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Further reading for The Circleville Letter Writer & Serial Killer Donald Harvey:

Cold Cases True Crime: True Murder Stories And Accounts Of Incredible Murder Mysteries From The Last Century (Volume 1)

Defending Donald Harvey: The Case of America’s Most Notorious Angel-of-Death Serial Killer

and say…do you want to be a Superintendent??

So You Want to Be a Superintendent

1976 in Circleville, Ohio, locals began getting weird letters in the mail that contained personal information about their lives. The local school bus driver, Mary Gillispie received a letter that accused her of having what she claimed was a non-existent affair with the superintendent of schools. The letter stated that the writer had been watching her and her house and that the person knew that she had children. About a week later she again received a similar letter, she told no one of the letters until her husband received one as well, his said that if he allowed his wife to continue her affair his life would be in danger.

After two weeks, the writer started sending threats to tell local television, radio stations and broadcasting on cbs (not the television station) about the affair. Thinking they may have figurered out who the letter writer was, Mary and her husband Ron decided to write back claiming they were sure who the was threating them. The threats stopped for several weeks….

Then Ron received a phone call from the writer, the call seemed to solidify the identity of who Ron thought the writer was. He grabbed his gun, and took off in his truck not long after Ron was found dead in his pickup. He had crashed into a tree, and it was found that he had fired as least one shot from his gun before the crash. His death was ruled an accident, police saying he had lost control of the truck and crashed while driving drunk. Soon after several Circleville residents began receiving letters that the sheriff was involved in a cover up with the case.

Mary and the superintendent did later acknowledge they were involved in a relationship, though they claimed it did no begin until after the letters had started. But Mary continued to be harassed but it became more then just letters, along her bus route there were threatening signs placed on the side of the road. On one occasion Mary stopped the bus, and got out to rip the sign down. When she did she found that the sign was boobytrapped with a box containing a gun and had she ripped the sign in another direction she would have been shot.

The absolute coolest part of this story, is that while Unsolved Mysteries was shooting this story, they too recieved a letter from the Circleville Letter Writer stating “Forget Circleville Ohio: Do Nothing To Hurt Sherriff Radcliff: If You Come to Ohio You El Sickos Will Pay :The Circleville LEtter Writer”

An angel….of death that is:

Donald Harvey was an American serial killer who started his journey as a hospital orderly. He claimed to have started killing to “ease the pain” of patients, he did this by smothering them with their own pillows. It was later that Harvey admitted to enjoying the killing of his victims and he described himself as an Angel of death. He claimed to have murdered 87 people, but the officials have estimated the real number to be between 37 and 57. At the time of his death, Harvey was serving 28 life sentences in Toledo, Ohio.

Episode 110

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