The Cleveland Torso Murderer

 The Cleveland Torso Murderer

The Kingsbury Run Torso Murderer, also known as the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run, was an unidentified serial killer who was active in Cleveland, Ohio, United States, in the 1930s. The killings were characterized by the dismemberment of twelve known victims and the disposal of their remains in the impoverished neighborhood of Kingsbury Run. Most victims came from an area east of Kingsbury Run called "The Roaring Third" or "Hobo Jungle", known for its bars, gambling dens, brothels, and vagrants. Despite an investigation of the murders, which at one time was led by famed lawman Eliot Ness, then Cleveland's Public Safety Director, the murderer was never apprehended. (The Cleveland Torso Murderer is not to be confused with Richard Cottingham, a.k.a. The Torso Killer or the Times Square Torso Ripper.)

Murders

The official number of murders attributed to the Cleveland Torso Murderer is twelve, although recent research has shown there could have been as many as twenty. The twelve known victims were killed between 1935 and 1938. Some investigators, including lead detective Peter Merylo, believe that there may have been thirteen or more victims in the Cleveland, Youngstown, and Pittsburgh areas between the 1920s and 1950s. Two strong candidates for addition to the initial list of those killed are the unknown victim nicknamed the "Lady of the Lake," found on September 5, 1934, and Robert Robertson, found on July 22, 1950.

The victims of the Torso Murderer were usually drifters whose identities were never determined, although there were a few exceptions. Victims numbers 2, 3, and 8 were identified as Edward Andrassy, Florence Polillo, and possibly Rose Wallace, respectively. Edward Andrassy and Florence Polillo were both identified by their fingerprints, while Rose Wallace was tentatively identified via her dental records. The victims appeared to be lower class individuals — easy prey in Depression-era Cleveland. Many were known as "working poor", who had nowhere else to live but the ramshackle Depression-era shanty towns or "Hoovervilles" in the area known as the Cleveland Flats.

The Torso Murderer always beheaded and often dismembered their victims, occasionally severing the victim's torso in half or severing their appendages In many cases the cause of death was the decapitation or dismemberment itself. Most of the male victims were castrated. Some victims showed evidence of chemical treatment being applied to their bodies, which caused the skin to become red, tough, and leathery. Many of the victims were found after a considerable period of time following their deaths, occasionally in excess of a year. In an era when forensic science was largely in its infancy, these factors further complicated identification, especially since the heads were often undiscovered.

During the time of the "official" murders, Eliot Ness held the position of Public Safety Director of Cleveland, a position with authority over the police department and ancillary services, including the fire department. While Ness had little to do with the investigation, his posthumous reputation as leader of The Untouchables has made him an irresistible character in modern "torso murder" lore. Ness did contribute to the arrest and interrogation of one of the prime suspects, Dr. Francis E. Sweeney. In addition, he personally conducted raids into hobo shanties and eventually burned down Kingsbury Run, from which the killer took their victims. His reasoning for burning down the shanty towns was to catalog fingerprints to easily identify any new victims, and stated that it was also done to get possible victims out of the area in an attempt to stop the murders. Four days after the shantytown burning, on August 22, 1938, Ness launched an equally draconian operation of questionable legality, where he personally dispatched six two-man search teams on a large area of Cleveland, stretching from the Cuyahoga River to E. 55th Street to Prospect Avenue under the guise of conducting city fire inspections. This area of the city had long been supposed as the location of the Torso Murderer's "laboratory." Among the detectives dispatched and charged to look for signs of the Torso Murderer's activity in the area were Detectives Orley May, Emil Musil, Peter Merylo, and Martin Zalewski- men who had worked the case from the beginning and must have felt the frustrations of the case most strongly. While the search never turned up any new or incriminating information that could lead to the arrest and conviction of the Torso Murderer, the systemic search did serve to focus renewed public attention on the terrible living conditions in the downtown Cleveland area. The teams uncovered hundreds of families living in appalling fire traps without toilets or running water. The interests of social reform, did ultimately come to light even if those of law enforcement did not.

At one point in time, the killer taunted Ness by placing the remains of two victims in full view of his office in city hall.

Victims

Most researchers consider there to be 12 victims, although some have counted as many as 20. New evidence suggests a woman dubbed "The Lady of the Lake" could be included. There was a second victim who was also considered to be a victim of the Torso Killer in 1950 named Robert Robertson due to the fact that his head was also cut off. Only two victims were positively identified; the other ten were six John Does and four Jane Does.

1st victim found second victim to be killed was Edward Andrasy. His body was found September 23, 1935 on the base of Jackass Hill where East 49th Street dead-ends into Kingsbury Run. Andrasy's head was discovered buried near the rest of his body. His body was found to be emasculated and only wearing socks. The autopsy report stated that his head was decapitated in the mid-cervical region with a fracture of the mid-cervical vertebrae. The corner also noted that Andrasy had rope burn around his writs. The cause of Andrasy's death was decapitation; hemorrhage and shock. Edward Andrasy's death was ruled a homicide. He was estimated to have been dead for Two to three days

The second victim to be found first victim to be killed was John Doe number 1 he was found September 23, 1935 at Jackass Hill area of Kingsbury Run (The body was found by James Wagner and Peter Kostera) Male body was never identified. Emasculated and decapitated, head recovered. The skin was treated with a chemical agent that caused it to become reddish and leathery. He had been dead Initial estimates were seven to ten days. It was later revised to three to four weeks.

Third victim to be found third to be killed Florence Genevieve Polillo (aliases: Sawdey, Saudey, Ghent, Martin, Gallagher, Davis, Clara Dunn, Clara Martin) she was found both on January 26/February 7, 1936 Between 2315 and 2325 East 20th Street in downtown Cleveland and 1419 Orange Avenue Florence Polillo's body was discovered at 2315 to 2325 East 2oth Street in Cleveland, Ohio. Florence was found dismembered and had been wrapped with paper and packed into half-bushel baskets, however, her head was never discovered. Florence was approximately 43 years old and weighed about 150 pounds. The autopsy report states that her cause of death was a slit throat, but it was questioned if it was a homicide because the head was never discovered. It was estimated that she had been dead for Two to four days.

The fourth victim found fifth to be killed John Doe II "The Tattooed Man” he was found June 5, 1935 in Kingsbury Run John Doe II also known as "The Tattooed Man" body was discovered in front of the Nickel Plate Railroad Police building, while his head was discovered near the East 55th Street Bridge. John Doe II had 6 tattoos hence the name "Tattooed man". The autopsy report stated that the body was drained of blood as well as his head was severed while the victim was alive. He was dead for Two days.

The fifth victim to be found fourth to be killed was John Doe Number 3 who was found on July 22, 1936 in Big Creek area of Brooklyn, west of Cleveland. The victim was dismembered while still alive. His head was recovered. This unidentified male body was the only known West Side victim. He was dead for around 4 months.

The sixth victim to be found 7th to be murdered was John Doe IV he was found on September 10th, 1936 near a Creek in Kingsbury Run. Two halves of a male torso and lower legs were found. The coroner notes the body was severed between the third and fourth cervical vertebrae as well as between the third and fourth lumbar vertebrae. The head was never found nor the body identified. The victim's kidneys and stomach were cut and he was emasculated as well. The Coroner declared the probable cause death was decapitation. He was dead for 2 days.

The 7th victim to be found 8th to be murdered was possible Jane doe number 1 she was found February 23rd, 1937 at Euclid Beach on the Lake Erie shore. The unidentified female body was found at the same spot as the 1934 noncanonical victim nicknamed "The Lady of the Lake" (see below). The head was never found. (Seen as arguably the first victim) The upper extremities are disarticulated at the level of the glenoid fossa, better known as the socket of the shoulder joint. The neck and head are disarticulated between the seventh cervical and first thoracic vertebrae. Multiple hesitation knife marks at the surface of the skin are present. There was considerable water and gravel found in both pleural cavities. Though previously listed anatomical discoveries and diagnoses are made, the probable cause of death is officially undetermined via the coroner's case file. She was dead for 3-4 days.

The 8th victim to be found 6th to be killed wasjane doe 2 she was found June 6th, 1937 Beneath the Lorain-Carnegie bridge Only black victim (Thought to be Rose Wallace, but never truly identified). The body was decapitated and missing a rib. The head was recovered. (From the head, they found distinct dental work was done with her teeth, but were still never able to positively ID her). She was dead for a whole year.

The 9th victim found 9th victim murdered was John Doe number 5 he was found July 6, 1937 he was Pulled out of Cuyahoga River in the Cleveland Flats Body of this male was recovered but the head was never found. The unidentified man had his abdomen gutted, and his heart ripped out. He was dead for 2-3 days.

The 10th victims found 12th victim murdered was Jane doe number 3 she was found April 8, 1938 in Cuyahoga River in the Cleveland Flats On April 8 only the victim's lower leg was recovered. On May 2 a human thigh was discovered floating in the river to the east of the West 3rd Street bridge. A police search under the bridge found a burlap sack containing the victim's headless torso cut in two halves, another thigh and a left foot. The head and the rest of the body were never found. Only victim to have drugs (morphine) in her system. The amount of morphine was estimated at 0.002 gm. per 100 gm. sample. She had been dead 3-5 days.

