December 10, 2020
Allegations of an affair led to a series of threatening letters that puzzled authorities in Ohio for years.
Photo by Calvin Hanson from Pexels
Mary Gillispie had seen enough.
It was the afternoon of February 7, 1983, and Gillispie, a school bus driver for the Westfall School District in Circleville, Ohio, had just dropped off one group of children and was headed to pick up another at Monroe Elementary School when she spotted the sign. It had been placed along her bus route at the intersection of Scioto-Darby Road and Five Points Pike.
Gillispie parked the bus, exited, and approached the handwritten sign, which made an obscene remark about her young daughter, Traci. Gillispie had been receiving such harassment for years, typically via letters in the mail, and she knew the sign was the work of the same anonymous perpetrator. In the letters, the person had warned her that messages would be posted publicly.