Before we get to our show, here is a podcast we think you're going to love. Hi, everyone. It's Elise from True Crime Cat Lawyer. That's right. I've combined my three favorite things into a podcast. Cats, true crime, and lawyering. Every other Thursday, my co-host Winston and I bring you a new case from the Pacific Northwest. Winston is my sassy sidekick with a mustache who can often be found donning a bow tie. In other words, she's my cat.
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You can find us on all the major podcast platforms like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, and GoodPods. We hope you'll join us for some true crime in the Pacific Northwest. Hello and welcome. It's Perhaps It's You, your favorite unofficial Unsolved Mysteries rewatch podcast. I'm Liz. I'm Samantha. And we have a very special guest today. We have friend of the pod Angela is here. Hello, Angela. Hello. How are you? I'm doing great.
I'm very excited to be here. Good. We're excited to have you. I'm happy to hear that you are excited. Or maybe you're just saying that, which is fine. Honestly, that's fine, too. After you were forced to endure this marathon of an Unsolved Mysteries episode. I'm not being held against my will. I promise. That's nice of you to say. That's nice of you to lie. You can't see me? I'm linking Morse code to help me. Well, the audio medium, I'm afraid. We're safe. Angela actually volunteered to come on this episode. I don't know if she realized how fucking long this episode would be. We are on season seven, episode six.
But Angela has some professional experience that she wanted to lend her expertise to the Centerville Letters. Yes, it's the Circleville Letters. My only expertise is I just know the city. That's about it. Look, it's more than I know, clearly. So it's good that we have you here. I think that really sets the tone of how enthused I am to do this, how knowledgeable I am. Angela, do you want to toot your own horn a little bit and tell people about your experience and expertise, your wisdom and knowledge?
Sure. So I have somehow stumbled into being a forensic document examiner. Before that, I spent almost a decade as a crime scene specialist. So the kind of person that you see in the CSI shows, the one in the background that's taking the photos and lifting the prints and all that kind of stuff. And then I saw that there's a job that I could get that allows me to not be on call and to stay in a lab all day, which is really nice when it's 100 degrees outside.
So yeah, so about five years ago, I switched from being out into the field to being in the field. I did my two year industry standard training in forensic document examination, which is nothing to do with like graphology, which is assigning characteristics to handwriting. I don't do that. That is not a science. That is something that I will just automatically say that you are a serial killer. That's my go to if anyone asks me. Yeah. I don't.
I know Angela because we were both in Las Cruces, New Mexico at the same time. And Angela has only had the coolest jobs I've ever heard of. She was working as an archaeologist at that time. Yes. And then before that, I worked as a very briefly worked as a medical death investigator for the Emmy's office. And yeah, I mean, all of these jobs I pretty much stumbled into, like my degrees have really nothing to do with anything that I actually have made a living at, except for the fact that they're somehow forensics related. So yeah, just kind of, you know, people ask me when I was an archaeologist, did I want to be an archaeologist when I grew up? And I did not.
You know, did you want to be a CSI when you grew up? Like, no, I did not. But yeah, they were good jobs and I had a lot of fun. And which I mean, it's kind of a weird thing to say about, you know, because I know that like everybody's day was like their worst day when I showed up, you know, even though it was just a regular day for me. But it was, you know, it was always, always different, always interesting. So I think I've told a few stories about you on the podcast. And one was definitely that when I met you and you said that you had a degree in forensic anthropology, I was like, oh, like bones and your face just fell.
Because you had heard that so many, so many times. And also, no, it's nothing like Bones. Obviously, that's the stupidest show ever. Like, yeah, that actually has nothing to do with anything, Liz. Thank you. Thanks for that insight.
Yeah, well, I mean, to be fair, though, I that seemed to be like the like white girl degree du jour at the time because I've met so many people. Yeah, like my age, my demographic that, you know, we have forensic archaeology or forensic anthropology degrees. And we're like doing things like DNA or crime scene or, you know, tissue donations, things like that. Things that are also incredibly interesting. But yeah, very different, I think, than what a lot of us studied. It's because everybody wanted to be Scully, right? I assume. Absolutely. Like, absolutely. There was a day that I went to work.
Where I had just, you know, cut my hair and, you know, had it dyed red and just felt really great and walked past a mirror. And I wasn't wearing a duster. I was wearing a windbreaker. But it was like, oh, my God, I have arrived. Yeah, yeah. Angela, as a former CSI, what is your experience like watching a show like Unsolved Mysteries? Oh, you know, Unsolved Mysteries, it's I haven't watched any of the new ones because there's no track. So why bother? I have listened to all the Patreon episodes. So I feel like, you know, I've watched them through you.
So it's, well, there are things that with Unself Mysteries, fortunately, it took place, you know, several, you know, basically like in ancient times as far as forensic science is concerned. So there are a lot of things that I can just be like, all right, well, they didn't know. They are just incompetent. Unfortunately, I mean, these are things that we absolutely are still running into today with a lot of law enforcement agencies. But there's also that kind of like, all right, well, this is, yeah, this is something that you can see where they went wrong or what they did that, you know, it could be helpful in the future. So things like that, it's kind of good. I can't watch CSI shows. I'm really bad about watching any kind of.
crime drama I think that's why I like podcasts because it is kind of like just people telling these stories without trying to add any kind of with adding like their personality um but not adding some kind of like expertise that um I prefer listening to women talk about crime better than I do actually um watching the shows um it has to have some kind of like supernatural element to it like I really like iZombie because if you can pretend that you know if you if you relax enough to say like okay zombies exist in this world then it doesn't matter what they do as far as the So things like that I enjoy. Speaking of Scully, I really did like The Fall because Gillian Anderson was in it and there was a lot of forensic stuff that they got right in that, including, you know, they walked into a room and they had left the number markers for the crime scene stuff. And I immediately turned to my husband and I was like, those little bitches are so expensive. Nobody would have done that. And Gillian Anderson's character immediately starts picking them up.
And, you know, putting the gloves on, I can't stand it when somebody just like puts, like pick something up with the glove, but doesn't put the glove on. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Well, it's interesting to hear you say that like a lot of what we see forensics wise in and some mysteries might be wrong, but you can at least still enjoy the show because you can say, well, it was a different time and we've learned from things like this since then. Yes. Like different times, even different countries. I'm like, I don't know what their procedure is like. Yeah.
We've learned not to send evidence directly to Robert Stack and have him fondle it on TV. Well, that does happen in this episode. Oh, my God. They didn't learn. Oh, my God. I will be mad about that for the rest of my days. That is shocking, yeah. Wow. Wow. Okay, so I want you to refresh my memory on something. I swear you have a story about being at school, working in some sort of morgue environment, and someone dropping off a head in a bag that had just like a question mark drawn on it.
Yes, yeah. And no one ever figured out where that head came from? Yeah, it was when I was an undergrad. It was at the anthropology department. There was, you know, we had forensic archaeologists, or sorry, forensic anthropologists on staff as professors, that kind of thing. So it wasn't unusual to have bones sent there. But they, you know, usually there was some kind of like chain of custody or like a heads up email, at least. Whereas one day, a man who was dressed as a police officer came into the...