The 11th victim found 11th victim killed she was found on august 16, 1938 on East 9th Street Lakeshore Dump (The dead body was found 800 feet east On Shore Drive, of east 9th Street) she was Decapitated. Head recovered. Head disarticulated at the level of the third intervertebral disc. Autopsy was performed by S.R. Gerber, M.D., Coroner of Cuyahoga County. Lead Detective Peter Merylo would later, in his memoirs, dismiss Jane Doe IV as a victim of the Torso Murderer due to evidence of embalming found on the remains. No other canonical victims' remains had shown traces of embalming. She had been dead 4-6 months.

The 12th and final victim to be found 10th victim to be killed was John Doe VI he was found august 16, 1938. East 9th Street Lakeshore Dump (exact location is 900 feet East of E. 9th Street and 50 feet South of Lake Road) John Doe VI's body was discovered on the lakefront in plain view of Safety Director Eliot Ness's office with Jane Doe IV. It was previously mentioned that the head of John Doe VI was discovered in a can, however, there has been no evidence or reports on it. Similar to the other victims, the head was severed from the body and the victim today still remains unidentified. The head was disarticulated at the level of the third inter-vertebral disc. and had knife marks on the dorsum of the second and third cervical vertebrae. Extremities at all the major joints were all disarticulated as well. The coroner ruled the cause of death as undetermined though he noted it was probably a homicide he had been dead for 7-9 months. Edward Andrassy was buried in St Mary Cemetery, Cleveland, Ohio; Florence Polillo is buried in Pennsylvania Five of the John/Jane Does ("Lady of the Lake"; and victims John Doe #1; John Doe #2; John Doe #4; Jane Doe #1) were buried in Potter's Field Section of Highland Park Cemetery, Highland Park, Cuyahoga County, Ohio.

Possible victims

Several noncanonical victims are commonly discussed in connection with the Torso Murderer. The first was nicknamed the "Lady of the Lake" and was found near Euclid Beach on the Lake Erie shore on September 5, 1934. Only parts of her were found and matched with parts found at another shore in Perry. She had an abdominal scar from a likely uterus removal which was common and made it more difficult to identify her. After she was found people began reporting see body parts in the water, including a group of fisherman who believed to have seen the head. She was found virtually the same spot as canonical victim number 7. Some researchers of the Torso Murderer's victims count the "Lady of the Lake" as victim number 1, or "Victim Zero". Like the Lady of the Lake, a year later John Doe I had perhaps a substance on his skin (though his skin abnormalities could possibly be due to burning) when his body was found, however at the time the similarities were not connected. The chemical was believed to have been a substance using lime chloride. It is supposed that the killer meant to use a quickening lime to decompose the bodies quicker but mistakenly used lime that would preserve bodies instead.

The headless body of an unidentified male was found in a boxcar in New Castle, Pennsylvania, on July 1, 1936. Three headless victims were found in boxcars near McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, on May 3, 1940. All bore similar injuries to those inflicted by the Cleveland killer. Dismembered bodies were also found in the swamps near New Castle between the years 1921 and 1934 and between 1939 and 1942. In September 1940 an article in the New Castle News refers to the killer as "The Murder Swamp Killer". The almost identical similarities between the victims in New Castle to those in Cleveland, Ohio, coupled with the similarities between New Castle's Murder Swamp and Cleveland's Kingsbury Run, both of which were directly connected by a Baltimore and Ohio Railroad line, were enough to convince Cleveland Detective Peter Merylo that the New Castle murders were the work of the "Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run". Merylo was convinced the connection was the railroad that ran twice a day between the two cities; he often rode the rails undercover looking for clues to the killer's identity.

On July 22, 1950, the body of 41-year-old Robert Robertson was found at a business at 2138 Davenport Avenue in Cleveland. Police believed he had been dead six to eight weeks and appeared to have been intentionally decapitated. His death appeared to fit the profile of other victims: He was estranged from his family, had an arrest record and a drinking problem, and was on the fringes of society. Despite widespread newspaper coverage linking the murder to the crimes in the 1930s, detectives investigating Robertson's death treated it as an isolated crime.

In 1939 the "Torso Killer" claimed to have killed a victim in Los Angeles, California. An investigation uncovered animal bones. In addition to the murders in Cleveland it is also suspected that there are connected murders before and after in Sandusky and Youngstown, as well as New Castle(PA), and Selkirk(NY). If they are connected this would raise the body count, and raise more questions about travel ability. It would also create a longer timeline of murders and victims over the span of the years. In a time where most major travel was still by railway, and Cleveland being a major hub between some of these cities, it would be much more difficult to find viable suspects.

Elliot Ness who became famous for being part of the untouchables and who took down Al Capone due to tax evasion. was also Safety Director at the of the murders that occurred in the Cleveland area from 1935 to 1938; though he had oversight of the police department, he was only peripherally involved in the investigation. Ness interrogated one of the prime suspects of the murders, Dr. Francis E. Sweeney, using a polygraph test. At one point in time, two bodies of the victims of the serial killer were placed within view of his office window.

Eliot Ness officially took charge of the so-called Torso Murderer case on 12 September 1936 as public concern, press scrutiny, and political pressure grew

Eliot Ness and a group of thirty-five police officers and detectives, raided the hobo jungles of the Run. Eleven squad cars, two police vans and three fire trucks descend on the largest cluster of makeshift shacks where the Cuyahoga River twists behind Public Square. Ness’s raiders worked their way south through the Run eventually gathering up sixty-three men. At dawn, police and fireman searched the deserted shanties for clues. Then, on orders from Safety Director Ness, the shacks were set on fire and burned to the ground.

The press severely criticized Ness for his actions. The public was afraid and frustrated. Critics said the raid would do nothing to solve the murders. They were right, but for whatever reason, they did stop.

Another interesting point to note was that In 1947—the same year Ness unsuccessfully ran for mayor of Cleveland—a woman, later identified as Elizabeth Short, was found murdered in Leimert Park in Los Angeles. Short was cut in half, her intestines were removed, and she was drained of her blood—all similar hallmarks to the Torso Murders. She became known as the Black Dahlia, and her murder has one more thing in common with the Torso Murders: It remains unsolved.

Suspects

Authorities interrogated around 9,100 people during the investigation to find the Torso Murderer. Though the case became the biggest police investigation in Cleveland history, and many were investigated, there were only two main suspects of the Torso Murders: Frank Dolezal and Francis E. Sweeney.

County Sheriff Martin O’Donnell arrested fifty-two-year-old Bohemian brick layer Frank Dolezal for the murder of Flo Polillo. Dolezal had lived with her for a while, and subsequent investigation revealed he had been acquainted with Edward Andrassy and Rose Wallace.

His “confession” turned out to be a bewildering blend of incoherent ramblings and neat, precise details, almost as if he had been coached. Before he could go to trial, Dolezal was found dead in his cell. The five foot eight Dolezal had hanged himself from a hook only five feet seven inches off the floor. Gerber’s autopsy revealed six broken ribs, all of which had been obtained while in the Sheriff’s custody. To this day no one thinks Frank Dolezal was the torso killer. The question is: why did Sheriff O’Donnell?

Most investigators consider the last canonical murder to have been in 1938. One suspected individual was Dr. Francis E. Sweeney. Born May 5, 1894, Sweeney was a veteran of World War I who was part of a medical unit that conducted amputations in the field; after the war, Sweeney became an alcoholic due to pathological anxiety and depression derived from his wartime experiences. Sweeney was later personally interviewed by Eliot Ness, who oversaw the official investigation into the killings in his capacity as Cleveland's Safety Director. Before the interrogation, Sweeney was detained and he was found to be so intoxicated that he was held in a hotel room for 3 days until he sobered up. During this interrogation, Sweeney is said to have "failed to pass" two very early polygraph machine tests. Both tests were administered by polygraph expert Leonarde Keeler, who told Ness he had his man. Ness apparently felt there was little chance of obtaining a successful prosecution of the doctor, especially as he was the first cousin of one of Ness's political opponents, Congressman Martin L. Sweeney, who had hounded Ness publicly about his failure to catch the killer. After Sweeney committed himself, there were no more leads or connections that police could assign to him as a possible suspect. From his hospital confinement, Sweeney sent threatening postcards and harassed Ness and his family into the 1950s and the postcards only stopped arriving after his death. Sweeney died in a veterans' hospital in Dayton on July 9, 1964. Sweeney was a viable suspect but the evidence was circumstantial and would have no bearing. He had a doctors office on the street where a man named Emil Fronek said a doctor tried to drug him in 1934. His story was discounted as he could not relocate the building with police the next day. Upon finding a victim with drugs in her system and looking through buildings it was found that Sweeney did have an office next to a coroner, in the area where Fronek had suggested he had been drugged. He would practice in their morgue and that would then create a clean and easy place to kill victims and not leave a mess due to the building being used to hold the dead anyways. Then the taunting postcards would make sense since only Ness knew what was going on, and irony that the last bodies were placed so he could see them from home and for the killer to prove they would not be caught.

