 Happy Monday, friends. And boy, do I have the juiciest of mysteries for you. But before we go any further, you know what to do. Hit that subscribe button and give us a like. I also again want to take a moment to shout out to our producer, Tiffany Monroe. She is a Reiki master here in Atlanta, Georgia. She owns a nonprofit called Healing Hands Reiki and Spiritual Development. She offers courses as well as one-on-one treatments. If you're not from the Atlanta area, but you are interested in contacting Tiffany regarding some of her services, please follow the links down below. And you can work something out with her to do something perhaps over Zoom. And if you would like to become a producer at Esoteric Atlanta or join our Patreon, follow the links below to help support the channel. All right, let's get started. Welcome to Esoteric Atlanta. My name is Bryce and today on Mystery Monday, we are going to be talking about the Juicy and the Notorious Circleville letters. I saved their Notorious, but in fairness, I didn't even know about these letters until I stumbled across them doing research. But apparently back in the 90s, this story was a pretty big deal because it was aired on Unsolved Mysteries. The letters revolved around a few of the residents of Circleville, Ohio. Now, Circleville is south of Columbus, Ohio. And what's interesting about the letters is that all of these letters were mailed from Columbus, Ohio, not from Circleville, Ohio. Our story starts in 1976 and revolves around a local bus driver by the name of Mary Gullipsby. It seems that Mary started to receive anonymous and harassing letters, accusing her of having an affair with the superintendent of the local school. Now, Mary claimed that this affair at this time was not true, wasn't happening. For a long time, Mary kept the letters to herself, even though the letters started to threaten her own children. It wasn't until her husband, Ron, received a letter himself that Mary had to come clean and tell Ron that she was in the process of being harassed by some unknown stalker from Columbus who thought she was having a non-existent affair with the superintendent. It appears that Ron's letters were a little bit more threatening, though. You see, the stalker told Ron that if he didn't in the affair that his wife was having with the superintendent, that not only would their children's life be in danger, but Ron's life would be in danger, too. But everything came to a head when they got another letter saying the stalker was going to go to the local media and tell the whole entire world that Mary was involved in this affair. He was going to put billboards up, go on radio shows, everything. So Ron and his wife, Mary sat down with Ron's sister and her husband, Paul and Paul's sister and talked about what they should do. Ron's sister and his brother-in-law, Paul, along with Paul's sister were the only three people outside of the immediate family that knew about these letters. You see, Mary thought she knew who the person was that was harassing them. So she had Paul, her brother-in-law, write a letter to this individual asking them to stop. And it seemed to have worked because the letter stopped coming for a while. But then on that fateful day of August 19th, 1977, all hell broke loose. You see, Ron got a phone call. And remember, this was the 70s. There were no cell phones. There were no cordless phones. It was all landlines with no caller ID. So he gets this phone call and it's the stalker. The stalker proceeds to tell Ron again that the affair needs to stop. He also threatens Ron and tells Ron that he's been watching Ron. And he's also going to be surveying Ron's truck. So of course, Ron, like any of us would be, was like, oh, hell no. Got his shotgun and proceeded to get in his truck and drive off. I guess he knew by hearing the voice on the phone who this supposed stalker was. Well, it was a little while later that they found Ron's truck crashed into a tree. And unfortunately, Ron did not survive. Now, the interesting thing to note is that the gun, Ron's gun had been shot one time. Now, the officer on the scene declared that this was an accident. That Ron was driving drunk. Now, the thing is, is Ron's blood alcohol level was high, but this wasn't apparently common for Ron. Things grew even more intense when all sorts of residents of the town not involved in this supposed affair, all of a sudden started receiving letters from this stalker claiming that sheriff Dwight Radcliffe was involved in the coverup of Ron's death. You see, apparently the sheriff at first glance thought that there was foul play involved in Ron's death, but then quickly decided that that was not the case. But then our story takes a whole other twist. Remember the whole subject around these letters, the whole point of the stalking was the fact that the stalker claims that Mary Gillespie was