The academic, you know, anthropology, just kind of like the lab or not the lab, but the office area where it's just, you know, like you have student workers, you know, who are doing reception, that kind of thing. And he just dropped off like Walmart bag, like a gray plastic Walmart bag that had some masking tape that had three little question marks on it. And inside was a skull. And he told the girl there that like he was told to drop this off. And she was like, oh, OK. And she took it and he left and she had this and nobody exchanged any kind of information. So it was just. Oh, my God. Yeah.
That was Jack the Ripper. End of story. Yes. Was there any information that was able to be gleaned about the head? Was it an old skull? Was it recently removed from its body? I mean, it looked like it had been, yeah, it hadn't been on a body pretty recently. Like, it looked like it had probably been buried at some point in time. I mean, it wasn't a fresh, you know, it didn't still have tissue on it and that kind of thing. It was just, you know, the kind of stuff that you would see. Yeah, just any kind of... You know, just a regular skull. Just a regular human skull you have kicking around.
Yeah, you know, you're cleaning out your parents' garage and you're like, oh, man, not this thing again. Yeah, you just, you know, just put it in a bag. Oh, my question mark. Well, three question marks. I mean, you know, they really were really confused. Or it was the Riddler. We'll never know. That's the real key. Fascinating. Yeah, you have all the best stories because, I mean, that's just, I'll never forget that. Who could? The mysterious skull that was just left somewhere. I don't know if they're the best stories, but I just.
Yeah, it was about a year working in forensic documents where we had some new people come in and we were kind of telling everyone about ourselves. And somehow it got onto other people using a word to describe somebody. And somebody said, well, I don't know, Angela, I guess death? And I was like, what are you doing? And she said, well, it's just all your stories like seem to involve dead people. And I was like, well, yeah, because I spent like almost a decade just around dead people every day. So it's not that it's just, you know, it's like any other job, you know, that you would be talking about, like, and, you know, you talk about a part of town and it's like, oh yeah, I remember they were like, you know, I had a coworker that lived in an apartment complex that I went to a call at and things like that. So, um, yeah, you come up with, yeah, there are just sometimes where you'll tell a story and it's like, oh God, did he survive? And it's like, oh, um, no.
No, no one in these stories survives. I also remember you being part, at least briefly, of some sort of paranormal investigation group. No, that was my friend up in... Okay. Yeah, she was like kind of their historian briefly while like her parents' house was getting renovated. So I got a t-shirt. So that was enough for me. Okay. I probably was just very envious of the t-shirt and that's why it's stuck in my brain. It was a good t-shirt. That makes perfect sense. Well, Angela, I feel bad making you go first, but since I don't even know the name of this place, we need you to talk about...
The Circleville Mystery. Okay. And walk us through it. All right. So I got some major nostalgia vibes just from the opening sequence. It had been a while since I've seen that in full. I also liked that it did like the things that kind of went by. One of them was Psymed, which I assume is forensics. Well, you would assume that, but that's not necessarily. Sometimes it's just people sticking gold leaf to their face. Sometimes it's people with amnesia, even though amnesia is its own category. It's like.
It's not the concept of twins has been a scientific explanation for. And then you're sitting at home going, but we do like, that's not actually, that's actually not mysterious at all. It's called twins, but yes. Yeah. It's called twins. Or sometimes it's usually it's like, it's the husband. That's also hard learned. Yeah.
All right. So this one is called, it opens up with Final Appeal. And it goes straight to the punch. It opens up with Robert Stack in a mail room. And it's a huge mail room. It's supposed to be the Unsolved Mysteries mail room. Here's my question. Is that really their mail room? Did they get that much mail? God, I hope so. Oh, I guarantee they got that much mail. People are probably constantly sending in tips. Yeah. Or just love letters to Robert Stack. Oh, Stack. That's a separate room. They have a separate room for those. Right. In your trench coat. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's why they have like the separate bins. You know, you've got the love letters. You've got like the tips. It's really sad when like one really important tip gets like thrown in the love letters. And it's, yeah.
But yeah, so he's in the mail room and he talks about how Unsolved Mysteries was just mailed a postcard. And it actually looks like a library tag. It's unlike any postcard I've seen. But it reads, forget Circleville, Ohio. Do nothing to hurt Sheriff Radcliffe. You come to Ohio, you El Sickos will pay the Circleville writer. I love El Sickos. I don't know why. Right. This episode is definitely being called El Sickos. And I kind of wish that was the name of this podcast. It's so random and amazing as seemingly nothing to do with anything. Also.
Writing somewhat a creepy postcard to tell them to forget about something, not the move. That's not going to work. At all, no. Yeah, and Ohio and Elsickos, I don't think have ever been in the same letter together. So yeah, it was just totally bizarre. So yeah.
So Circleville, Ohio, the Circleville writer, we're starting in like 1976 and several Circleville, Ohio residents have started to receive strange letters that are detailing personal information about their lives. And Circleville, Ohio, they say it's about, you know, 30 miles south of Columbus and it's known for its pumpkin show. There are 214 days until the next one and call me basic, but I love anything pumpkin. Oh, I was going to ask if we should do a trip to Circleville to see this pumpkin show. Most interesting thing about Circleville. Who cares about these letters? Tell me more about the pumpkin show. Yeah, they've got like, yeah, pumpkin everything. They've got like a little like Miss Pumpkin. They've got pumpkin pageants, like who can grow the biggest pumpkin, pumpkin, all kinds of food. They have a pumpkin water tower that was not shown in the Unspoken Mysteries. And I'm really, yeah, bummed about that. Yeah, they did not go at all into the pumpkin show. This is all my research. Angela, we're meeting you there. I don't want to miss another pumpkin show. 214 days. I'll see you there.
So, okay, Mary Gillespie, she's kind of our main character here. She's a bus driver at the local school district, and she received a letter accusing her of having an affair with the superintendent. And it was postmarked from Columbus, Ohio, and it had no return address. I find that so weird. Like, who cares if a bus driver is having an affair with the superintendent? Right, and it's a really tiny, like, school district, apparently. So, yeah, it's just, okay. Okay, fine.
That's really none of my business. Am I your husband? I don't care. Yeah. And we really don't get any information about the other strange letters that people are receiving. And I assume it's because a lot of them are just kind of like, okay, like this is weird, but whatever.
So, yeah, the writer also told Mary that they'd been observing her house and they knew she had kids. And it had so they had the voiceover. They have somebody reading the letters. It's very dramatic. It sounds like they don't know if they're like trying to be, you know, like Batman or Batman villain. The whole range. And, you know, this is a this is not a joke. And please take it serious, which just, you know, irritates me. But yeah, so, of course, you've read something that says please take serious. You're not going to take that seriously. I wouldn't. By the same person that uses the phrase El Sickos. Like, what?
