldn't account for. But Paul promised he had nothing to hide. Desperate to show his innocence, he agreed to take a polygraph on February 25th. Today, polygraph tests are extremely controversial, and most experts agree that they aren't reliable. But back in 1977, they were basically seen as foolproof, Though they still weren't allowed as evidence in court. Nonetheless, when Paul failed his test, Sheriff Radcliffe took it as confirmation that he was the one who tried to kill Mary. Which meant he was also probably behind the letters. To prove his theory, Radcliffe administered a handwriting test. Normally, forensic handwriting analysis is conducted by experts who were trained to look for for tiny discrepancies between writing samples. To accurately compare Paul's writing with the anonymous authors, A handwriting analyst would have to examine as many of Paul's own writing samples as possible. If they didn't have any to go on, they may have asked him to create new ones. Unfortunately, that's not what happened. Radcliffe's deputies administered the test themselves and used a method that no expert would announce endorse. Essentially, they gave Paul copies of the anonymous letters and told him to replicate the writing as best he could. When Paul was finished, Radcliffe took one look at how well he did and was convinced he'd caught his man. On February 28, 1983, Radcliffe arrested Paul and charged him with attempted murder. The prosecution thought they had a strong, strong case against Paul, but his motive was muddy. As best they could tell, it had to do with Paul's ex wife, Karen Sue. In 1982, six years after the letters began, Paul and Karen sue went to war with each other, Slogging through a very messy divorce. In the end, Paul had won everything. The house, the money, and even custody of their three children. Karen sue was left bankrupt and clinging to one of the only friends she had left. Her former sister in law, Mary. Although her brother Ron had passed away almost six years ago, in August of 1977, Karen sue had stayed close with Mary. And after Paul's crushing victory, Mary had let Karen sue stay in a trailer on her property. It was kind of Mary to offer, but it must have been been humiliating for Karen sue to accept. But apparently, that wasn't enough for Paul. When detectives spoke with Karen sue, she described Paul as jealous and physically abusive. She also claimed to have found anonymous letters hidden around their house. Two years earlier, in 1981, one of them was addressed to someone at Paul's work. Supposedly these notes were written in the same distinctive block style as the Circle Circleville letters. However, when asked to produce these crucial pieces of evidence, Karen sue claimed they'd disappeared the day after she found them. But Karen sue insisted she had more than enough circumstantial evidence to put Paul away. According to her, Paul was obsessed with Mary and Gordon Massie's alleged affair. It's not clear if she thought Paul was in love with Mary, but after Ron's death, Karen sue said that obsession had turned to hatred. At one point, he supposedly cursed at Mary and told her to leave town. As for the other letters he sent to people in town, his motives were unclear. The only explanation Karen sue offered was that Paul was dangerous and disturbed. He allegedly had a violent temper and a fondness for firearms. She said that even this, their children were scared of him. We don't know what the kids said to the police. But it wasn't enough to give detectives pause because In March of 1983, a grand jury charged 41 year old Paul with attempted murder. Several months later, in October, his trial began. It only lasted a week and after just two and a half hours of deliberation, the jury returned a verdict. Paul Freshauer was guilty. Soon after, Paul was given the maximum sentence, 25 years in prison with the possibility of parole in seven. On that day, the residents of Circleville breathed a collective sigh of relief. The days of fear and paranoia were finally behind them. Or so they thought. Within a few weeks of Paul's imprisonment, the letters started up again. And the author wasn't just targeting Circleville anymore. Now they sent hundreds of letters to people all across central Ohio. At first, prison officials reasoned that Paul was behind it. Maybe he was smuggling letters out through visitors or corrupt guards. They placed him under increased surveillance, monitoring all his incoming and outgoing mail with obsessive data detail. But the letters kept coming. Frustrated, the warden moved Paul to solitary confinement. He cut Paul off from virtually all human contact and had him strip searched regularly. But it didn't matter. Anonymous letters continued to appear in Circleville mailboxes. They all had the same distinctive block lettering and they were all postmarked from Columbus. Even though Paul Paul was imprisoned in Lima, over a hundred miles away. After several investigations, the warden concluded that Paul couldn't be responsible for the messages. Either he had an accomplice on the outside or he wasn't the letter writer to begin with. In 1990, 48 year old Paul applied For parole for the first time. His application was done denied. And a few days later, he received his own anonymous letter in prison. It read, now when are you going to realize that you are not going to get out of there? I told you two years ago, when we set them up, they stay locked up. Don't you listen at all? No one wants you out there. No one. The joke is on you. Ha ha. Paul was livid, but he wasn't giving up just yet. Four years later, he applied for parole once more and used the letter he received as proof of his innocence. This time, his request was granted. And in 1994, 52 year old Paul was released from prison after spending more than 10 years behind bars. The whole, whole time he was locked up, Paul had continued to proclaim his innocence. And now that he was finally free, he was determined to clear his name once and for all. One of the first things Paul did after getting out was create a website for himself. He argued that he was framed and that Sheriff Radcliffe was in on the conspiracy against him. Whether or not that was true, the Circleville letter writer quickly came to the sheriff's defense. Which was odd, considering the author had previously accused Radcliffe of corruption. Now the writer was threatening any reporters who questioned Radcliffe. Maybe the author was panicking because the same year Paul was released in 1994, a documentary series called Unsolved Mysteries was doing an episode about the Circleville letters. That's when the producer producers received their own letter warning them not to investigate further. It said, quote, do nothing to hurt Sheriff Radcliffe. If you come to