having this affair with the superintendent of the school. Now, she claimed that this affair never happened. However, after Ron's death, she then changed her story. And she claimed that the affair happened, but only after the letters started coming in, because I mean, that makes sense, right? You're being harassed and stalked and your children are being threatened over this affair that you're claiming never happened. But you're just going to go ahead and have the affair anyway, because that's logical, right? I think it was Shakespeare who said, oh, the tangled webs we weave when first we start to deceive. Of course, I think any logical person now believes that Mary had been having this affair with the superintendent. This was not a fake affair. This had been going on. Told you this story was juicy. Anyway, it's not over yet, because in February of 1993, which just to side note, that's the month and the year that I was born was February 4th of 1993. But as I was taking life, Mary was up in Ohio, continually being harassed. Her husband is now dead. So I guess she can date whoever she wants to because like her husband's dead. So she's technically a free woman now. But anyway, she's driving her bus home and she's a bus driver for children. This is a school bus. And all of a sudden she starts passing all these billboards and these signs that are put up on the side of the road to try to demoralize her and shame her. Well, when the billboards become threatening, Mary decides to take action and do her own hands. She gets off of the bus and she starts to pull the signs down. Well, apparently the stalker, whoever put the signs up, decided it would be cute to tie a pistol to the billboard. So when she pulled it down, a string would pull and a gun would fire. Now, fortunately for Mary, the bullet missed her. So I'm sure she got the scare of her life, but she survived. When Goodell, Sheriff, Dwight Radcliffe picked the gun up and examined it. It was apparent that the number, the ID number had been scratched off the gun. But never fear technology, even in the 80s, was up to scruff. It could pull up the number of the gun and see who it belonged to. And now we take another twist. The gun was registered to Mary's brother-in-law, Paul, who had been married to Ron's sister. The gun belonged to Paul. But then Paul was like, hold up, y'all, my gun was stolen on the 25th of February of 1983. I did not have it in my possession. But of course, now Paul was on Sheriff Radcliffe's radar, right? This is a small town. We know everybody in this town. Who else could it be? So he had Paul come into the police department and take a handwriting analysis. Now, I'm going to remind you at this point in the story that Mary and Ron had Paul write the letter in the beginning to who they thought was the stalker to ask the stalker to stop. On October 24th of 1983, Paul was arrested for attempted murder of Mary. He was not arrested in relationship to writing the letters. However, at his trial, the handwriting expert tried to use the letters against Paul. We also had testimony from Mary herself. Now, Paul and his wife, his wife, who was Ron's sister at this point were going through a divorce. And Mary claimed that Ron's sister came over to Mary's house and confided in Mary that she believed her husband was the one writing the letters and harassing Mary. We also have to point out that Paul's boss testified at the trial that Paul was not at work the day of the attempted murder with the billboard signs. Now, even though that doesn't look that great for Paul, there could be many reasons why he wasn't at work. Throughout this whole trial, Paul always maintained his innocence. I personally believe that Paul is or was innocent of these crimes and we'll get to why I believe that in just a minute. Unfortunately, Paul was found guilty by his jury and he was given a seven to 24 year sentence for his crimes. This is important for anybody interested in this case to note because after Paul went into to jail into solitary confinement, the letters kept coming. Paul got letters to the letters from the stalker saying that they were going to try to keep Paul in jail for as long as possible. Other residents of the town also received letters saying that Paul was innocent and continuing to harass Mary for this affair with the superintendent. There is no way Paul could have written these letters. We also need to note that again, these letters came from Columbus, Ohio. This is according to the post office stamp stamp on the letters. Now, Paul was being kept in Lima, Lima, Lima. Not sure if I'm saying that right, Ohio, which is a ways away from both Columbus and Circleville. And again, guys, he's in jail. He can't drive to Columbus to go to the post office. He's in jail. And even though we understand, like common sense, the dude was in jail. He could not be the writer of these