Terrifying & True | The Circleville Letters: Threats, a Booby Trap & an Unsolved Mystery

Anonymous letters turned Circleville, Ohio, into a maze of accusations, surveillance, death, and attempted murder—and the writer’s identity was never conclusively established.

The campaign began in 1976 when school-bus driver Mary Gillispie received letters accusing her of an affair with superintendent Gordon Massie. Her husband Ron was threatened as well. After Ron died in a 1977 vehicle crash following a mysterious phone call, the letters returned with allegations of a cover-up and signs appeared along Mary’s bus route.

In 1983, Mary removed one of those signs and discovered a booby-trapped box designed to fire a handgun. The weapon was registered to her brother-in-law Paul Freshour. Handwriting evidence and the device helped convict Freshour of attempted murder, although he was not tried for writing the letters and maintained his innocence for the rest of his life.

Then the case became even stranger: threatening mail continued while Freshour was incarcerated, including during periods when he had severely restricted access. Terrifying & True follows the trial, the disputed handwriting procedure, the Unsolved Mysteries letter, and competing theories involving relatives, coworkers, and possibly more than one writer. The result is not a tidy culprit reveal, but an unsettling study of how anonymous accusations can consume an entire community.

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