Yeah. So, yeah, so Mary, she received like another letter kind of similar about a week later. She keeps them to herself. But then her husband, Ron, he received one as well. And in this reenactment, Mary's not too convincing, first of all, about the like, oh, yes, I don't know what these are about. They're not true. But I didn't tell you. Ron is like he's trying to bring the gun show to this raspberry polo that he's wearing. Like it could not be tighter on this man. She's wearing some like, I don't know. Yeah, like baggy.
short sleeve button downs that like you know you see like church ladies wearing ron is trying to bust out of this polo um yeah and later stated that if ron did not stop his wife's affair his life would be in danger um we get exactly and like we get a close-up on like the words in danger um and yeah more dramatic voiceovers are read um yeah they're starting to go public by broadcasting the affair on tvs cb radios and billboards who cares and if somebody wants to spend the money to like broadcast something about me on a billboard like that's that's their problem man that's dedication Yeah, so bizarre. This Circleville writer strikes me as just a pot stirrer. And this town is so benign that the only thing they can find is this maybe affair that's going on with this woman and the superintendent. I would be much more intrigued by if there was favoritism in the pumpkin show. Like, is the pageant rigged? Tell me that on a billboard. Like, what kind of fertilizers are you using on those big pumpkins? Like, you know, are those, you know, worst favorites? Someone's doping their pumpkins. That would be the talk of the town. Put that on a billboard.
so then i guess yeah you could see like yeah this is why this is big news in this town i guess then um yeah it's kind of like it reminds me of if you have like the next door app or anything like that it reminds me of that but like the 1970s it's just yeah like people talking shit people you know complaining about other people's business and you know just this is where they take it out um i saw a really great this was not local but i saw a really great next door post recently i sent this to samantha that literally someone was like the house across from me did anyone else see that at 5 30 a car pulled into the garage they usually They usually park in the driveway, Angela. But that day, they actually pulled into the garage that they own. That was probably my next door. That person was honestly worried about the state of the neighborhood based on someone parking in their own garage at 530 in the evening. So we had somebody post last week that somebody had placed three rocks in their driveway. They do not remember them being there the night before. Does that mean that their house is being watched? Oh. Yes. I don't know if you know this, but the three rock gang initiation, it's very common.
It's true. Fortunately, you know, if there were four rocks, I mean, I don't even think she'd be able to post. She'd be dead by now. Yeah, it's true. She's just lucky it wasn't four rocks. Someone once left a taxi during me to Guana in my parents' driveway. Wow. And we had that thing for years, and it turned out that it was from the neighbors across the street. I'm sure the kids just left it there. They thought it was funny. But they were, like, mad that we had kept it. I was like, we did put it in our driveway, and it's been just hanging out in the linen closet all this time so that when we go get, like, a pillow sheet or something, we're like, oh, yeah, the Guana. That's amazing. I love that.
I'm going to ask my mom, where's that iguana now? Did you guys give it a name? I don't think. I think we just called it the iguana. Wow. I can't believe you had a taxidermy iguana. It didn't have a name. I know. I'm sorry. Only my family would be like, huh, and just like take it inside. I guess this was ours now. I guess this is ours. I don't know where this came from. But I also like that, you know, yeah, you didn't name it because it was just the iguana. So, I mean, at least there were different iguanas to distinguish between. Yeah, we only had one. Right. Yeah.
All right. So Mary and Ron, now they're getting these letters. Ron's all stirred up. And so then they only tell three people about it. They tell Ron's sister, okay, whose name is Karen. They don't mention that on Unsolved Mysteries because there are just too many names that they're otherwise that they'd be thrown out. So we've got Ron's sister. We've got Ron's sister and her husband, Paul Freshour. So yes, so Ron's brother-in-law is Paul. And then we have Paul's sister, who was also one of the people they told about. Paul's sister does not get a name. She hasn't earned a name, yeah.
No, at all. And like, yeah, they just show them like in the reenactment. They're in this kitchen that looks like my in-law's kitchen from like the 1970s. It is. I love it. I love it. Very brown. You've got some like, you know, yellow floral wallpaper in the background. You've got those little room dividers, those little like finial room dividers. And dull things. Yeah. Yeah. And so their plan is they decide to have that they're going to write letters to the suspect that, you know, because they think they know who's sending them, claiming that they know who he is. And during the reenactment, they bring up a movie called I Know Who You Are. I looked it up and.
I don't know if that was something that CBS was promoting at that time or whatnot, but I did not find a title for that. They just made it up. wanted to see like well how did that end because you know if it ends disastrously then they you know should have known better but um yeah and then ron tells paul like you do it you prove well uh and at this point we're actually introduced to paul on um you know on unsolved mysteries he's a little talking head uh he sounds like he should be panning for gold um and he's just really casual about how they only wrote four or five letters um which in my opinion seems kind of like a lot uh they only wrote four or five taunting letters okay they were taunting they weren't violent but you know Yeah, they never say who they sent them to or who they were harassing. Maybe they have a pending lawsuit. I don't know. But as far as they're concerned, the plan works. The letter stopped for several weeks. And then we find ourselves August 19th, 1977. So Ron receives a phone call from the alleged writer. Mary was out of town at this time. They don't say that in Unsolved Mysteries, but I just know this.
Because God, I know way too much about this case. So Mary was out of town at the time. It was just their kids at home. They had two kids. And there's not really a consensus on what was said, but it was something along the lines of like, I know who you are. Like, we're going to end this. And they seem to believe that it was Ron confirming his suspicion of who the writer was. So Ron grabs his gun and he leaves in his pickup truck. Unsolved Mysteries makes a point to say that the writer had mentioned the same red and white truck in the letters. And Stack says that perhaps he was too angry to care. Like, it's their truck. Like, he knows where they live.
Like, it's 1977. I don't know if, like, there are taxis out in the middle of Ohio or, like, I mean, he's not getting an Uber, so, yeah. I don't know that they had another vehicle. It's not like he was like, well, I'll take the Bentley today. Like, I don't know that he has another vehicle. Like, he has a bitchin' red and white truck. Like, that's what he's got. Yeah. Yeah, but it's, like, very victim-blamey, like, oh, he took that truck. It's because Robert Stack cannot imagine a life where you only have one car. Like, that's just, like, beyond him. That is true. Yes, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. He should have taken his yacht. What was he thinking?
Yeah. Why didn't he have his security guard just find out who wrote the letters? Did his chauffeur have the day off? Like, yeah, it's so silly. Yeah. So a few minutes later, and like it's seconds later in the show, Ron was found dead in his pickup truck. He had crashed into a tree in an intersection. And then they say that Ron, it looks like Ron had fired at least one shot in his gun before crashing. And the reenactment shows this really cringy, improper handling of the gun, of them just like taking out the bullets of the revolver, just like flashing them around like, ooh, one's been fired. But it also doesn't mention...
Like, if it's a revolver, I mean, yeah, it could be, that could have been shot any time before the crash. Like, there's no mention of, like, oh, yes, it smelled like, you know, gunshots. Right, yeah, so, yeah. They just wanted to make sure they got their fingerprints all over it. They were like, what bullets are in here? Let's touch those. Let's make sure we, yeah, we touch every part of this gun. Well, to be fair, they were holding the gun with a handkerchief, but then they dumped the bullets out into their bare hand. So, yeah. Did they train you to hold things with handkerchiefs if you didn't have gloves available? And to pick up stuff with pencils that we kept behind our ears? Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
Nice, nice DNA, nice ear DNA on there. Yeah, yeah. Medical examiner investigators, they learned about proper poking people with sticks. Yes. I'm starting to think I could be good at this now. If it's just, yeah, touching things with handkerchiefs, poking things with sticks. I can do that. Absolutely. I'm great at poking things with sticks, actually. I'm great at it, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah.
