The Mayhem of the Circleville Letter Writer. Corruption, #41

The Circleville letter writer wrote letters for nearly two decades from 1976 to 1994. Starting in 1977, the anonymous Circleville letter writer terrorized the town of Circleville, Ohio, by mailing anonymous letters to Westfall School District bus driver Mary Gillespie and her husband Ron Gillespie about Mary Gillespie's alleged affair with Westfall School District Superintendent Gordon Massie. The Circleville letter writer wrote and mailed threatening anonymous letters to people all over central Ohio using the U.
S. Postal Service. The Circleville letter writer relentlessly harassed the Gillespies with a combination of signs posted around Circleville making allegations about this affair in addition to mailed threats that the behavior had better stop, in addition to telephone calls to the Gillespie residence. This aggressiveness on the part of the Circleville letter writer caused the Gillespies-Ron and Mary, to form an affinity group with Ron's sister Karen Sue Freshour, Ron's brother-in-law Paul Freshour, and the sister of Paul Freshour.
The group vowed to write letters back to the Circleville letter writer asserting that they knew who he was and were not intimidated. Find out how this Circleville letter writer harassment campaign eventually caused the motor vehicle fatality of Mary Gillespie's husband Ron, who, after receiving an August 19, 1977 evening telephone call from the Circleville letter writer, overreacted and sped off from his home in his red and white pickup with a gun in his hand, only to be found dead in his wrecked truck at an intersection up the road after crashing into a tree.
Five years later, in 1983, Westfall School District bus driver Mary Gillespie had begun a relationship with Westfall School District Superintendent Gordon Massie, as was originally alleged by the Circleville letter writer. The Circleville letter writer framed the brother-in-law of Ron Gillespie, Paul Freshour on Feb. 7, 1983, by setting a crude booby trap in the bushes on a road that was part of Mary Gillespie's bus route that featured a sign making offensive remarks about Mary Gillespie's 13-year-old daughter Traci Gillespie.
The sign was attached to a box with a loaded gun inside that was set to go off when someone opened the box and the gun was linked to Paul Freshour, leading authorities such as Pickaway County Sheriff Dwight E. Radcliff to assert that Paul Freshour set the booby trap, yet when Paul Freshour went to prison for the attempted murder, the threatening letters of the Circleville letter writer that were mailed all over central Ohio did not stop.
Find out in this informative book how Pickaway County Sheriff Dwight E. Radcliff worked with prosecutors in giving Paul Freshour a flawed handwriting test that was ultimately successful in framing Paul Freshour for the attempted booby trap murder of Mary Gillespie.