Circleville Letter Writer

Case background and investigation

In March 1977, according to CBS News, anonymous letters began arriving in Circleville, Ohio. Many were addressed to Mary Gillispie, a school bus driver, and accused her of having an affair with the school superintendent, Gordon Massie. Letters were also sent to her husband, Ron Gillispie, to Massie, and to other residents and businesses. Unsolved Mysteries' account of the case places the first letter in 1976. CBS reports that Mary Gillispie denied an affair at the time and said the relationship began only after her husband's death.

On August 19, 1977, Ron Gillispie, 35, left home after receiving a telephone call and died when his pickup truck struck a tree. The coroner ruled the death an accident. His blood alcohol level was 0.16 percent, about one and a half times the legal limit in Ohio at that time, according to Unsolved Mysteries, and a handgun that had been fired once was found with him. His brother-in-law Paul Freshour believed the death was not accidental, CBS News reports. No one was charged in connection with it.

The letters went on, and signs about Mary Gillispie and her daughter appeared along her bus route. On February 7, 1983 she stopped to take one down and found a box holding a .22 calibre handgun rigged to fire. Investigators traced the gun to Freshour, her brother-in-law. He denied any part in the trap or the letters.

Freshour stood trial in October 1983 and was convicted of attempted murder; Unsolved Mysteries gives the date as October 24, 1983. He was sentenced to seven to 25 years. CBS News reports that a state handwriting analyst and an examiner first retained by the defence both found similarities between his writing and the letters. He was never charged with writing them.

Letters postmarked from Columbus kept arriving while Freshour was in prison, and he received some himself. He was paroled in May 1994 after about ten years, and the letters stopped that year. He maintained his innocence until his death on June 28, 2012.

In a later review for CBS's 48 Hours, document examiner Beverley East said she was certain Freshour wrote the letters, while former FBI profiler Mary Ellen O'Toole said she could not account for the letters sent during his imprisonment. CBS reports that the Pickaway County Sheriff's Office regards the case as closed.