In 1997, another theory postulated that there may have been no single Butcher of Kingsbury Run because the murders could have been committed by different people. This was based on the assumption that the autopsy results were inconclusive. First, Cuyahoga County Coroner Arthur J. Pearce may have been inconsistent in his analysis as to whether the cuts on the bodies were expert or slapdash. Second, his successor, Samuel Gerber, who began to enjoy press attention from his involvement in such cases as the Sam Sheppard murder trial, garnered a reputation for sensational theories. Therefore, the only thing known for certain was that all the murder victims were dismembered. Elliot Ness was said to have taken the identity of the killer's name to his grave.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_Torso_Murderer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliot_Ness

https://www.clevelandpolicemuseum.org/collections/torso-murders/

https://historyofyesterday.com/eliot-ness-pursuit-of-the-cleveland-torso-murderer-162c16469e32

https://www.ranker.com/list/cleveland-torso-murderer-facts/amandasedlakhevener

https://criminalminds.fandom.com/wiki/The_Mad_Butcher_of_Kingsbury_Run

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/632096/cleveland-torso-murderer-unsolved-serial-killer

Murder of Harvey and Jeannette Crewe

 The Murder of Harvey and Jeannette Crewe

David Harvey Crewe and Jeannette Lenore Crewe were a New Zealand farming couple who were shot to death in their home around 17 June 1970. The murders led to the wrongful conviction and subsequent pardoning of another farmer who lived nearby, Arthur Allan Thomas. A Royal Commission set up to investigate the miscarriage of justice found that a detective had fabricated evidence and placed it at the scene of the crime. No person was ever charged with planting the evidence, and the murders remain unsolved.

Background

Jeannette Crewe's father, Lenard M. Demler, was fined £10,000 for tax evasion in 1962, and had been forced to sell a half share in his farm to his wife in order to meet the liability. Jeanette married her husband, David Harvey Crewe (known as Harvey), in Auckland in 1966.

In 1970, the Crewes and their 18-month-old daughter lived on their farm at Pukekawa, Lower Waikato. Jeannette was afraid to be in the house without her husband after bizarre burglary and arson attacks, including one in which clothes were set on fire in a bedroom. At the time of her death, Jeannette was about to receive her mother's half-share in the Demler farm, which adjoined the Crewes'. The bequest to Jeannette had come about after Jeannette's sister had been cut from their mother's will, and Demler had removed Jeannette as a beneficiary of his own will in retaliation although she had no role in the original matter. Jeannette's mother had then re-written her will to bequeath to Jeannette the half-share in Demler's farm that he lived on.

Crime

Harvey (28), and Jeannette (30), were found to be missing from their bloodstained farmhouse on 22 June 1970 by Demler (died 4 November 1992), who had been asked to look in on them by an alarmed neighbour because they had not answered the telephone for days. The Crewes' 18-month-old daughter Rochelle was distraught in her cot. Demler left her alone while he went on a farm errand.  The Crewes had last been seen on 17 June, and milk, bread, and newspaper deliveries on the morning of 18 June had not been collected from the letterbox.

It was evident from the outset that something terrible had happened in the Crewe house.

Blood and bodily fluids stained the chair where Harvey usually sat and pooled on the carpet beneath and there was a long drag mark down the middle of the living room floor. The was also blood on the brickwork near the front steps and in the kitchen - on the linoleum floor, the cupboard doors, the hot water tap, on two saucepans.

Police knew they were looking at a homicide -but, with no trace of Harvey or Jeanette, it was hard to say whether it was a murder suicide, home invasion or something else.

The night of the murder Jeanette fed Rochelle and put her to bed, then served dinner - flounder, potatoes and peas. After eating Harvey then moved to his armchair and Jeanette to a sofa on his left. She was knitting - a jersey for her husband - when the killer confronted them.

Police believe Harvey was shot first from behind, by someone standing in the kitchen or just outside the open louvre window. The shot to the left side of his head, just above his ear, would have killed him instantly. The killer then advanced into the lounge.

"It is likely that Jeanette verbally challenged the offender in some way, possibly by screaming or shouting," police would later say. Jeanette was struck in the face and then at some point her head hit the front left corner of the hearth, which would have incapacitated her and left her lying prone on the carpet.

There, she was shot at close range in the right side of the head. The killer - or killers - then set about dragging the bodies out of front door, leaving Rochelle in her bedroom just metres from the exit.

The gory scene went unnoticed for five days despite a number of people coming and going from the Crewe property, including the delivery man and stock agents. As the search for the missing couple continued police spoke to neighbours, family, the community and people who thought they had seen the Crewes.

Neighbour Julie Priest - the wife of Owen who went to the house initially with Demler - told the cops she'd heard three gunshots on the 17th, probably after 8.30pm.

No medical opinion that an infant could survive without fluids for five days is supported by any verified case of such an occurrence. Although Rochelle had tissue loss, suggesting she had eaten little or nothing between 17 and 22 June, the degree to which she retained water during treatment indicated that she had not ingested fluids for at most 48 hours before she was found.

A witness Bruce Roddick told police that he had seen a woman unknown to him on the property on 19 June. This sighting has never been independently confirmed, nor has the woman ever been identified. This woman was observed to be in the Crewe house before the Crewes were reported missing. The Crewe baby Rochelle and the farm animals were fed by an unknown person.

The theory fast became that she was an accomplice to the killer and snuck back to the house to care for baby Rochelle.

Demler was the leading suspect due to his propinquity and failure to raise the alarm until prompted, apparent guilty knowledge that Rochelle did not require immediate medical attention, blood of Jeannette's type on his car seat, and a scratch on his neck. Police were also told that Demler probably had access to an unregistered .22 calibre weapon.

Demler's behaviour continued to raise suspicion; during police searches of the countryside for the Crewes, he shadowed on horseback without helping, and presciently suggested they would be found in water. However, the evidence against Demler was entirely circumstantial and he strongly denied any knowledge of what had happened to his daughter and her husband. He was also said to have an alibi for one of the arson incidents as he had been attending dinner with the Crewes when a fire was discovered.

Jeannette's body was found on 16 August, wrapped in a duvet bound with copper wire, in the Waikato River and her husband's body was retrieved upriver on 16 September.  A car axle linked to a neighbouring farmer, Arthur Allan Thomas, had apparently been used to weigh down Harvey's body and was central to police theories about the case, although it did not justify a prosecution..

This is where the case takes a bizarre turn.

The axle used to weigh Harvey down was then identified as being a 1928 Nash Standard Six 420 series front axle that had formerly been fitted to a trailer made in 1959 and eventually on-sold to Thomas' father, Allan.

Police ascertained that in 1965 the axle was removed from the trailer in the course of upgrading it for Thomas himself.

The Nash axle was returned to Thomas' brother Richard, who took it back to the family farm on Mercer Rd, Pukekawa.

Thomas was spoken to repeatedly by police about the axle and his association with the Crewes.

However the axle remains a controversial piece of evdeicne becuase of how it was found and connected back to Thomas.

The next visit to the Thomas farm was made by Det Johnston and Det Parkes on 20 Oct 1970. Det Parkes said that he had earlier been instructed to pick up the Thomas rifle, and that he understood Det Johnston was concerned to pick up wire samples.

Insp Parkes gave evidence that they collected their wire samples and that Det Johnston then borrowed a spade and began foraging around on the tip. He said that, of three tips on the farm, Det Johnston was concerned to search only one. After only a few minutes, to use Insp Parkes' words, 'Det Johnston located 2 stub axles. One was probably partly uncovered, but the other was buried.' Insp Parkes said that Mr Johnston knew what they were, and seemed quite excited by his find.

He did not search the tip any further that day. Insp Parkes very fairly agreed that it was an extraordinary piece of luck that the 2 stub axles, which were to become such significant exhibits, just fell into Det Johnston’s hands. We can only agree, particularly having regard to the fact that he had already searched the tip 5 days before. We find the circumstances in which the stub axles were located peculiar in the extreme.

it is most unfortunate that Det Johnston is dead and was not able to give evidence before the Commission. We are very conscious, that, had he been here to give evidence, he may have been able to put forward a proper and innocent explanation of matters such as the finding of the stub axles from which the most serious of inferences can on the face of it be drawn.

The significance of the stub axles is that they matched either end of the axle recovered with Mr Crewe's body. On the right hand end, the stub axle had been removed by cutting the stub axle eye with the kingpin still in place, the kingpin remaining attached to the axle beam. The 2 halves of the eye, one on the stub axle and the other on the axle beam, matched exactly. On the left hand end, a weld on the upper part of the axle beam assembly matched a weld on the stub axle.

It follows that both stub axles found on Mr Thomas's tip had clearly been connected at one stage with the axle found on Mr Harvey Crewe's body. The inference which the Crown invited the jury to draw at the second trial was that both stub axles and the axle itself had been placed on the Thomas tip following their return to the farm after the conversion by Mr Rasmussen, and that the murderer had used the axle only to weight Mr Harvey Crewe's body, leaving the 2 stub axles on the tip to be found by the Police on 20 Oct 1970.

We have had the benefit of considerably more evidence on the axle than was put before the jury at the second trial. We have been particularly fortunate in obtaining the expert evidence of Professor NA Mowbray. In our view, the inference which the Crown sought to draw at the second trial is not justified when one considers the whole of the evidence which is now available. We take this view because of the following factors:

The circumstances in which the stub axles were found are so peculiar as to call for an explanation. This the Police are unable to provide, because of Mr Johnston's death. We expressly do not make a finding of impropriety or even suggest that one is appropriate, but we do say that an explanation is called for in the light of the following matters:

Det Johnston was first shown the tip on 13 Oct by Mr AA Thomas, who told him that motor vehicle parts were dumped there. Mr Thomas would in our view not have been so open about the matter, and so co-operative with the Police, had he been the murderer and had taken the axle from the tip a few months earlier.

