The Circleville Letters Mystery

Dark Histories

Ben Cutmore

History

4.8 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 28 January 2018

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week is a tireless effort to unravel the most tightly wound bundle of gossip, hearsay and bizarre facts that make up the Circleville Letter Mystery. A series of thousands of letters, spanning almost three decades that lead to at least one strange death, a shifty court trial and incarceration and accusations of deep conspiracy. Oh and a booby trap. For extended show notes, including maps, links and scripts, head over to darkhistories.com Support the show by using our link when you sign up to Audible: http://audibletrial.com/darkhistories or visit our Patreon for bonus episodes and Early Access: https://www.patreon.com/darkhistories Connect with me on Facebook: http://facebook.com/darkhistoriespodcast Or find me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/darkhistories Or you can contact me directly via email at [email protected] Music was recorded by me © 2017 Other Outro music was Paul Whiteman & his orchestra with Mildred Bailey - All of me (1931). It's out of copyright now, but if you're interested, that was that.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I know where you live I've been observing your house and know you have children this is no joke please take it serious
0:10.9	so read the first letter received by Mary Gillespie, a resident of Circleville, Ohio in December of
0:17.0	1976. Communication from this anonymous letter writer continued for decades and reached out to over a thousand recipients.
0:26.0	Disturbing, threatening letters that documented private matters of residence, including illicit affairs,
0:32.0	sorted relationships and corruption swarmed through the town as events
0:36.2	surrounding them grew ever more dramatic and the stakes grew higher.
0:40.7	In this episode we take a look at a strange and unsolved case that has become
0:45.8	known today as the Circleville letters. This is dark histories where the facts
0:51.9	are worse than fiction.
0:57.0	Hello and welcome to season 2 episode 2. I'm Ben this is dark histories.
1:06.0	I just want to give a quick thank you to everyone who's emailed in recently
1:10.0	with listener suggestions and I just point out that I'm you know I'm always
1:15.7	open to suggestions so if you've got ideas that you'd like to hear for episodes just
1:21.8	let me know you can either go on the website
1:25.0	dark histories dot com and you'll find an email form there or you can just straight
1:30.6	up right an email to contact at dark histories.com. So let's get on with it.
1:38.0	On we go. This is quite a ride coming up so strap yourself in we've even got booby traps but you know no
1:46.0	spoilers is a case of the circle feel letters Circleville, Ohio was a small town described over and over again as the sort of place no one locked their doors.
2:05.2	You'd be forgiven for dismissing this cliched phrase, though seeing as how the Circleville Pumpkin Show is an annual event which still sits as one of its top attractions.
2:15.2	It's likely that this description is a lot closer to the reality than one might think.
2:19.7	The town itself lies 25 miles south of Columbus and has a population of 13,000.
2:27.0	From the outside there would be little cause to doubt that it wasn't anything other than a cozy little town as it first appeared.
	...

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