I'd say apply next time a position comes open. Okay, thank you. Yes, I'll give you a reference. My resume is just great at poking things with sticks. I have never seen anyone poke something with a stick like Liz does, let me tell you. If it's dead, she's going to poke it.
So yeah, so then we talked about Sheriff White Radcliffe. So he, you know... Leave him alone, Angela, you sicko. You hell sicko. Well, surprisingly, he did not agree to be on Unsolved Mysteries. He said fuck no to being interviewed because I imagine he is so done with this. They did show a picture of him, like he has no mustache, but like the photo they used, like he has these square glasses frames that just match his square face perfectly.
He's kind of like a cartoon drawing of a sheriff. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, he questioned and eliminated at least one suspect in the case, which I hopefully assume is the person they thought, you know, that they were writing the creepy letters to. I like the solution to getting creepy letters was to write more creepy letters. It's like, no, like, you know.
I know for sure that this is the person and now you're just like compounding them. Like this town is now drowning in creepy letters. I just realized, I just solved it. Like the Circleville, like it's just like a, you know, the person, they got the creepy letters and they thought they knew who, you know, was writing the letters. So they sent some creepy letters to somebody else. And it's just, yeah, it's just a chain letter. Yeah. That's why it's Circleville. It's a circle of creepy letters. Yeah. As is documented in the, I think, God, was that an R.L. Stine book or a Christopher Pike book about chain letters and then people died? One of them. One of them wrote a masterpiece that was probably inspired by these events. Yeah.
But yeah, so they, yeah, so he basically says that, you know, Ron's death was an accident, claiming he lost control, he was drunk, you know, and crashed the car into the tree. Then we go back to, you know, we go back to Paul saying, you know, that, oh, you know, Sheriff Dwight or, you know, Sheriff Radcliffe initially agreed that the death was a result of foul play, but then he allegedly changed his mind when the suspect passed a polygraph test. Also, they then mentioned that Ron's blood alcohol level was 0.16, which was twice the legal limit in Ohio in, you know, 1970, whatever. Okay, well, they make a point to say that his family says that drinking was unusual for him, which I don't know what that implies. Like, he was forced by alcohol, and then, like, okay, but he was drunk. He was very clearly drunk, though. Right, and he's also the kind of person that, like, they were surprised that he was drunk, but was no one surprised that he just, like, grabbed a gun and left his kids at home and was like, I'm gonna go deal with this? Like, that's also, I mean, is that usual behavior, too? Like, it sounds... In character. Drink out, out of character. Exactly. Like, he only grabs his gun when he's stone-cold sober.
Like, you know, that's proper gun etiquette. Oh, yeah. He took it seriously. Exactly. No, he took it serious. Yeah, my apologies. Yes. So, yeah, that's the thing. Like, they're like, oh, no, he wouldn't be a drinker. But, you know, it's an unusual time. And also, I don't know, maybe Ron, I mean, Mary was out of town. I don't know. Maybe, you know, drink the whole six pack or whatever, like when she wasn't there. Yeah, that's a good point, actually. Yeah. I also don't know if a six pack would get you that drunk. But whatever. So, yeah, so he was drunk. But.
Yeah, so then it was, you know, ruled as an accident. But several presidents soon started to receive letters stating that Sheriff Radcliffe had been involved in a cover up. And of course, we know all these letters are true. So people started to believe them. We then have like staff talk, you know, he asked the important questions. Was Ron Gillespie's death an accident? Was he really drunk that night? And why had one bullet been fired from his handgun? You have to have a bullet in every chamber of your gun at all times. I don't know if you know that, but that's just a rule.
And if you only fire one shot in your revolver, you leave that case in until the other ones are, you know, fired. Again, just, you know, you stay sober and you keep the cases in. Yeah, I know a lot about guns. Yeah, exactly. I know how to take guns apart. I know how to make them safe. I know all kinds of different types. I have yet to fire a gun in my life. I don't know how I've made it this far. I'm just not that interested in them. They're going to kick you right out of Texas. I know. I know. Yeah. Don't let them know. Yeah. It's our secret. So, all right. So now we're like six years later. Stack is still in the mail room. And at this point. He hasn't left for the past six years. He's waiting on that letter. He knew it was coming.
So just reading all the fan mail, he gets like, yes, I am very handsome. Yeah, I mean, I bet that, yeah, that probably would be a full time job. So at this point in time, we learned that Mary and the superintendent had acknowledged a relationship, although they claim that it didn't start till after the letters were sent. So the creepy, in their world, the creepy letters brought them together. Huge aphrodisiac. Very nice and cute. Yeah, yeah. Threatening letters. It brings people together. I want to see like the equivalent of a Hallmark Christmas movie, but maybe like a Halloween Hallmark movie where threatening letters causes a budding romance. Oh, that would be nice. It's like, oh, we have the same stalker. Are two stalkers like find love? Like, yeah.
There really is someone for everyone. There is. So, yeah, so this brings us to, like, 1983. So the letter writer has, at this point, has started to place threatening signs on the road along Mary's bus route. And we see Mary rolling down the street in her big bus, daydreaming, not paying any attention to the road. Being a terrible bus driver. Yes. Not acting like a woman who has lost her husband in a car wreck. But, yeah, just, yeah, not at all caring. But then she sees a sign.
It says, Tracy Gillespie sucks. And this is the straw that breaks the camel's back. Tracy is her daughter. Nobody's going to be talking shit about her daughter. The sign is great. It is just a board that Unsolved Mysteries wrote. Tracy Gillespie sucks. Okay. Okay. Did either of you watch the 48 Hours Circle of the Letters episode? No. Okay. I need to watch it. I meant to rewatch it because it came out last year and I watched it a few months ago.
And I'm certain that the sign that they show in Unsolved Mysteries looks so different than the sign they show in that 48 Hours episode. And I really want to know which one is accurate because, yeah, the sign in the Unsolved Mysteries episode, first of all, is like in the woods for some reason. And it's just like a plank that they wrote with a Sharpie. Tracy sucks. I swear, I remember in the 48 Hours episode, it was a giant like bed sheet in the middle of a field that someone had like spray painted. Very, very different. Yeah.
Yeah, I think that that would probably be more accurate because I don't know if you had just a little tiny sign like Tracy Gillespie sucks. It's like in the woods. Yeah. I want to know where that plank is today and can I have it? Well, you know, make your own for about 15 cents. No, no, I want the one that was on Unsoft Mysteries. I don't want just a piece of wood. It's going to be like, I got it for you. And it's literally just a piece of wood from Home Depot. She wrote Tracy Gillespie sucks on it. Yep. Yep. It's a, yeah, I know what I'm going to get you for your birthday now.
Yes, yes, please. So yeah, so Mary rips, you know, gets off of her bus, rips the sign down, and it ended up being attached to a string, and the string was attached to a box and a post that was attached to a fence post. All right. At this point, we're introduced to this guy, like Martin Yance, who I think came out before. He was a journalist. I've also heard him refer to as an investigator. I don't know, but this guy is very invested in the story. And he says that it was a box of unusual size. I don't know what that means!