Ohio, ul sickos will pay. It wasn't enough to scare off the crew. They went ahead with the documentary, which did question how Radcliffe had handled Paul's case. And then the producers waited for the author to retaliate. But they never did. After the episode aired, the letters suddenly stopped. Although some Reddit users claim they continued through 2001. In the nearly 50 years since Gordon Massie got that first letter in the mail, the Circleville mystery has only deepened. And while the author's true identity has never been revealed, there are a lot of things theories out there, and some seem pretty plausible. The simplest explanation is that Paul Freshhour had an accomplice, Someone in the Circleville community who continued their letter writing campaign in Paul's absence. But this theory has several glaring problems. Not only did Paul receive his own letter while he was in prison, but it also doesn't explain why Paul would have started writing the letters in the first place. Why? Why was Paul so obsessed with exposing Gordon Massie. And why would he then turn his fixation on Mary? If his goal was to hurt Karen sue, why wasn't she his main target? Instead, an FBI profiler featured on 48 Hours thought Paul just didn't fit the bill. In her opinion, the letter writer was female, someone who was a bully in her daily life and thrived on intimidation. To some, that sounds a lot like Karen Sue. Certain residents thought she was just weird. They said that she had a crush on Gordon Massey and that she used to sit in front of his school and write down the departure times of all the buses. However, we can't verify this. We can say that she had the most to gain from Paul being incarcerated. With him behind bars, she was able to regain her financial assets and custody of their kids. And there's even evidence connecting her to the booby trap. Supposedly, another bus driver reported seeing a tall man with sandy hair standing near the sign 20 minutes before Mary got there. His car, a yellow El Camino, was parked nearby. What's interesting is that in 1983, Karen sue was dating a man named Bob. He happened to be tall and had sandy blonde hair. And although he didn't own an El Camino, another one of Karen Sue's brothers did. The evidence is vague and circumstantial at best, but it's the closest thing we have to an eyewitness account linking someone to the crime. And there's another connection as well. Paul and Karen Sue's teenage son, Mark. Paul belongs to, believed that Mark may have helped Karen sue with her scheme. Their son, who was around 11 or 12 when the letters first started, had always been closer to his mother. Paul thought that if Karen sue had asked for his assistance, he would have agreed. Paul even suggested that Mark had stolen his gun and set the booby trap. Paul believed it was part of an elaborate conspiracy cooked up by Karen sue and that Sheriff Dwight Radcliffe had knowingly gone along with it and arrested Paul even though he knew he was innocent. Paul claimed Radcliffe wanted to further his own political ambitions by supposedly nabbing the Circleville writer. Before his death in 2012, Paul compiled a 164 page document detailing alleged misconduct by Radcliffe's department, hidden evidence, ignorance, ignored witnesses, and procedural violations. During his trial. However, there's no proof that Radcliffe was actually guilty of a crime. Like Karen Sue, Paul's motives are questionable, and it's hard to sort out fact from fiction. Besides the fresh hours, several other people have been mentioned over the years as possible suspects. Everyone from a bitter superintendent who hated Gordon Massie to a whole cabal of poison pen writers. This could actually make sense because the writer or writers seemed to know a lot of very personal details about hundreds of people. This is much easier to believe if you imagine that it's not all coming from one person. I certainly have my own suspicions, but now that you've heard the story, I'm to going dying to know what you think is the most likely explanation. Do you think Paul was innocent? Was Karen sue behind the letters? Or is there another theory we didn't mention that you think makes the most sense? The truth is, we may never know who was responsible. The letters stopped as mysteriously as they began, leaving behind questions, fractured families, and the sense that nothing stays hidden for long except for the Circleville writer's identity, that is. There's no way to quantify the damage they did. If Paul Freshhour really was innocent, then he served ten and a half years in prison for nothing. On the other hand, the author also exposed some people who really did do terrible things. People like Dr. Ray Carroll. So what can we take away from this twisted story? Maybe something about ourselves. I think we all love gossip, at least to a certain extent. We get a rush seeing our neighbors close their curtains and imagining what secrets they might be hiding. And there's something so deliciously salacious about learning the truth. But what if our own secrets were suddenly front page news? If our most intimate and embarrassing moments were smeared across social media for everyone to gossip about? These days, that can happen with one wrong click or one mistaken download. In our digital age, privacy is no longer a right, it's a privilege. And we should guard it very carefully. Because once it's lost, there's no going back. Foreign. Thanks so much for listening. I'm Vanessa Richardson and this is Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes. Come back next week. We'll decode the episode together and hear another story about the real people at the center of the world's most notorious cults, conspiracies and criminal acts. Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. Here at Crime House, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, reach out on social media rimehouse on TikTok and Instagram. Don't forget to rate, review and follow Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes Wherever you get your podcasts, your feedback truly makes a difference. And to enhance your Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crime's listening experience, subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. You'll get every episode ad free plus exciting bonus content. We'll be back next Wednesday. Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes is hosted by me, Vanessa Richardson and is a Crime House original. Powered by Pave Studios, this episode was brought to life by the Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes team. Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benidon, Natalie Pertovsky, Lori Marinelli, Sarah Camp, Xander Bernstein, Leah Roche, Spencer Howard and Michael Langsner. Thank you for listening.