Det Johnston searched the tip for trailer parts on 15 Oct 1970 without finding the stub axles.

The stub axles fell into Det Johnston's hands on 20 Oct 1970 with extraordinary ease.

(d) No witness was able to identify the axle itself as the axle which Mr Shirtcliffe put into the trailer which he built. The following matters suggest that it was perhaps not the same axle:

Mr Shirtcliffe has consistently denied welding the axle. If the axle found on the Crewe body is the one on which he had worked, then the tie rod which he bolted on to it must have been welded at a later stage. Mr Whyte denies of course that any welding was done while he owned the trailer and Mr Thomas says that only the left hand studs were welded. If the axle did come from the Thomas trailer therefore, it would appear that welding work was carried out after it was removed from the trailer. Such work implies further use of the axle after it left Mr Thomas's possession, and is consistent with the further wear on the right hand stub axle which we have already mentioned.

Furthermore, welding has also been carried out at either end of the axle beam, to affix it to the stub axles on either side. It would appear that this welding, also, was not carried out while the trailer was in the possession of Mr Shirtcliffe, Mr Whyte, or Mr Thomas. To summarise the matter, this evidence suggests either that the axle beam and the 2 stub axles were used by some person after they left Mr Thomas's possession, or alternatively that neither the axle nor the right stub came from the trailer which Mr Thomas owned.

Mr RA Closey, a vintage motor cycle enthusiast, gave evidence of searching the Thomas farm in company with a group of likeminded persons about 3 months prior to the time the murders occurred, namely in March 1970. Despite searching the tip area closely, they located nothing but model 'T' parts. They did not use a spade and so did not investigate what may have been under the surface of the tips. We have evidence from Mr Parkes, however, that at least 1 of the stub axles was partly visible in Oct. The Closey evidence is not conclusive, but does tend to suggest that the axles and stub axles were not on the tip in March 1970. This confirms Peter Thomas's statement.

Investigation and trials

Both victims had been shot to death with a .22 calibre firearm; Jeannette had broken facial bones from being struck with a blunt instrument. Demler had been considered the main suspect, but the brutality of the assault on Jeannette, and the lead investigator's belief that she had been raped, led to doubts that he was involved. On the basis that the murderer might have used a legitimately held gun, police collected and test fired sixty-four registered .22 firearms, 3% of the total recorded as held in the Pukekawa area. A forensic report on 19 August stated that, of the sixty-four, neither Thomas' rifle nor one owned by the Eyre family could be eliminated as the possible murder weapon, but there was insufficient evidence pointing to one or the other. Although police suggested to Thomas during an interview that his rifle was used to kill the Crewes, the gun was returned to him on 8 September. On 27 October, the garden at the Crewe house was searched for a third time and a spent cartridge case was found, apparently still lying where the murderer had left it. The case carried marks which showed that it had been ejected from Thomas' rifle.  In November, Thomas was arrested and charged.

Despite his wife and cousin giving him a strong alibi for 17 June, Thomas was sent for trial on a charge of murdering the Crewes. The prosecution suggested Thomas's wife, Vivien, had been the woman seen at the Crewes' house, although she was not charged. The witness was certain Vivien Thomas, whom he knew, was not the woman who he saw. The prosecution said that the motive for the murders was that Thomas had been obsessed with Jeannette, an accusation for which they provided very little evidence. A witness who did give testimony supporting the prosecution's contention that Jeannette had been pestered by Thomas was Demler; he was cross examined about why he had not mentioned such obviously relevant information before the court had begun sitting. Thomas was found guilty of the murders in a 1971 trial, but the conviction was overturned on appeal. He was tried again in 1973 and convicted. Supporters of Thomas started a campaign to bring to public attention that the key evidence against him had serious anomalies.

Arthur Allan Thomas

Arthur Allan Thomas is a New Zealand man who was granted a Royal Pardon and compensation after being wrongfully convicted of the murders of Harvey and Jeannette Crewe in June 1970. Thomas was married and farming a property in the Pukekawa district, south of Auckland before the case. Following the revelation that the crucial evidence against him had been faked, Thomas was pardoned and awarded NZ$950,000 in compensation for his 9 years in prison and loss of earnings.

Campaign to overturn the convictions

There were numerous inconsistencies in the evidence, which led to an outcry among elements in the farming community and among relatives of Thomas and his wife, Vivien Thomas. That led to the formation of the Arthur Thomas Retrial Committee.

The report by a retired judge, Sir George MacGregor, which rejected the appeal for a retrial, was also riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies. However, a report on that by journalist Terry Bell, then deputy editor of the Auckland Star Saturday edition, was rejected for publication on the grounds that "it is not the role of the newspapers to attempt to try the courts". Bell then resigned and produced the booklet Bitter Hill, which is the English meaning of Pukekawa, outlining inconsistencies in the prosecution's case and the theory advanced by the retrial committee. It provided the impetus for a national campaign that eventually led to a controversial retrial where the jury was housed incommunicado with police in a local hotel. Thomas was again convicted.

Pat Booth, the assistant editor of the Auckland Star, attended the retrial and became concerned. As part of the campaign for a pardon, Booth wrote a book, Trial by Ambush. That was followed by another campaigning book, Beyond Reasonable Doubt, by British investigative author David Yallop, which was subsequently made into a film of the same name.

Thomas received a pardon, and a Royal Commission report explicitly stated that detectives had used ammunition and a rifle taken from his farm to fabricate false evidence against him. A 2014 police review of the case acknowledged police misconduct was probably the explanation for the key evidence against Thomas: a spent cartridge case.

Royal Commission of inquiry

A Royal Commission of Inquiry was established, headed by retired New South Wales Justice Robert Taylor. It declared Thomas to have been wrongfully charged and convicted and found that among other improprieties, police had planted a .22 rifle cartridge case in the garden of the house in which the murders were committed. The case was found four months and ten days after the area had already been subjected to one of the most intensive police searches ever undertaken. The cartridge case was said to have come from a rifle belonging to Thomas. However, the police tested only 64 rifles in an area where this weapon was common and found that two, including the one belonging to Thomas – could have fired the cartridge case found in the garden. That was the link to the deaths of the Crewes although it was later admitted that the case was "clean" and uncorroded when it was found. As such, the condition of the case was inconsistent with having lain in the garden, exposed to weather and dirt for more than four months.

No action against police officers

The commission report said: "Mr Hutton and Mr [Len] Johnston planted the shell case... and they did so to manufacture evidence that Mr Thomas' rifle had been used for the killings." The Solicitor-General recommended against prosecuting the officers because of insufficient evidence. An independent review of the 2014 police review by David PH Jones QC, released on 30 July 2014, concluded "In my view, there was sufficient evidence for a prosecution to have been taken against Bruce Hutton based on the available material".

Subsequent events

In 2009 Arthur Allan Thomas travelled to Christchurch to support David Bain, who also had criminal convictions against him overturned. In 2010 he collaborated with investigative journalist Ian Wishart on the book Arthur Allan Thomas, where for the first time he gave his perspective on his life, from before the murders to the present.

The two detectives who planted the shell that helped convict Thomas are now dead. Johnston died in 1978. Bruce Hutton, 83, died in Middlemore Hospital in April 2013. At Hutton's funeral, Deputy Commissioner Mike Bush praised Mr Hutton and said he was known for having "integrity beyond reproach". An editorial in the New Zealand Herald said: "that was clearly absurd. It was also an unthinking or calculated insult to Mr Thomas, who spent nine years in prison before being pardoned". Thomas, then age 75, responded by saying the police were engaged in "a blatant cover up". A police review of the original investigation, at a cost of $400,000 to New Zealand taxpayers, released in July 2014, cleared all other suspects and implied that Arthur Thomas remained a police suspect. The independent review by David PH Jones QC concluded that "It does not appear that there was any real inquiry by the 1970 investigation team into any persons other than Arthur Thomas".

Rape and sexual assault trial

In late 2019 Thomas, then aged 81, faced one charge of rape and four of indecent assault against two women. He previously pleaded not guilty and elected trial by jury. His case was called at Manukau District Court, where he was excused from attending; Judge Charles Blackie lifted suppression orders that previously prevented the media from reporting anything about the case. On 15 December 2020 at Papakura District Court, Thomas's lawyers asked that the charges be dismissed. Judge John Bergseng suppressed argument details of the hearing out of fair trial interests.

The trial opened 14 June 2021 at Manukau District Court, with Aaron Perkins for the Crown and Marie Dyhrberg, QC, for the defence. Judge Jon Bergseng presided. Thomas was now aged 83. One complainant alleged she was raped and indecently assaulted; the other alleged she was indecently assaulted three times. Both witnesses said there were others present when some of the alleged offending took place. A third witness claimed Thomas had encouraged him to participate in the alleged acts. Full trial details were heavily suppressed. The Defence claimed the charges were fabricated and motivated by money. Thomas's former solicitor, Chris Reid, told the court he organised a legal meeting on behalf of Thomas with the complainants and their husbands. Among those present were Reid's cousin, Thomas's then-lawyer Peter Williams, and former prime minister David Lange. Reid testified that the complainants made demands for Thomas pay them money: "If he didn't, they were going to complain to the police about sexual abuse of one sort or another."