What is a box of a usual size? Well, to the Unsolved Mysteries prop department, it's a shoe box. That seems like the most usual size, though. It looks like a high-top sneakers size shoe box. That is the most usual size for a box. Exactly. So, yeah, so she takes this box into the bus. I've heard that she actually took it home before she opened it up, but in the reenactment here, she takes it into the bus, opens it up, and discovers the best phrase that Robert Stack has ever had to utter, a crude booby trap.
And so the box contained a small pistol. So a block in the box, if you will. And the theory is that if Mary had pulled the sign off in a certain way, then the gun would have fired. That was the plan, anyway. I don't know if it was, like, could have possibly worked. Right. I mean, like, in the reenactment, like, she pulls the sign off pretty hard. I mean, yes, if you have a plank attached to a fence boat, like, it seems like it's going to take a lot of effort. And, yeah. This is like a cartoon. This is something I, this is something a child would come up with. This is a string attached to a gun. Yeah, there's a lot of bullshit, I don't know, kind of around it, in my opinion. But, yeah, it's, you know, so this is what she finds. And, you know, she.
notifies the police and according to stack an amateurish attempt um was made to rub off the serial number of the gun so he's roasting the criminal for not doing a good job getting the serial numbers off yeah yeah uh i mean he's a fucking amateur they can't even take serial numbers off my god he's a man who knows how to get a serial number off a gun if you want an untraceable gun you go to robert stack yeah absolutely that's how he made his that's how he really made his money yeah that's how his first yacht came to be yeah um that's why it's called the unknown um but uh Oh my god, what a great name for a boat, though. The unknown. I love it. I love it. And if you're in some kind of weird boat-style mystery, I mean, it just makes it even better. So good. So the serial number was restored via forensic magic, and it was determined that the gun belonged to, you're never going to believe it, Paul Freshour, who, I know, mind blown, turns out he had also recently separated from Ron's still nameless sister.
Yes. When asked about it, Paul claimed the gun had been stolen because of course it had. And so at this point, Sherrod Radcliffe asked Paul to meet him at station and to take a handwriting test. He asked Paul to try and copy the handwriting from the letters as best he could. Sheriff Radcliffe is a very difficult name to say. Also had him write the letters as he dictated them.
Angela, would you recommend that people try to copy letters written by psychos for law enforcement? I would not. And in fact, I have a direct quote from the sheriff that says, I want you to copy as closely as you can. And my notes say, no, never do that, especially when a cop that's questioning you about a crime tells you to do it. Yeah, bad move. Yeah. Yeah. So anytime you want to get handwriting exemplars, yes, we do have to compare known handwriting. We do have to compare cursive to cursive writing, print to print, signature to signature. So and comparing cat.
to the word dog, you're not going to get the same characteristics. So what we need as a document examiner is somebody to, we need repetition and we need the same kind of characteristics. And we also, yeah, you don't want to show the person what they have to write because whether subconsciously or, you know, consciously they're, you know, they, yes, might try to be disguising their handwriting. They may try to, you know, unconsciously emulate it. So yeah, it's best to kind of dictate it.
A lot of the letters that I've seen, it looks like, yes, they are big block handwriting. It looks like they have been deliberated. You can tell that there's some kind of shaking in the handwriting. There are tremors. So yeah, obviously somebody has been trying to disguise their handwriting, the person that's been sending these out. Yeah, ideally you would want this guy to just write, you know, try to get like 10, 15, 20 copies of him writing some dictated words that you would want to compare. Just tell him, hey, can you write these in, you know, block print?
handwriting like how you would write that um and yeah the reason you want so many is because if somebody's trying to disguise their handwriting it's it's muscle memory so you can only disguise your handwriting for so long before you know you just kind of get tired and you kick back into your um unique individualistic habitual yeah handwriting yeah so yeah this is all very improper um the expert that they got like he said it was improper but then they also said that the expert said that they could have been written by him meaning we don't know i mean could he have had the skill level i'm sure they're pretty low skill level also deliberated but also why Did we automatically assume, why was the immediate jump that the gun belonged to the Circleville writer? Like, why are they assuming that it's the same person? Because also, again, like, if you're going to write on a sign, you know, if it is a bed sheet and you're using spray paint, that's not going to be the same kind of handwriting. You know, you're going to use different body motions. It's a different medium. It's going to be totally different. Like, when we get, oh, God help me, because we do, people writing threats on bathroom stalls. When we want those exemplars, we're going to ask them to, like, hey, use a marker, put some paper on a wall, and have them write.
the exemplar like that way, because you're going to use a different body motion. Same with a wood. I mean, when was the last time you wrote something on wood with a Sharpie? Yeah, totally different. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and even if you are trying to deliberate, like if you're trying to disguise your handwriting, yeah, still, it's going to be different on a piece of wood as a wood piece of paper. So yeah, there's really no...
reason why they jumped to the conclusion that the gun and the circle build rider are one in the same. I assume it's just because that it was attached to the sign. Then Paul, you know, after this whole debacle with the handwriting, Paul and the sheriff go to Paul's garage, which is like... In the reenactment, it is the most open-air garage I've ever seen. A bunch of light flowing in. I mean, you could do a photo shoot in there. It would be great. And he showed him where his gun was kept, his now-missing-not-missing gun, which, yeah, exactly. It's right out in the open. So afterwards, the two returned to the courthouse, where Paul was arrested and charged with attempted murder.
Even if that's his gun and he put it in the unusually shaped box, it's such a poor attempt at murder that I feel like maybe there should be another charge. Right. And there are so many, like how many cases have you guys even covered where it's like, wow, that person like completely beat the crap out of that other person and probably would have killed them if somebody hadn't intervened or like something along those lines where it was very, or like, oh, they, you know, shot them and they didn't die, but yet it's somehow still like assault and not attempted murder. Yeah. So it does seem like kind of a weird charge. I did read something that called it.
because they say that he was, spoiler, he was convicted for attempted murder. But I read another thing that it was something along the lines of basically not properly taking care of his gun. Like it was something was attempted using a gun that he was to be in care of, which I wanted to look more into that because I was like, dude, that is, that's something you don't hear about. That's kind of interesting. So yeah, so now to the trial, which happens in October of 83, which like, that's a pretty sure.
Turnover, I guess, you know, yeah, there's not a lot happening in this. There's no other cases to try. So, yeah. And although Paul was never charged with writing the threatening letters, they became a crucial part of the evidence against him. Yeah, I don't know how, I don't know what judge allowed that in there. Right. So yeah, the dictator letters, they did say that the dictated letters were the ones used for comparison, not the ones that they were like, hey, can you copy this as best you can? But yeah, still, he wasn't charged with letters. I don't know why. Anyways, they had a handwriting expert testify. I looked the guy up. I didn't find anything on him recently or at all. So I don't know what kind of training he had.
And this is according to the court transcript from Unsolved Mysteries. He said, in my opinion, that the handwriting on the envelopes, documents, and postcards were printed by the same person, it being the known handwriting or hand printing of Paul Freshour. So that makes no sense. But yeah, so that was like his conclusion. Does it make no sense because the method they used to test his handwriting was suspect? Well, just the thing. It's like, it is my opinion. And then later he says, it being the known handwriting or hand printing of Paul Freshour. I'm like, there's some more context that I need from this court transcript. Yeah, but also.