letters. In 1990, the parole board denied Paul's parole because the letters kept coming to the town. It's situations like this that make me think maybe Sheriff Radcliffe was involved in this because like even a five year old would logically understand that this scenario, the court had set up with Paul and his guilt was complete BS. But in happier news in 1994, Paul was paroled. Now, Paul continued to proclaim his innocence. And I think most people can acknowledge that he was innocent. Now, on November 11th of 1994, unsolved mysteries aired his story. They're trying to find out, again, who is the actual person writing these horrific letters? Now, what's funny is that the network and the producers of unsolved mysteries also received a letter from this dog or threatening them. But by the time they received the letter, they had already filmed the episode and aired it. So it was a little too late. Unfortunately, Paul died in 2012. Now, there are people that have dedicated a lot of time to this case and they have a few suspects in mind because, again, like Paul's innocent. I mean, he's innocent. So who are these suspects that people have in mind? Well, one of the suspects is the superintendent's son. People believe that maybe the superintendent's son was so upset by this illicit affair his dad was having with this bus driver that he started this whole chain event of harassing letters. Another thought was that it was perhaps Paul's wife, Ron's sister. Apparently their marriage, Paul and her marriage was pretty dysfunctional. And if there's some personality disorder there, then it very well could have been Ron's sister who who did this. Another theory was that there was a co-worker, another co-worker of Mary's. Not superintendent, but another one that was obsessed with Mary. Maybe this co-worker knew that Mary was having an affair with the superintendent and this co-worker wanted in on that action. And so they started threatening because that always gets you what you want. Right. And the final suspect on our list of suspects is Mary herself. And I know people must be thinking, oh, you're crazy. Like, how could Mary do this to herself? Well, let me tell you something. I have been privy to another stalking incident within my own life, within my own community, where it is believed that the person doing the stalking or being stalked is actually stalking himself. That's a theory a lot of us have. And and this person has narcissistic personality disorder, which this is totally something a narcissist would do. Now, I don't know Mary. I have no, I don't even know what she looks like. I can't find any pictures of her, but I am very suspect of Mary because if she is a narcissist or if she is a borderline or if there is some personality disorder and and she wants out of her marriage with Ron, why not start stalking herself and she knows her kids are going to be fine. She could have stolen a Paul's gun and set it up so she would not shoot herself. I don't know. Maybe it's farfetched, but I'm very suspicious of Mary. It's also interesting to note that Mary turned down unsolved mysteries. She did not want to be interviewed. Maybe she was afraid of being called out for inconsistencies or the possibility that she was the one doing the stalking, or maybe she was filmed with shame because her testimony was part of what got an innocent man locked away. And now, of course, this is all my opinion. Again, I don't know Mary. I don't know anybody involved in this case. I'm just a civilian who's interested in this story, this juicy story. But what do you think? What's your opinion? Have you heard of these letters? What do you think actually happened in Circleville, Ohio back in 1976? I do want to say rest in peace to Paul. I hope the afterlife is a lot nicer to you than your living life. All right, guys, tomorrow, once again, I'll be on David Zublik's channel. His channel is now on Bitshoot. If you missed any of my past interviews with David, the Canaanites or the Halloween episode with David, please go to Bitshoot and you should be able to find him there. You can find all those episodes. Please make sure to subscribe to his channel on Bitshoot or on Rumble. He also has his channel up on Rumble, too. Again, thank you to Josh McCabe for doing our music. There's also a link in the description box, as always, for you to be able to purchase our opening song. And thank you to Todd Fraudrich for helping me produce this episode. And as always, you can find Todd's band on YouTube as well by following the link below. All right, guys, I will talk to you soon. We are in a huge week here in the United States. I hope everybody gets out there and votes. If you live in a big city, please be careful. Watch your back. These are historical elections. And so everybody, just please be careful and be safe. God bless lots of love to you all. And I will talk to you soon. Bye.