Reid said Williams told the complainants the meeting had to take place according to law, the threat could have constituted extortion, and recommended the complainants get independent legal advice. According to Reid, Lange also advised the complainants to go to the police. Three other witnesses testified for the Defence, including Thomas's second wife. Thomas himself did not testify. In her closing address, Dyhrberg called the man's testimony "the stuff of fantasy"; he himself could not rely upon his own memory. She said the two women had not told the truth, and "it's gotten out of control". In his closing address, Perkins said, “It is far-fetched in the extreme that two women would come along and commit perjury." In summing up, Judge Bergseng told the jury that each charge must be considered separately, with a focus on the evidence specific to each one. But caution was required because the passage of time meant memories of some witnesses may have faded, making it impossible to check some of the witnesses' testimony, and also causing Thomas to lose "the ability to call witnesses who could support his defence". The jury failed to reach a verdict and was discharged on 28 June 2021.

On 14 October 2021 Crown Prosecutor Charlie Piho told the Manukau District Court the Crown wished to continue with the prosecution. Judge Mina Wharepouri set a trial date for November 2022.

Campaign, pardon and Royal Commission

A campaign, led in part by Pat Booth of the Auckland Star, was largely responsible for getting Thomas released with a pardon. Campaigners said forensic work by Dr Jim Sprott had shown that the cartridge case had been planted at the scene and that its method of construction identified it as being from a batch that could not have contained the number 8 bullets recovered from the victims. Following David Yallop's book about the case, Beyond Reasonable Doubt, Thomas was pardoned by Governor-General Keith Holyoake on the recommendation of Prime Minister Robert Muldoon. Thomas was released after serving nine years in prison. He was paid NZ$950,000 compensation for his time in jail and loss of the use of his farm.

A Royal Commission of Inquiry was ordered to review the wrongful conviction of Thomas and reported to the Governor-General in November 1980.

The Commissioners found that the spent cartridge case from Thomas' gun, Exhibit 350, had not been left by the murderer, but had been created weeks later by police using his impounded gun and ammunition, then planted at the Crewe farmhouse. The Commission's report implicated Detective Inspector Bruce Hutton and Detective Sergeant Lenrick Johnston in police misconduct, and found that the prosecution of Thomas for the murders had been unjustified. Despite the Commission describing the conduct of Hutton and Johnston as an "unspeakable outrage", the New Zealand Police never laid charges against any officer involved in the investigation and prosecution of Thomas. Johnston died in 1978. Hutton died in 2013. The case was made into the docu-drama feature film Beyond Reasonable Doubt in 1980.

There was however one final O-henry twist in this case that came completely out of nowhere and a second suspicious death took place.

One of New Zealand’s richest men has been named as a possible suspect in the 1970 Crewe murders that saw Pukekawa farmer Arthur Allan Thomas convicted but later pardoned for – and in another shock development the lead detective on the case has been implicated as the man who married – then murdered – the woman who fed baby Rochelle Crewe

Saturday’s New Zealand Herald carries the story of “a Scrooge” who gave his $122 million fortune to the Catholic Church because of a long-standing grudge against his stepchildren. What few knew is that the “Scrooge” in question – the late Harold Plumley – was once named as a potential suspect in the Crewe murders, and his brother-in-law was none other than Detective Inspector Bruce Hutton, the police officer who locked up Arthur Allan Thomas using planted evidence to get the conviction.

In a nutshell, the Plumley family had farmed land around Mangere for generations, but as a young man Harold Plumley ended up disinherited of virtually everything except a few paddocks left to him in East Tamaki by his mother, while his sister Mary Plumley inherited virtually all of the family estate.

Harold Plumley eked out a living in the Pukekawa district selling agricultural equipment to farmers. At the same time, his wealthy sister Mary was capturing the eye of married Otahuhu police officer Bruce Hutton.

Former colleagues of Harold Plumley approached Investigate magazine more than a decade ago with bombshell allegations that Plumley had been sexually rebuffed by a Pukekawa woman he referred to as “Gee-net”, and that he was going to “get her”.

That conversation took place some months BEFORE Jeannette and Harvey Crewe’s bloodstained home was found empty in June 1970 except for baby Rochelle in her cot.

As the witnesses tell the story, they speculate that Harold Plumley may have killed the Crewes but his strong sense of Catholic guilt wouldn’t allow him to kill the child. Instead, sister Mary Plumley was roped in to feed baby Rochelle – while she was dating Bruce Hutton.

Investigate magazine was contacted by an anonymous source who claimed they had some very interesting information to share on the condition that their identity remain confidential as they still feared of their life and repercussions

“I have had information since 1970 that I have been far too frightened to release. I made an effort to inform the Police in 1970 and spoke to a Sergeant Johnston (I shall never forget his name) and outlined what I knew about some people that should be interviewed. Imagine my surprise when he went right off the rails and told me that if I ever rang the Police with that information again or made any attempt to have it made known, then I would be the next bastard found in the river. Further, now he had my name and I was to shut my bloody mouth forever over this matter.

“Sergeant Johnston is now dead, however, with the information that I have I am still a threat because all of his buddies are not dead. The main threat is Bruce Hutton and what I believe I know about him could see him jailed for the rest of his miserable life.

“I approached Mr [John] Carter our local MP about 18 months ago [around the end of 2006 or start of 2007] and he has been made aware of a snippet of my information. It was enough for him to send me the name of a certain Police District Commander, however I will not devolve [sic, divulge] any information unless I am 100% assured that anything I disclose will be given absolute confidentiality and my name, etc, is to also be 100% confidential. Something I was not given by the Police Commander at the time.

“I still have genuine concerns for my safety.”

The witness says he came to know Plumley, and his blonde-haired sister, through their mutual work in the farming sector covering the greater South Auckland and North Waikato areas. At one of their meetings, the man named as a new person of interest in the Harvey and Jeannette Crewe homicide investigation confided “about how the farmers’ wives often made advances towards him when their husbands were out working on the farms when he called, and [he] seemed happy to be able to talk or boast about this.

“However, on one of my last visits, he was very agitated over some woman by the name I thought sounded like ‘Gee-net’ – he pronounced it as Gee-net – who was not happy with him for some unknown reason and had evidently threatened to tell her husband about that matter.

“This obviously had infuriated Plumley as he stated that a woman like her could ruin his business and his reputation, and if it became public it would cause further alienation of his relations (that I had already sensed were not great) between himself and his family, and he wouldn’t let that happen. Plumley went on to mention that he would finally ‘get her’ – I presumed from past discussions that he meant he would win her over. However, at this time it was no concern of mine and it appeared to me he was letting this matter consume him, and the rejection of his advances (whatever they may have been) were definitely not appreciated.”

The witness described Harold Plumley as a man quick to anger, with “a very vehement nature” and prone to “violent, verbal” outbursts – although surprisingly he never swore.

“Although he discussed his farm meetings and meeting farmers’ wives openly to me, I cannot recall him swearing and can’t remember him doing so during any of his conversations with me, and I thought that was rather odd at the time given the nature of his ramblings.”

The witness said he paid no further attention to the man’s exploits, until Jeannette and Harvey Crewe were found to have been murdered at their farm in June 1970, a little while later.

“However, I was more than surprised to learn that Arthur Allan Thomas had been charged with the murders. I had met briefly with Mr Thomas on two occasions, once…in Warkworth when I visited a neighbour of his [father’s] and once when I called at his farm… On each of these meetings, although brief, I found Mr Thomas to be an extremely polite and quietly spoken man, and if anything a little naïve, but in no way would I have ever expected him to be a man capable of murder.

“As the information started to roll in over this case it was public knowledge that a blonde woman was seen at the Crewe’s house, and it was openly reported that she had possibly been the person who fed the baby Rochelle.

“Who was she? This has been one of the most-asked questions and one of the conundrums of this most infamous murder mystery. The 18 month old baby was found in her cot at the Crewe’s farm, and there was evidence that she had been fed and had had her nappies changed during that time.

“Harold Plumley’s comment to me about a woman named Gee-net threatening to tell her husband about some matter…came chillingly back to me, especially due to the fact I had seen [his] previous violent verbal outbursts.”

The man’s sister, a woman who doted on her brother despite his status as “black sheep” of the family, was fair haired. The witness, who knew her personally as well, has exceptionally good reason to believe the woman agreed to help her brother after the fact, because of the shame it would bring to their prominent family name. He believes the sister was undoubtedly the woman who fed baby Rochelle Crewe, and who has never been identified by police, at least publicly.

“Having thought about this matter,” the witness said, “I then phoned the police. I asked to speak to the senior officer in charge…and I relayed my suspicions to him and the names I had.

“Instead of showing any interest, I was shouted at over the phone – told ‘never to ring the f**king police again about this matter, and if you do you’ll be the next f**king person to be found in the river!’.

“I was also told that the police knew who the murderer was and to ‘butt out completely, or else!’.

Because of this the witness claimed he was shit scared to say or do anything more. Which is why it took him 38 years to come forward with the information.

Now we come to the second very suspicious death that has never been properly explained or investigated.