So I read that he also used, but this is, again, only one source said that he used some other documents that were what we would call a normal course of business documents that were taken from his place of employment. He worked at like the Anheuser-Busch, some kind of like bottling or bakery, I don't know. So those were possibly also compared, but... Yeah, to say somebody, to say, to use that and compare it to something that was, you know, obviously a disguised handwriting, it is quite a stretch. And yeah, that is why. His work documents, I mean, if you look at these circle fill letters, this is not how people write. I can't imagine his work, whatever he's writing for work, I don't even know what that would be, would be written like that.
out all of his like hr forms like a total psycho right just all cat just scrawly all caps possibly with his non-dominant hands like yes yes like an occasional embellishment uh i don't know yeah if that is his regular handwriting then wow this case really should not have taken this long to solve um oh i wonder if it's that guy in town with psycho handwriting oh yeah okay though i love that forensic files and oh my god Oh, it's a terrible case where these women are taken out on a boat and murdered, but all they have is a sample of the killer's handwriting, and then they put it on a billboard, and they go, who knows this handwriting? Oh my god, amazing. I need to check that one out. That's a good use of a billboard, unlike just being like, this person sucks. Right. Which, okay, in other circumstances could be kind of amazing. That's what I'm going to take on a billboard of you, Liz. Liz Walker sucks. I'm thinking maybe Mayor Jacob Frey sucks, but Liz Walker sucks works too.
I just want to put a billboard of my handwriting and just ask, does anyone know this handwriting? See how appreciated you are. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, it's such a bizarre case. And, yeah, this is also something that I think a lot of the problems and I'm going to get a little soapbox here. A lot of problems with the comparative sciences, forensic sciences, is that.
First of all, yeah, you have people, you have the old boy system where a lot of people who aren't qualified to do things, you know, they've just been doing it so long that nobody really questions them. Like somebody saying that they are certified in, you know, blood pattern analysis. You know, I've known people that have said that. And yes, they have a certificate for a 40 hour workshop that they took. Whereas there are other people who are actually certified by the International Association of Identification and have taken like a three year course on it. Yes. So.
The problem is, is that in a lot of courts, it is the judge that is the gatekeeper. And the judge isn't going to be up to date on, you know, what is or isn't, you know, an accredited application. And to say something, you know, a lot of these comparative disciplines, you know, like your trace evidence and handwriting comparison. they are investigative tools. They are not identification. They are a way to say that, well, you know, yes, this indicates that this person could have written this. Or this person, no, they do not have the skill level to write this. Handwriting analysis, we also do things, and which would kind of be interesting. So there's like electrostatic detection apparatus where we use toner. It's kind of similar to the way that, you know, like a Xerox printer is used, you know, using...
positive and negative charges in toner and fiber paper disturbances to develop like impressions that were um on paper so if you wrote something on a notepad it would leave impressions you know up to 10 pages down depending on the paper and the type of pressure that you used um and you know we would develop those and you know that's always kind of cool because sometimes yeah you'll have somebody that wrote you know that wrote somebody's phone number on it or that wrote like um you know you know sandy has um you know yeah sandy has a dental appointment blah blah blah and things like that you know they wrote it on a letter walker socks that sort of thing yeah that sort of thing all the time oh actually That would be fascinating. Yeah, The Fall, again, because I just love that show, it actually used...
Yeah. And Esda to develop like one of the notes that was left behind, like somebody, the little girl's, the killer's daughter's drawing was developed. And I was like, yes, I love this. But yes, it would be kind of been cool. I don't think, I mean, I know Esda's were around then, but I don't think that they were used that often. But yeah, things like that are like, yeah, did they not use, did they not try to process them for fingerprints? I don't know. It's just such a weird, yeah, to use, to try to use handwriting comparison on this case as such a critical part of the evidence.
as an identification method is is yeah incredibly questionable and yeah it just it makes yeah it just it looks bad um it uh yeah that's it it looks bad to be convicted of having bad handwriting yeah oh god so yeah i sound like such i am such an old lady now because i i judge people's handwriting like no business like nobody's business and that's kind of your job that's kind of literally your job i know but like we get a lot of like kids now like we're not kids but yeah like teenagers and young adults and i'm just like no no those are kids those are kids absolutely are yes I was in line the other day in front of someone who was a child. And by which I mean, they were probably in their mid twenties and he, I guess was in a band. And so he was telling his friends that when he, when people ask him to sign stuff, he has to write his name and all block letters because he doesn't know cursive. Like, like he doesn't have a signature. And I just, and just, yeah, as an old lady, it's just like fucking hurt my, I was like, Oh my God. Like this guy, this guy, this guy can't even, folks, this guy can't even write his own name. This is me speaking as a person that doesn't have children. So I don't actually know, but I realize they don't teach kids cursive anymore, but don't they still teach kids to sign their names? Maybe not in every school.
the cracks if that's so yeah no i did not think yeah there are a lot of schools that i don't think are teaching cursive anymore and i do understand that cursive it it makes sense because like you are basically teaching one way of doing something and then several years later you're saying hey we're gonna we're gonna teach you something the same thing but just totally different it is very outdated i think it's like like why i learned two fonts one of them is for like using a pen out of an inkwell like yeah we need to phase that out but the fact that this guy like could not even sign his own name i was like ready to cry oh yeah you need to learn to have a signature i would think i mean you have to sign things yeah and god's less like old people that are having a bunch of check fraud still happening to them because otherwise i would probably be out of a job um but yeah it is it is like a it is a weird I don't know. It's becoming a relic, but yeah, you know, I think everyone, yes, everyone should learn to sign their name at least to prevent Liz laughing at them. But also, yeah, for forgery. I mean, just have a nice, distinct signature. I mean, I guess probably if you're like signing stuff, you know, for your band or maybe you have an extremely successful Unsolved Mysteries podcast, you probably don't want to use like your legal. He should come up with like a, you know, whatever, public signature. But obviously I sign all the perhaps new stuff with my legal signature. So just everyone, no one trace that. Okay. That's. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I actually, I changed to my... one of the main pushes for me to change to my married name legally was that when I started to have to sign evidence, like my maiden name was like eight characters long. And my last name now is three characters long. When you have a hundred things that you have to sign. Oh my God. Yeah. That was like the main push. So you're like, you're like, it's totally worth the paperwork. Absolutely. Yeah. I understand. Yeah. Also in addition to the, back to the trial, in addition to the handwriting, Mary also testified that.
wrong that paul's ex-wife um had kind of said that she thought he might have been the writer before um you know which he would have thought would have come up sooner but whatever um yeah and then paul's boss testifies that he was not at work that day um and on the day that the movie trap was found yes and so paul had an alibi for most of the day um are we assuming that the day that that sign is found is the same day it was put up that's what they're assuming um Unsolved mystery says he never took the stand in his defense, but I'm also like, did nobody, like, did he not have a defense? Because that seems like something that the, his defense attorneys should have brought up. He didn't have to take the stand for that to have been pointed out, but he was found guilty and he was given a seven to 24 year sentence, which they say is the maximum penalty. That's a really weird period of time. That seems like, I don't know, seven years, maybe 24, we'll see. You know, see how you acclimate, that kind of thing, you know. Less than a decade, more than two decades. We'll see how it works out.
