05: The Circleville Writer
Starting in 1976, citizens of Circelville, OH began receiving letters detailing their sex lives and other town gossip. The letter writer would never be caught, but we here at TPT think we know why.
Mary Gillispie had just finished her bus route and arrived at her home in Circleville, OH. The year is 1976. She walks by her mailbox on her way into her home, picks out the contents and finds an assortment of the usual envelope clad fodder: bills, coupons, and one letter addressed to her.
She opens the letter, finding big, block letters accusing her of sleeping with the superintendent of schools, Gordon Massie. Shocked, Mary hides the letter, unaware that this is only the opening salvo of a war between the secrets of the citizens of Circleville and an anonymous letter writer, hellbent on exposing the entire town.
The Circleville Letters are a fascinating story that start fairly innocuously. One letter delivered to a woman accusing her of sleeping with her boss. What the tale ends up as is a convoluted web of terror climaxing in an attempt on that same woman’s life.
As with all of our cases at The Prevailing Theory, we’ll be examining this case using the FIT method. If this is your first issue with us, FIT stands for Facts, Investigation, and Theories. A three legged summary stool to let you decide for yourself, while providing proof for our own theories.
Facts
The author started by targeting Mary Gillispie, a bus driver in Circleville’s school district, threatening to expose her for sleeping with the superintendent of schools, Gordon Massie. The letters spooked Mary, but the accusations were just that, accusations, so she ignored them.
The letter writer, sensing that the upper hand was slipping away, began writing letters to Mary’s husband, Ron, trying to get him to expose the infidelity to the school board. The writer went on to threaten Mary’s life if Ron didn’t tell.
Ron and Mary laid their cards on the table, deciding to get Ron’s sister, Karen, and her husband Paul, involved.
Paul was a correctional officer, and Ron and Mary figured this was as close to getting the authorities involved without calling the police. Besides, Mary believed she knew who it was.
David Longberry was another bus driver for the Circleville school district that had made romantic advances to Mary before and was rebuffed. The four got together and wrote a letter to David, explaining that they knew he was the person behind the threatening letters and the whole thing needed to stop before they got the authorities involved.
The letters stopped. For a few weeks.
In the summer of 1977, Ron Gillispie got a phone call. After a heated exchange, Ron grabbed his gun and ran to his car, shouting over his shoulder to his kids, “I’m going to meet the letter writer!”
Unfortunately, Ron would crash his car into a tree and be killed while on the chase. The Sheriff’s Department would rule the death a drunk driving accident, due to his blood alcohol content level being .16, or twice the legal limit.
After Ron’s death, other people in town started receiving letters, accusing the sheriff of covering up Ron’s murder.
These letters went on sporadically for a few years, but things started heating up in 1983. Mary Gillispie, who was now dating Gordon Massie (though they both maintained the affair started after the letters), would see signs on her bus route accusing Gordon Massie of various sexual escapades.
Mary ignored these signs until she saw one accusing him of having sex with her 12 year old daughter. She stopped her bus, ran over to the sign to pull it down and noticed a pistol had been rigged to fire at whoever took the sign down.
Police took the gun in, finding that someone had tried to file off the serial number. They were able to recover the number anyway, and traced the gun back to Paul Freshour!
Paul told police that the gun had been missing, he just hadn’t reported it stolen, believing it not have been a big deal.
The police pulled in Paul and made him give some samples of his handwriting. The samples were found to be a match, and Paul was arrested for the attempted murder of Mary Gillispie.
This arrest would result in his incarceration, but here’s the twist: While he was incarcerated, the Circleville letters kept coming. In fact, Paul received a few himself taunting him about being set up.
Paul was paroled in 1994 after being denied parole in 1990. He would maintain a blog around the case until his death.
Investigation
Ron’s blood alcohol content was twice the legal limit, although many people reported they had not known Ron to be a drinker.
The investigation into Ron’s death also uncovered that his gun had been fired once before he crashed his car and died.
The other gun, found in the booby trap, was registered to Paul, who had recently separated from Ron’s sister, Karen.