Detective Inspector Bruce Hutton married Mary Plumley, the woman the witness speculates fed baby Rochelle, putting him within a heartbeat of the Plumley family millions if she died.

Serendipitously, on 15 February 1985, that moment arrived.

Mary and Bruce Hutton were visiting close friends in Whitianga, one of whom was her doctor. Mary advised she was going inside to wash sea salt out of her hair.

A while later, Bruce Hutton told the inquest, the doctor’s wife, Anne Kellaway, found 53 year old Mary naked and unresponsive, curled up in a bath with only 1 ½ inches (4cm) of water in it. The plug was in, the tap was turned off.

Who runs a 4cm deep bath to wash their hair? It’s a question that has never been credibly answered.

Bruce Hutton told the coroner, “Gavin and I ran inside and found Mary curled up in the bath. We got her out and Gavin started external massage and I did the mouth to mouth. It was no use as she had already gone.”

Her family doctor – Gavin Kellaway – pointedly provided absolutely no evidence to the coroner’s inquest beyond his signature on the 15/2/85 death certificate where he stated he had last seen Mary alive at 14.20 that afternoon and she was in “good health”. There was no witness statement corroborating Hutton’s version of events, describing the scene they found or the resuscitation efforts. Nothing. Nor was there a witness statement from Ann Kellaway – purportedly the woman who discovered the body.

Which to me is bizarre you have all the witnesses who were there at the time this women died under extremely bizarre and mysterious circumstances and there are no statements made?

Perhaps his evidential silence was deliberate, given what we now know. Better to say nothing than lie on oath. And after all, who could Kellaway have turned to? The Police? Bruce Hutton was “the Police” – a man so revered that police commissioner Mike Bush was still singing Hutton’s praises at his 2013 funeral.

A Waikato Hospital pathologist was the only medic to testify, ruling Mary had suffered a heart attack, loss of consciousness and drowned, even though the autopsy found no water in the lungs to corroborate the “drowning” in an inch of water claim.

Again, who climbs into a 4cm deep bath, turns off the tap, assumes the foetal position, THEN drowns, simultaneously causing a myocardial ischaemic event, yet without inhaling water?

The autopsy found “no external evidence of violence or external injury”. That’s odd, because if a naked woman was genuinely standing in an inch of bath water and keeled over with a heart attack you would expect the falling body to collide with taps or the side of the bath on the way down. Yet there was not a mark on her.

Bruce Hutton was the sole heir of Mary’s fortune – around $10 million in today’s money.

One man who wasn’t buying the death by drowning claim was Harold Plumley

“He killed her,” he claimed, “to get his hands on the money..he manipulated the Will, he was only after her coin”.

Intriguingly, the majority of bath electrocutions leave no visible marks, and pathologists have difficulty distinguishing them from ordinary heart attacks.

Yet inexplicably, the implausibility of “drowning” in 4cm of water, even though the lungs were found to be “dry”, doesn’t seem to have crossed the mind of the pathologist examining Mary Hutton’s body. Nor does the heart damage she found that is now regarded as a biomarker of electrocution.

But then again, they didn’t know as much back in 1985 and neither the family doctor whose home the tragedy occurred at, nor Mary’s former police officer husband, mentioned anything about a hairdryer or a heater being found in the bath, so the pathologist had no reason to suspect foul play.

Why wasn’t there a police investigation? Well maybe there was. Arthur Allan Thomas’ brother Des stated in 2008 that a Pukekohe man who he knew had contacted him at one point to tell him Bruce Hutton had killed Mary Plumley Hutton:

“He rang me up once and told me that Hutton had thrown an electric heater in her bath…this fella that told me, he’s got cops that he’s friendly with and they told him.”

Des Thomas says he told TVNZ’s Sunday programme of the Hutton allegations but nothing eventuated.

In a 2008 phone interview, Harold Plumley stated that he and Bruce Hutton had “antagonism” toward each other caused by Hutton’s relationship with Mary, and he believed that was why police had never questioned him about the Crewe murders.

“I didn’t have anything to do with it, didn’t know them, although I did drive past their farm every day at the time – still do occasionally – because of my work as a farm consultant.” In a later phone interview, despite initially saying he didn’t know them, Plumley would emphatically describe Harvey Crewe as “just a bum…no money..a pipsqueak cattle agent who married into money”, and when asked if the Crewe farm was dairy or dry stock, his answer was instant: “dry stock”.

But Plumley’s next revelation was earthshattering. “I know what led to Mary and Hutton going away to that break in Whitianga – our father told me after her death.

“He said that four days beforehand, Mary came to him and said ‘I’m very worried’. Dad explained that she and Hutton had been really rowing. Father said she told him ‘it’s got to end! It’s got to end, and when I come back I’m going to the lawyers. I’ve got to get rid of him, I’ve got to get him out!’ That is absolutely clear cut, that I’ve given you, gospel truth,” Plumley told Investigate.

So here’s the lie of the land: days before her mysterious “drowning” in just over one inch of bathwater, wealthy heiress Mary Plumley Hutton told her father she was planning to divorce former Detective Inspector Bruce Hutton.

She never got to see her lawyer, and she never survived the weekend getaway where she planned to thrash things out.

Which I find extremely interesting that she died under such odd circumstances and its not prolly looked into. The money motive is what strikes me as being the reason she died because had she divorced him he would have lost the money but if she dies and its ruled anything other than murder or manslaughter he’d get the money no questions asked provided he wasn’t accused or suspected in her murder.

Plumley says he tried to talk to Mary’s Fijian maid Miriana after the death, but found himself hauled in for questioning by Otahuhu CIB for “harassment”.

“I really gave [Det] Mitford Burgess a lashing in front of the whole CIB,” Plumley recalled, “but that’s what happened – Hutton found out I was asking questions and suddenly the police were investigating me”.

Again being a cop and one that was highly respected gave Hutton an advantage. This is why I believe he was never poly looked into becuase no one wanted to think top cop was a killer or thought he would be capable of being one.

Plumley got the last laugh, however. While Hutton inherited Mary Plumley’s estate (worth around $10m in today’s money) left to her by her father, Harold Plumley’s paddock in Ormiston Rd East Tamaki, given him by his mother, was sold to Lion Breweries for $66 million in 2007 as the site of its NZ headquarters. By the time he died in 2016, Plumley’s fortune had ballooned to $122 million which he bequeathed to the Catholic church in NZ’s biggest ever charitable donation.

Do I believe Harold Plumley killed the Crewes? Although Plumley’s former colleague believed it, and Plumley knew more about the Crewes than he originally let on, there’s insufficient evidence.

As for Detective Inspector Bruce Hutton, the top cop who conspired to plant evidence to gain a conviction in the Crewe murders, the man of whom police bosses famously remarked at his 2013 funeral “his integrity is beyond reproach” – a new stain now clouds his legacy: did he murder his own wife to seize her fortune?

Status of the case

In 2014 an official police review of the investigation into the homicides, at a cost of $400,000 to New Zealand taxpayers, said that evidence available in the murder of the Crewes was insufficient for any new prosecution. The review acknowledged that a key prosecution exhibit in the trials had been fabricated by detectives, but did not appear to accept that they could have been on the wrong track; the review implied that the Crewes' daughter had not ingested any fluids between 17 and 22 June, and said a witness had been mistaken in thinking he had seen a woman on the farm during that period. The review did however rule out Demler having been the killer. Rochelle Crewe expressed satisfaction that a police review of evidence had cleared her deceased grandfather of involvement in the murders. The case remains unsolved.

The Crewe murders continue to divide the district into two feuding camps without apparent closure. Pukekawa water supply contractor, Des Thomas, brother of Arthur, continues to investigate for the murders a local man, "farmer X". The release in July 2014 of a police report on the murders cleared suspects the late Len Demler (father of Jeannette) and his second wife after the murders, Norma Demler. The report implied Arthur Thomas remains a suspect to the police. The police report also said the cartridge case that incriminated Arthur Thomas may have been "fabricated evidence". The murder house is still occupied.

In 2010 Rochelle Crewe, then in her 40s, contacted police and raised concerns about the initial investigation, asking what if any further investigative action had been taken after Thomas was pardoned to identify the person who gunned down her parents.

She also demanded answers around why evidence-planting cops Hutton and Johnston had not been prosecuted.

In 2014, after almost four years of work, the review team released their final report to the public.

They said no new evidence had come to light to implicate any specific person as being responsible for the double murder, or provided a basis for initiating further inquiries.

Though the review team could not pin the blame on anyone, they said the killer was someone who had access to items from the Thomas farm and they were firm on the fact that Thomas' firearm was most likely to have fired the fatal bullets.

But a re-investigation was "not warranted”.

Police also acknowledged shortcomings in the murder investigation and, for the first time, admitted that officers fabricated evidence against Thomas.