Yeah, it's very weird. So yeah, with Paul behind bars, everyone thought the letters would stop. And then the music gets really dramatic and everyone was wrong. Obviously, or this wouldn't be on Unsolved Mysteries. It would be Guy went to jail. We solved it. So, oh God, well, you know, one of y'all stories. Yeah, there was a part of me that was like, oh God, I'm glad that he, you know, that they found who did it. And they were like, oh, wait a second. Why is this on Unsolved Mysteries? Oh, no. Yes. So yeah.
The letters didn't stop. Paul himself received letters from the writer saying that, you know, he was determined to keep him there. Others received letters postmarked from Columbus, even though Paul was in prison in Lima. And even though he was in solitary confinement, the letters kept arriving. And in Unsolved Mysteries, the reenactment, they take him from a single cell room all by himself upstairs to another single cell room all by himself in solitary confinement. I don't understand why they had to put him in solitary.
In solitary confinement to determine if he was somehow sending these letters from prison. Like what is the security system like at this prison that they couldn't tell if he was smuggling letters out or not? All right. So here, here's the tea on Paul that Unsolved Mysteries does not mention. Paul used to be a prison guard. He had been a prison guard up until he was involved in a major like 30 something hour prison riot that he was held hostage at. Like that took place in the 70s. So not that long ago. Oh shit. Right. So major trauma. He also knew.
Obviously, how the system worked. I don't know where he was at. I don't know if new people were there. His former co-workers are now keeping him incarcerated? I don't know. That's a nightmare. That's a nightmare right there. Oh, absolutely. Hey, Bob. Yeah, I'm in prison now. Yeah.
please let me have my food and please don't kick me. Yeah. So, oh yeah. So, okay. It was a 30 hour ordeal at the Ohio state penitentiary in 1968. So I mean, still, you know, not, not too long ago. It wasn't the seventies, but still not that long. It seems very possible. He would know people. That's so weird. And he would also probably know how to, I don't know if there was a way to kind of get around the system. I imagine he might know how to, or maybe he wrote some letters beforehand. Also. Yeah. A big part of my job is, you know, prison correspondence. So I know that they, yeah, I know that they're.
heavily looked through the map. Yes, monitor. They're heavily monitored. Yeah, so I imagine they probably were at the time then. I also imagine that they're probably getting a lot more letters and receiving a lot more letters than we were. So that might be why they were putting him in solitary because, yeah, they were just kind of seeing what was going on. They don't want him to access a carrier pigeon and attach a creepy note to the pigeon and then have the pigeon fly away. Right, and like, just make sure that you get to Columbus before you drop it, little pigeon. That's all I ask. Yeah, please make sure this comes from another city that's far away so I can't be implicated.
It's a very well-trained pigeon. Yeah. And there was also a history of, like, domestic violence with Paul. And even though there was that, even though, you know, he had been violent against, yeah, Karen, against, you know, his ex-wife, like, he still received the kids and everything and the divorce settlement. So, like, it's a weird, there's, like, a whole weird situation surrounding, yeah, Paul. But, so, yeah.
He kept receiving letters, all this kind of stuff. But then in 1990, that's when he first became eligible for parole. He was denied parole due to the letters, even though they said that there was no way that he could be sending them. But then like four years later, he was finally paroled and he continues to maintain his innocence. Then we go back to like Martin Yant, who has investigated this story. And he has some evidence that he's like, you know.
Such as like 20 minutes before Mary found the booby trap, another bus driver on Mary's route had seen a suspicious man standing next to a yellow El Camino. The large sandy haired man turned away from the road and acted like he was using the restroom or according to Martin Yance, like he was trying to avoid identification because yeah, he's paying on the side of the road. Like, you know. Like, yeah, no, I'm not going to just pee in front of a bus full of kids. Yeah, you didn't want to end up on a sex offender registry. And that is suspicious. I wrote down that I really wanted a yellow El Camino. That car was thick. Right. And also, like, I don't know, it's like the 1980s. So I imagine they probably weren't super, like, uncommon. Like, I imagine kind of, I don't know. Although, God, yeah, my brother had an El Camino. That was his first car. And I called it the car that looked like it was dug up from the backyard because.
Parts of it were yellow. Other parts, yeah, but, you know, it worked. But yeah, so there's also not any kind of mention if the other driver saw the sign or not. So that's the thing. Like, yeah, if it was a big bed sheet or something, like nobody mentions whether or not they saw the sign. Yeah, before Mary came by. Yeah, and Yanks, you know, he found another possible suspect's brother owned the same type of car. And the description of the man, you know, the sandy-haired big man did not match Paul. And it's reiterated that Paul had an alibi.
But again, we're not told any more about what that alibi is. And yeah, I mean, could it have made a difference? Apparently, Mary told the story to Sheriff Radcliffe, but the defense didn't know about it, which, yeah, I mean, that looks bad. I mean, but yeah, that's kind of what they're, that's their kind of what they're also pulling out to try to say that, like, oh, no, he didn't do this. And yeah, I mean, that's pretty much it until, you know, we, you know, record scratch and go back to the beginning where Unsolved Mysteries receives El Sico.
The Ilseco letter. Yes. And yeah, that is the Circleville, Ohio. Okay. In your non-professional opinion, do you think that he did it? In my non-professional opinion, I think there are a lot of people. I definitely think there was probably more than one writer. Yeah. I think that there were possibly some ulterior motives. I could see him being set up. I could see, yeah, I could see there not having really been a booby trap. Also, you know, yes, it was a poor attempt, an amateurish attempt at taking the serial number off the gun.
was that done on purpose so that the gun would be, you know, taken back, traced back to Paul. I just, yeah, I think that, I don't think there's anything suspicious about Ron, the guy who drove his car into the tree. I don't think there's anything suspicious about that. I think that, yeah, that was probably a guy who, and, you know, even if he, all the more, all the more reason, like if he hadn't been a heavy drinker and just got totally plastered that night, but still felt like, oh, I'm totally fine to drive, gets in his car and is like, oh yeah, no, I am not. Like, you know, I just think that, yeah, he probably was pretty drunk and, you know, lost control of his truck.
think we forget how common drunk driving used to be yeah right i don't know that he really would have thought much of it and yeah if he didn't drink maybe his tolerance wasn't great or he didn't know what he could handle and his wife's out of town and then he gets pissed off he grabs a gun yeah it's it's honestly i don't even understand really how foul play could play a part like that was my question i mean did someone force him to consume all that alcohol it seems like they because they they claim there's a cover up by the police. I don't know if they think that the police are just making up the fact that he was drunk, but it seems really unlikely. I think the family was saying or suggesting that maybe that was like a lab error and then he wasn't drunk, but then it's like, but okay, but he still crashed his car or did like someone else crash? Like how did he die? Like he was not shot. I don't really even understand what like the missing bullet implies. That he shot at someone. I don't know. Yeah. There wasn't like a bullet hole or anything found in the car or the truck. There wasn't, you know, there, nobody heard a gunshot like right before the crash. It,
Yeah. And also like, yeah, like you said, like this was a time when drunk driving wasn't, um, so it wasn't, you know, was a lot more common. So, you know, they say he wasn't a heavy drinker, but like, was that somebody who would have like one or two beers after work? I mean, that would not be considered a heavy drinker, but then would drive home from the bar still. Um, so yeah, somebody who has a little more than what they usually have. Uh, yeah, I just, I, I don't see anything suspicious of that.
think at this time someone who drank literally every single day but wasn't visibly drunk would not be considered a heavy drinker so that that's not the same as being like he was a teetotaler and he never touched one drop like yeah that was the case and yeah that would be super suspicious but um they didn't mention anything about him like no never drinking right um there was something and this is not an unsolved mysteries i did hear that there was a guy who was a bus driver around the same time as um mary was and he um so The superintendent also received a letter talking about how he needs to leave his girls alone, referring to the other bus drivers. So this guy, several years later, was...
