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Circleville Letters 48 Hours

Circleville Letters 48 Hours – In its issue on Saturday. The episode will examine the contents of the letters and the police investigation that led to the man’s conviction. CBS News’ official synopsis:

”An anonymous letter writer threatens to reveal the secrets of the town’s rumours. Anyone safe? 48 Hours’ Erin Moriarty reports.

Circleville Letters 48 Hours

The perpetrator of the anonymous letters was a man named Paul Freshour. However, many people think he is innocent. Read on to learn more about the case.

Cbs’s ’48 Hours’ Dives Deep Into A Decades Old Mystery In Circleville

Hey folks!!@WhateverRemains will be on Circleville Letters on @48hours throughout our season! We are really excited and having fun! We’ll let you know when it’s released – in the meantime, subscribe and stay informed! #CirclevilleLetters

Paul Freshour was the brother-in-law of a woman named Mary Gillespie. In early 1977, residents of Circleville, Ohio began receiving anonymous letters threatening to reveal their secrets. The most famous target among them was Mary Gillespie.

Gillespie received letters threatening to reveal her affair with a school principal named Gordon Massey. Her husband, Ronald, also received a letter from the writer Mary about the affair. In August 1977, Ronald was mysteriously killed in a car accident. That day, he left home after receiving a phone call from an anonymous writer.

Watch 48 Hours Season 33 Episode 62: The Circleville Letters

A subsequent investigation ruled Ronald’s death accidental, but many, including Paul Freshour, believed he had been murdered. In fact, CBS News reported that Freshour was actively pushing authorities to dig deeper into the case.

However, when Gillespie was driving to pick up his children from school, he found a crude note about his teenage daughter on the fence. He checked the sign attached to the box. He then takes the box home and is shocked to find a loaded gun inside. The whole sign and box seems to have been made to kill him.

In 1983, Paul Freshor was tried in Ohio for attempted murder. All 750 pages. Welcome to Circleville. #CirclevilleLetters

Things To Know About The Circleville Letters

Police began investigating the incident and discovered the gun belonged to Gillespie’s brother-in-law, Freshour. According to CBS News, he has pleaded not guilty and mentioned that the gun was stolen a few weeks ago. However, police were convinced Freshour was the culprit after his wife, Karen Sue, said she suspected he was the anonymous writer.

The trial began in late 1983, and Freshour was eventually convicted of attempted murder. He was sentenced to a maximum of 7 to 25 years in prison. However, while Freshour was locked out of pen and paper, the letters continued to arrive.

In fact, one of them was sent to Freshour, who was released from prison in 1994. The letter stopped just then. Freshour maintained his innocence until his death from a heart attack in 2012.

According to CBS News, a former FBI agent named Mary Ellen O’Toole examined the letters Freshour received after his incarceration. He believes the poison pen letters were written by a man with a serious personality disorder who “likes to hurt others”. He doesn’t believe Freshur is to blame.

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During the investigation, forensic expert Beverly East analyzed it and found that Paul’s handwriting was similar to some of the anonymous Circleville letters. However, the big question of whether Paul was guilty continues to divide people today. In 1976 or 1977, Circleville began receiving threatening letters. Then signs appeared around town. This mystery has fascinated true crime writers for decades. Can there be new answers now?

The first threatening letter arrived in a school bus driver’s Circleville mailbox in 1976 or 1977. The handwriting was clear, with frequent spelling errors and the words vile and vile.

The author said they knew the bus driver had an affair with the school district superintendent. But it didn’t end there.

In this message, and in the following centuries, the author was clear about his purpose. They wrote that they had to finish the case, that they were watching the bus driver’s house, and that they knew he had a child. They said that it was time for the daughter to pay for her mother’s sins.

Circleville Woman Killed In Traffic Accident

For nearly 20 years, mail carriers have been sending not only postmarked, threatening letters and postcards from Columbus to bus driver Mary Gillispie and her family, but also to government officials, newspapers (including The ), citizens of various towns, and even Gallia and Jackson. There are a few in southern Ohio.

Most of the articles were about that alleged incident, but some were about other personal actions and violations known to the letter writer. For a while, people turned in letters to the county sheriff’s office every day. Eventually, the mystery turned into graphic, disturbing signs posted around the city.

No one has ever been held accountable for writing the letters, which by some accounts numbered in the hundreds, and by others numbered over 1,000. But on Wednesday night’s episode of CBS’ “48 Hours,” which aired locally on WBNS-TV (Channel 10), Columbus-raised reporter Erin Moriarty and podcaster Marie Mayhew dissected the case. Moriarty said he thinks forensic document and handwriting expert Beverly East has finally figured out who wrote the letter.

After much speculation about who might have written them, a handwriting expert concluded that it was Paul Freshour, whom investigators suspected.

Hours 8/6/22

Moriarty, who has a bachelor’s degree and a law degree from Ohio State University, has been with CBS since 1986 and a correspondent for “48 Hours” since 1990, and was still in Columbus when it all began in the ’70s.

But she had never heard of the case until someone sent her a message on LinkedIn recently. He and his team have visited Circleville several times this year to investigate.

“I grew up reading Agatha Christie and she always focused on the dark side of small towns. Circleville is the last place with this dark side. But it took so many years,” Moriarty said in an interview Tuesday. “Think about it. That letter writer could be the person behind you at the grocery store, the person behind you every week. I just found it fascinating.”

In March 1983, according to archival documents, a .25-caliber handgun was found in a cardboard box next to an “obscene sign about Gillispie’s daughter” posted along the bus route. Investigators said at the time that it was an attempt to kill him.

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Gillispie’s former brother-in-law, who lived in Grove City, filed for divorce from his sister in 1982 and was eventually arrested. Freshour received a college education and landed a well-paying job as a quality control supervisor at Anheuser-Busch Brewery in Columbus.

Later, according to experts, he had none of the psychological characteristics of a murderer. However, he was accused of rigging the trap at Gillispie Road. In October 1983, a jury convicted him of attempted murder and a judge sentenced him to 25 years in prison.

At the time of the trial, Freshour was involved in a letter campaign that had spanned seven years at the time. Although he was never accused of being behind any of these letters, he was sued for public opinion.

He gave more than one interview to journalists while in prison, and after his release – after 10 years in prison – he said that he did not participate at all. He died of a heart attack in 2012 at the age of 70, but he maintained his innocence until the end.

Circleville Letters Part 1

Martin Yant, a former journalist and columnist who owns Ace Investigations, a private investigation firm in Columbus, has spent a lifetime researching wrongful convictions. He researched the Circleville letters for more than 30 years and was part of the documentary 48 Hours (along with former crime reporter and author Robin Yocum).

Another Circleville mystery: In 1967, a bomb exploded in downtown Circleville, killing five people and injuring about 30 others. Why did this happen?

Yant met with Freshour over the years, carefully pouring over what materials he could get from the hands of local authorities.

So do you think he wrote the Freshur letters? And he believed in Freshourset years ago?

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“Well, I don’t believe he got a fair trial. I think he was wrongly punished. I have a very strong suspicion that he may have been defamed,” Yant said in an interview Tuesday.

“I’ve been investigating this case for 30 years straight and every time I think I’ve solved it, something else comes up and then I have to go back and start over.

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