Though they felt the 1970 police investigation team did a lot of things correctly, it was also conceded there were numerous balls dropped, including failing to corroborate some alibis, follow up on vehicle sightings, secure crime scene exhibits and evidence and investigate people of interest connected to the Thomas farm.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Harvey_and_Jeannette_Crewe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pukekawa#The_Eyre_Murder

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Allan_Thomas

http://netk.net.au/NewZealand/Thomas8.asp

https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/7881051/the-woman-who-fed-the-baby-crewe-murders

https://investigatemagazine.co.nz/173611/shock-new-twist-in-crewe-murders-cold-case-was-top-cop-bruce-hutton-a-killer/

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/crewe-cold-case-fifty-years-and-no-answers-in-infamous-pukekawa-whodunnit/WR65KZTZY4XDCUF23WOVYPA3Y4/

https://investigatemagazine.co.nz/173611/shock-new-twist-in-crewe-murders-cold-case-was-top-cop-bruce-hutton-a-killer/

The Circleville Writer

 the Circleville letter writer

Since 1976, the small town of Circleville, Ohio has been plagued by a mystery that has yet to be solved – a series of anonymous letters sent to Circleville residents claiming to know their deepest, darkest secrets and threatening to expose them to the town. These letters sent shockwaves through the town and ignited a series of events that would result in accusations of murder, adultery, and other bizarre happenings.

The Bus Driver & the Superintendent

On March 3, 1977, a letter arrived at Westfall High School addressed to school superintendent Gordon Massie. The letter was hand written in a distinctive block letter style and accused Massie of having an affair with a married school bus driver in Circleville. The writer told Massie to confess his affairs to the school board. The very next day, the writer sent a letter to the Westfall School Board telling them about Massie’s affair with one of the drivers. These letters, as well as all of the Circleville letters, were postmarked Columbus, Ohio, which is about 25 miles north of Circleville.

The main target of the writer’s harassment would turn out to be one of these bus drivers, Mary Gillispie. Near the start of the letter writer’s campaign of harassment, Mary Gillispie found a handwritten letter in her mailbox accusing her of having an affair with Gordon Massie. In this first letter, the writer claimed they had been “observing [Mary] and her children” and stated that “everyone concerned had been notified and everything will be over soon.” At this point, Mary shared the letter with her husband, Ron Gillispie, but denied she was having an affair with Gordon Massie.

A short time later in March 1977, Ron received another letter–this one telling him that he needed to admit that his wife was having an affair with Massie. The letter told him to inform the Westfall school board of the affair and said that, if he did not, he would be killed. Once again, the Gillispies kept this letter quiet. Two weeks later, another letter was sent to the Gillispies; once again, the writer addressed Ron, telling him: “you have had 2 weeks and done nothing. Make [Mary] admit the truth and inform the school board.” At this point, both Mary and Ron had received letters threatening them and their children if Mary didn’t admit to the affair with Gordon Massie. In addition to the letters, there were also phone calls to the Gillispie home and offensive signs posted along Mary’s bus route; many of these signs made offensive/explicit references to the Gillispie’s young daughter.

From the beginning, Mary suspected the letters were being sent by David Longberry, a fellow bus driver who had expressed romantic interest in her and whom she had rejected. Determined to get to the bottom of who was writing the letters, Mary and Ron reached out to Ron’s sister, Karen Freshour, and her husband, Paul. Paul’s sister was also told about the letters, but at this time, no one else knew about them. Since Mary believed David Longberry was the writer, the five of them (the Gillispies, the Freshour, and Paul’s sister) decided to write their own letter to David, telling him they knew he was the writer. The letters stopped for a few weeks, so they thought they had identified the writer and put a stop to the letters. But a few weeks later, the letters resumed and a tragedy occured.

An Accident–or Murder?

On August 19, 1977, Ron received a phone call at home that enraged him. He told his daughter that the call was from the letter writer, and he got his gun, ran to his truck, and drove off into the night. What was said on the phone will never be known as only Ron knew who was on the other end we also don’t know what happened to Ron after he left or where he went.

From here the mystery takes a sinister turn Ron Gillispie’s truck was found at 10:35pm that night crashed into a tree with Ron’s body inside; he had died of major internal injuries. How this crash was caused remains a mystery and has never been explained.

Many Circleville residents believed that Ron’s death was not an accident–it was murder. After all, the letter writer had threatened Ron’s life if he didn’t expose his wife’s affair. In particular, Ron’s brother-in-law, Paul Freshour, believed that Ron had been murdered after uncovering the identity of the letter writer.

There were essentially two pieces of evidence that supported the murder theory:

Ron was not a heavy drinker, but his blood alcohol level was 1.5x the acceptable amount.however his family told police he hadn’t drunk any alcohol that day so when he had a drink and where remains unknown.

Ron’s gun was found under his body, and it appeared that one round had been fired sometime between when he left his house and his body was found. What he shot at or when the gun was fired has never been ascertained. This only depend the mystery.

The sheriff at the time, Dwight Radcliff, originally suspected foul play was involved in Ron’s death and there was even a person of interest in the case who was interviewed and given a polygraph test (which they passed; the person of interest has never publicly been identified). But after the coroner, Dr. Ray Caroll, examined the body, and found the high blood alcohol level, Sheriff Radcliff changed his mind and believed Ron’s death was an accident caused by drunk driving.

This did not sit well with Ron’s family and friends. They pointed out that he was not a big drinker and had not consumed alcohol on the day of his death. This turn of events also displeased the Circleville Writer, who sent a letter after Ron’s death accusing Sheriff Dwight Radcliff of covering up the crime.

After Ron’s death, the harassment continued, with letters being sent not just to Mary, but to citizens around town, to the newspaper, to local businesses, to schools–-basically to everyone in Circleville.

But apparently Sheriff Radcliff had motivation to cover up a possible murder as he was running for President of the National Sheriff’s Association, and a town plagued by not only an unhinged letter writer, but one who had turned to murder, wouldn’t be a good look for the President of this organization. The letter writer was also frustrated by the lack of investigation into the case and wrote letters claiming that Sheriff Radcliff was covering up the truth of Ron’s death. Letters also accused Dr. Caroll, the coroner, of sexual abuse of young children.

Other residents were scared since the letter writer seemed completely unhinged and knew details of their lives that a stranger should have no way of knowing. Meanwhile, Paul Freshour continued to insist that Ron had been murdered and even filed a report requesting that the FBI investigate Ron’s death.

And though Mary had always denied having an affair with Gordon Massie while her husband was alive, after his death, she and Massie did begin a romantic relationship. At this point, the threats against her became more vicious, including explicit threats against Mary’s daughter.

A Break in the Case

On February 7, 1983, Mary was driving her school bus near Five Points Pike, when she saw a sign posted along a nearby fence. The sign was handwritten and included an obscene message about Mary’s 12 year-old daughter. Mary pulled over and attempted to remove the sign, but when she pulled on it, she saw that it was attached to a box with some twine. Mary decided to take the box home, and when she opened it she found a gun inside. Mary brought the box to the sheriff’s office, who determined the box was a booby trap that had been designed to fire the gun when the sign was pulled down. For some reason, the booby trap did not trigger when Mary removed the sign.

This booby trap became the first real break in the case, An amateurish attempt was made to rub off the serial number on the gun. When lab tests were able to raise the number, it was determined that the gun had belonged to Paul Freshour, who had recently separated from Ron's sister. Paul admitted the gun was his, but claimed it had gone missing weeks before, and denied setting the trap; he had also not reported the gun missing prior to this, so there was no evidence to support his claim.

The sheriff’s office then told Paul to copy one of the Circleville letters and try to emulate the handwriting of the letter–a practice that is very much not proper procedure when comparing handwriting. Usually, the suspect is asked to write a sample in his own handwriting, not to attempt to copy the handwriting. In addition to the handwriting sample, Paul Freshour failed a polygraph test and his ex-wife, Karen, told police he was behind the letters to Mary. Karen was the first to link Paul to the letters.

But, as with everything with this case, there’s more to the story. Karen and Paul had recently gone through an acrimonious divorce after Karen cheated on Paul. Paul was awarded custody of their three children and Karen ended up living in a trailer in Mary Gillispie’s backyard, so Karen certainly seems to have a motive for framing Paul. She also would have had access to his gun. And despite telling police that she had access to the letters, including letters Paul had written and not mailed, she could not produce any of these, telling police that she had disposed of them. There is some cause for speculation that Karen may have been involved in setting up Paul Freshour as she had a motive due to the messy divorce and her losing everything and certainly her behaviour which I will go into later was cause for concern and I think personally she warranted a good look at.

As for additional evidence connecting Paul to the booby trap, there was none. Paul had an alibi for the day the booby trap was set; he was at home because there was work being done on his house. Paul also fully cooperated with law enforcement and was only connected to the letters based on an accusation from his ex-wife after a very contentious divorce.

Using Karen’s testimony, the copied letters, the failed polygraph, and the fact that the gun in the box was registered to Paul Freshour, he was charged with attempted murder of Mary Gillispie. Paul was never charged with sending any of the letters, but they were used as evidence against him in his trial. There was also no physical evidence connecting Paul to either the letters or the booby trap. But he was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to 7-25 years in prison.

Case Closed?

At this point, it seemed as though the mystery of the Circleville Writer had been solved. The only problem with this theory? The letters continued even after Paul Freshour was imprisoned. Even Paul himself received a letter, this one stating “Now when are you going to believe you aren’t going to get out of there? I told you two years ago. When we set ‘em up, they stay set up. Don’t you listen at all?”