After the serial number pointed the police in Paul’s direction, the Sheriff pulled Paul in and made him submit handwriting samples to compare to the Circleville Letter Writer. Handwriting analysis is a shoddy science anyway, but to compound the issue, the Sheriff’s Department had Paul try to emulate the letters, which increases the chances of a false positive.
Despite this, several handwriting experts analyzed, and later testified, that Paul’s handwriting and the Circleville Letter Writer’s handwriting were one and the same.
When Unsolved Mysteries was filming their episode for the show, the letter writer told them to leave and that they should leave Sheriff Radcliffe (the sheriff accused of covering up Ron’s death) alone.
Investigative journalist, Martin Yant, actually discovered that the booby trapped sign popped up after a man in a yellow El Camino had been seen hanging around that spot about 20 minutes before Mary Gillispie was on her route. Despite this, the man was never pursued as a serious person of interest since the gun found at the booby trap belonged to Paul Freshour.
The prosecutor in Paul’s case, Roger Kline, received a letter from the Circleville Writer, accusing him of having killed a pregnant schoolteacher, and the letter writer threatened to dig up the bones and mail them to Kline’s house. Kline would be investigated and cleared of any wrongdoing. The writer never following up on their threat.
David Longberry became a fugitive after sexual assaulting an 11 year old girl, and is still wanted in Ohio. He was cleared from the case after allegedly passing a polygraph where he was asked about his involvement in the letter writer’s activity.
Theories
1) Paul was the Circleville Letter Writer.
The proof for this revolves around Paul’s gun being found in the booby trap.
The serial number attempting to be filed down leads me to believe that the person didn’t want to be caught, and if someone stole the gun, why do they care if the number is filed down or not?
Paul’s brother in law was Ron Gillispie, who was being cheated on by his wife, Mary. The original target of the Circleville Letter Writer. Which might make Paul want to defend his brother’s honor by threatening to expose the affair.
The main hole in this theory is that people, Paul included, continued to receive letters while Paul was in jail. In fact, Paul was placed in solitary confinement and monitored 24 hours a day, and people kept receiving letters. Which means, Paul cannot have been the letter writer. At least, not the only one. Which leads me to my next theory.
2) The Circleville Writer was several people. Paul being one.
My inner investigator feels like this one is a cop out, but it also feels like the only logical conclusion.
The Circleville Letter Writer seemingly knew everyone’s dirty laundry. It would be either a) incredibly obvious or b) incredibly lucky for one person to possess all of this knowledge about town gossip. They’d have to be in the right place at the right time constantly. Or, people would know who they were because this person would always be asking about rumors.
It would not be impossible for a group of people to collectively know some town gossip. They may not have been coordinated, but the idea of someone knowing a secret and wanting to blackmail someone by using the mantle of the Circleville Letter Writer isn’t completely out of the realm of possibility.
Paul couldn’t have sent the letters from jail, so logically, he didn’t. It had to be someone else with access to the mail.
Finally, despite my own bias toward the unreliability of handwriting analysis, if it were accurate, Paul’s handwriting would match some of the letters because he was one of the writers, but not the only one.
Who are the other writers? It’s hard to say.
Sheriff Radcliffe - It seems like Sheriff Radcliffe could be one, since the letter written to Unsolved Mysteries came to his defense. Though his contribution to the letters would likely be minimal, he would also be aware of a lot of the town’s dirty laundry due to his position.
David Longberry - Longberry might be the initial letter writer but I believe he stopped after he was confronted by the Freshour-Gillispie quartet. But guess whose idea it was to confront David via letter?
Paul Freshour - In addition to the bevvy of information outlined in this newsletter, Paul clearly had some comfort hitting back through the written word as evidenced by his letter to David Longberry.
Theory 2 is what I’m slapping my endorsement on. There’s a significant list of people who have done their own bit of writing on this subject, so feel free to read through the links at the bottom!
Thanks for reading, everyone. This was a weird one to write about, and I tried a more rigid FIT layout as well. Thoughts/feedback are always welcome!
Let me know what theory you support or what your own theory is!
Referenced Works:
I really would like to know about the handwriting samples of the other suspects. Did the samples change once Paul was in prison?
Love this story, not too long of a read, good fyi/history lesson. Was Paul Ron’s brother or brother in law? If the latter, was he Mary’s brother then? 🤔