Yeah, he sexually assaulted a child and then was on the run and ended up hanging himself in El Paso. But yeah, so there's also, you know, people have brought up that. And also around the time that he died. Yes, there were, you know, because he died, I think, in like the late 90s. And that's also kind of around the same time that some of the letters stopped. Right. So there is also, you know, that kind of rabbit hole. But yeah, I just I think a lot of people probably wrote letters. I think different people wrote different letters. I think a lot of people probably got letters and just like.
just, just blew them off because yeah, you know, okay. Somebody's writing a letter about like, Oh, you double parted, you know, the grocery store. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it is weird. I do think that yes, Paul, um, whether or not he did it, um, yeah, the trial, yeah, no, that was a totally horrible trial and that should have not resulted in it. I mean, yeah, that the writing evidence, I don't think should have ever been admitted. And yeah, that was a bad, um, yeah, that was a bad trial.
Yeah. I think the idea of him being set up is fascinating. And I, I don't, I don't know, but if the sign looked in real life, like it did in Unsolved Mysteries, it's unfathomable to me that this woman would have spotted it driving down the road. And I'm not saying that she put it there, but I do like this. I don't know. I'm fascinated by this idea that like someone set him up and it was just a little too convenient that it was his gun and maybe it was stolen the way he said it was. I don't know. That's interesting. Interesting. Obviously there's no way to know, but that's an interesting theory.
Yeah, I mean, that's one thing, too, that also surprised me working crime scene. And, you know, I did property crime for a little bit before I moved to like crimes against persons and the number of people that leave their gun in their unlocked car. And then had it stolen. I mean, I was I was, yeah, at least one once a week, I would go out to a call like that. And it was like, all right, awesome. Yay. That's great. Yeah, yeah.
Great job, everybody. I'm curious, in the forensic document examiner community, is this a case that people like to talk about? Do people all have their own theories about the Circleville writer? It's spreading. It's spreading my misspeaking. So the 48 Hours episode, it was in the forums for a little bit. I've not seen the episode, but I do know that the woman who apparently said that he was... She fingered Paul as the writer of the letters. She is more of the... Her credentials...
a lot of them are from the UK. I don't know what their standards are, but she's a practicer of graphology. The places that she's certified from are the kind of like, like, yeah, like the places that you can go to online and, you know, get a, yeah, get like a, you know, 120 hour course thing saying that, yes, you can tell who a writer is and you can tell what they're, you know, if they're going to be a killer or if they're going, you know, that kind of thing. So she really wasn't that, she wasn't as renowned as the 48 hours had them, had her built up to be. So I think that was kind of more the thing is, is just the, again, just kind of having to, Yeah, say like, hey, this is what is considered standard in the industry. This woman does not have it. Okay, yes. I'm remembering back to watching that episode and I see this woman in my mind's eye and dubious. She made a lot of claims. I recall her making a lot of claims that it seemed like she could not possibly, that no one would stand behind these claims. There's just not evidence to support what she was saying. If you have somebody who, because I think she said that like for sure or like 100% or something along those lines that he was the writer. And again, like you can't. No. Yeah, you're not going to be able to tell that from this evidence. Yeah, from something that's been deliberated like this.
Samantha, do you think you and I should get one of these dubious certifications? Please don't go on 48 hours. Now I'm just like fascinated by how that works and like how at the end of the process we'd be like, wow, we are not qualified to do this. Amazing. Okay. That was fascinating. I'm so happy that you came on the show, Angela, I have to say. You brought a lot of expertise. Yes. We do not have. And I really appreciate having that insight into this case. It's fascinating.
Usually we're just making wild guesses, but yeah. I don't know. This seems sketchy, but what do I know? There's a lot of me going, guess what? I'm not a scientist. Aha. Now we have some actual expert opinion. So this episode is so goddamn long. It's so long, everybody. And Angela had so many insightful details about the Circleville slash Centerville letters. We are actually going to make this a two-parter episode. You'll have to come back next week to hear about Agatha Christie and actually a couple other interesting cases. We're going to really plow through an unnecessary update.
And then you can hear the rest of this very special episode. Join us next week. Do you want to plug our shit real quick? Sure. I mean, there's the social medias. There's a repod, which you should definitely download. We have a website, perhaps it's you.com. We have a great Patreon that you should be a part of this week. I mean, this month, Angela, we were talking about the X-Files. We were talking about pusher. If you remember that, that's the one where people can, he can control people with his mind. Yes. Okay. Excellent.
Angela and I once went and saw one of the X-Files movies. I can't fucking think of the title. It's the one where there's a two-headed dog and Mulder gets kidnapped, whatever one that is. And then after the movie, we just sat at her place for maybe 45 minutes and went through every single plot hole. And I have to say that is like an ideal movie viewing experience for me. Yeah, even though it was in Las Cruces where viewing movies was a disaster.
uh the other day mac reminded me that not only was like uh did someone okay we had a very terrible time once seeing the movie there will be blood for and a lot of things went wrong during the movie but mac reminded me that someone came in late not only with a crying baby but with helium balloons and then proceeded to sit and proceeded to sit like really close to the screen so that the balloons were literally like about that because my recollection of that movie is that the woman i was sitting next to no okay doesn't matter if you've seen this movie or not it's literally called there will be blood you might think things would go wrong and that's such a movie every time the music started to get tense those women that go sitting next to me would go oh god oh geez oh god oh god oh no oh god anyway I only want to do is watch an episode of the X-Files and then sit down and be like, my God, that sucked. And here are the 10,000 reasons why. Yep. That sounds great. But was it, like, were you the one that went to the El Paso orchestra and somebody had brought in like a bucket of fried chicken? Okay. I wanted to see a play at El Paso where someone had food they brought in with them from two separate fast food restaurants. Awesome. One was Arby's and one might've been fried chicken. And they literally just sat there eating, like they were having a dinner and a show. No one, no one tried to stop them.
yeah in a way i'm like that's probably the best way to see cat out of ten room buy a train track so the trains are perpetually going by to ruin the sound and yeah guys just munching fried chicken behind you oh my god amazing Well, I will say you won't have a similar experience to that listening to our Patreon episode, I hope. I mean, if you want to recreate it for yourself, by all means, it's your dollar. It's a special audio experience. You pull up an ASMR of someone eating chicken, you pull up some train noises, and you can recreate that in your own home. Good times. Do you, folks. Well, we will see y'all for the rest of this episode in two weeks. Yes. Take care. It's lots of mysteries. Keep barking. Bye. Bye.