Now, clearly, it is possible for people in prison to write and send letters, so the prison took numerous measures to ensure that Paul could not write these letters while in prison. These measures included putting Paul in solitary confinement, where he had no access to pen, paper, or the mail. And yet, letters continued to be sent during this time. Repeated sweeps of Paul Freshour’s cell showed no evidence that he wrote any of these letters in prison, he was regularly strip searched, and all of his incoming and outgoing mail was examined. Eventually, the prison warden wrote a letter to Paul’s ex-wife Karen telling her that it was impossible that Paul was writing these letters from his cell.

Additionally, Paul Freshour was imprisoned in Lima, Ohio, but all the letters (dating back from the first letters sent in 1976) were postmarked in Columbus, Ohio, so it is not clear how letters sent from a prison in Lima to Circleville would be postmarked Columbus.

In 1993, the television show Unsolved Mysteries was set to air a segment on the Circleville Letter Writer. Prior to the filming of this episode, the producers of the show received a postcard that said: "Forget Circleville, Ohio. ... If you come to Ohio, you el sickos will pay. The Circleville writer." The producers were undeterred and the segment was filmed and broadcast, including an interview with Paul Freshour, who had just been released on parole. This postcard was one of the final communications sent from the Circleville Letter Writer. No letters were sent after 1994.

The Writer Unmasked?

In August 2021, the CBS show 48 Hours aired an episode that they claimed definitively identified the Circleville Letter Writer through forensic document examination. CBS hired a document examiner, Beverley East, who compared the Circleville Letters to Paul Freshour’s known handwriting. She found numerous links between the letter writer’s handwriting and Paul’s handwriting, especially in the formation of his numbers. East said there were patterns in the anonymous letters that did not match Paul’s handwriting, but found more than 100 “quirks” of Paul’s writing that did match.

However, not all of the experts agree that Paul Freshour is responsible for writing the letters. Former FBI profiler Mary Ellen O’Toole does not believe there is enough evidence to state that Paul was the letter writer. In particular, O’Toole points to the letters that were sent while Paul was in prison. Since it was physically impossible for Paul to write and send these letters, it seems clear that there had to be another person involved. It should be noted that there were not just a couple of letters sent during the 10 years of Paul’s incarceration, but that there were literally hundreds of letters sent to people all over central Ohio. O’Toole also believes the letters were written by a female writer and that the letter writer was not well educated. Paul Freshour had three college degrees, including a Master’s degree.

So, despite the claims of 48 Hours, it is clear that they did not, in fact, definitively identify the letter writer. The question of who wrote the letters, who set the booby trap for Mary Gillispie, and whether Ron Gillispie died as a result of an accident or foul play has yet to be answered even 45 years later.

Some Additional Information

Paul Freshour was released on parole in 1994 after spending 10 years in prison. He maintained his innocence until his death in 2012 at the age of 70. After his release, he maintained a website dedicated to professing his innocence.

Dr. Ray Caroll, the county coroner who claimed that Ron Gillispie died with a BAC of 1.5x the legal limit, and who was accused by the Circleville Writer of child molestation, was charged with 12 counts of gross immorality, sex crimes, corruption of a minor, pornography, obscenity, and indecent exposure in December 1993.

David Longberry, the school bus driver Mary Gillispie originally suspected of writing the letters back in 1977, raped an 11 year-old girl in 1999. He went on the run shortly after and is still currently a fugitive. Although on one website online it was claimed that he allegedly committed suicide although there is no way to verify this claim.

The letter writer also made accusations against Roger Kline, the prosecutor who helped to convict Paul Freshour, but those are a bit harder to confirm. Specifically, he was accused of having an affair with a schoolteacher and then having her murdered when he found out she was pregnant. But, despite some random couple in Ohio “confirming” this story to a TV news station, there is literally no evidence of this. Kline became an appellate court judge before retiring in 2013. To this day her murder remains unsolved.

While Paul was serving his time in prison, a fellow school bus driver of Mary’s came forward and said they had seen a large man with sandy-hair in a yellow El Camino standing at the site of the booby trapped sign on February 7, 1983, about 20 minutes before Mary found the sign. When the bus driver passed by, the man turned away from her so she could not see his face. Paul Freshour has dark hair and is not a large man, so he was clearly not the man that was seen by the bus driver. Karen, Paul’s ex-wife, was, however, dating a man who was large and sandy-haired. Her brother also drove an El Camino. Police chose not to follow up on this tip. To my knowledge this has never been investigated which I find very strange.

Another odd element of this case is the glaring absence of Gordon Massie from all of the reporting of the events. The most vitriolic letters were sent to or about Massie; the sign that was booby-trapped included a message that Mary’s 12 year-old daughter was involved in a sexual relationship with Massie. Massie was also the target of the early letters and, despite Mary Gillispie’s denial of an affair with Massie, the two did have a romantic relationship after Ron’s death. And yet, there is very little information about Massie available, despite the huge amounts of information for many of the other people involved in the case. Massie was a well-respected member of the Circleville community and was married with a son. He died in 1996.


What I’m interested in is how did the letter writer find out this supposed information because I highly doubt that these people would shout from the hill tops about their involvement in such disgusting crimes.

In a confusing letter mailed to Grove City Police Chief James R. McKean on March 16, 1992, a second anonymous writer, printing in small rather than capital letters, identified the letter writer as a teacher named Mary.

The writer added that the same man who killed Ronald Gillespie in 1977 also killed Pickaway County school teacher Vicki Koch in 1980. Koch's murder remains unsolved.

The writer went on to explain the complicated process "Mary" supposedly uses to print her letters, and claimed that "there was many booby traps at the schools that can't be known or public. A Circleville teacher was killed for knowing too

much. . . . Please don't let them use or trick you. Confirm the booby traps at the schools. Write a letter and I will give you more."

(Unfortunately, the writer didn't say where a letter should be sent)

McKean said his department could find no evidence to back a claim made in a third unsigned letter received by a Grove City police sergeant. The letter said signs had been placed on the walls of area restaurants warning that a waitress would be killed as a means of gaining attention' In addition the letter. which was in the original block-printing style claimed teacher koch was killed at the request of a pickaway county offical by who she was pregnant the letter also said that appeals court judge William harsh of Portsmouth was involved in a graveyard scandal "that will cause all Harshas early graves."

No letters have been sent since 1994 and a number of the people involved in the case have since died. And yet no one has ever come forward with any information about the Circleville Letter Writer, so it seems that this is one mystery that may never be solved.

Paul freshour in his letter to the FBI outlined several interesting faces about the case.

FACTS THAT CAN BE CONFIRMED

l. I believe that the obscene, threatening and dangerous letters were concealed

because they would interfere with Sheriff Radcliff becoming the National

Sheriff s Association's President. See the date of the letters and the date of his involvement with the National Sheriff s Association. The crime rate in Pickaway County at that time would have eliminated him from this appointment.

2. No one has ever been indicted or charged with the obscene, threatening and dangerous letters, which often contained arsenic poison. I believe every letter constituted an attempted murder charge, yet no charge or indictments were ever made. They have had 26 years to solve this crime. Hopefully, you can get the letter crime solved.

3. The Department of Corrections confirmed for the l0 and a half years I was in prison under strict investigations that I was completely cleared of the obscene and threatening letters. See Department of Corrections for the State of Ohio.

4. Sheriff Radcliff lied in the media and claimed he caught many people smuggling letters for me. Please confirm this. This was a lie.

5. Confirm the obscene, threatening and dangerous letters claimed a prosecutor had a school teacher pregnant and murdered, because it would destroy his law enforcement career that he worked hard to achieve. He completed law school and then went on as an attorney, a prosecutor, judge, and now an Appeals Court Judge? This murder has never been solved. I'm sure it will never be if the obscene, threatening and dangerous letters are true because Judge Kline had too much power and protection from our legal system here in Ohio.

6. All forensic evidence was denied being given to me and this should be confirmed and questioned. Why?

9. Confirm Sheriff Radcliff kept the school superintendent's divorce out of the media because it might have affected him because of the rumors of his affair with a school employee which had been reported in the obscene and threatening letters: Through investigation the sheriff was going to claim this was done in order to catch the letter writer, who was going to call and question why Massie's divorce was never in the media? The Sheriff always covered his tracks.

The obscene and threatening letters contained some interesting facts which just how one person was able to collect and find out all this information remains disputed and the more than one writer theory comes into play.

The letters claimed Dr. Caroll, the Pickaway County coroner molested many children, and like the Gordon Massie and Mary Gillispie affair as reported, were untrue and a lie per Sheriff Radcliffs investigation. It was true. He missed this molestation also, yet many came forth later and admitted Dr. Caroll molested them. The Prosecutor claimed the statute of limitations applied, and he was never charged. He moved to Florida. In fact, a local Columbus, Ohio TV station visited him and did in fact confirm this. Dr. Caroll didn't do a day, and the letters were true. Had Sheriff Radcliff done his job, the molested children could have sued and got big money because many children suffered because of this and deserved to be granted money. I'm sure Dr. Caroll had a bunch of money, because the corrupt always do. How did Sheriff Radcliffs investigation miss this? It is because the coroner covered up things for Sheriff Radcliff and Kline.

Letters claimed baby bones from a dead baby's grave would be dug up and mailed at random if outside investigations did not get involved in Judge Roger Kline's murder of a pregnant school teacher. While the Pickaway County Sheriff visited the parents of the dead baby and plead for them not to tell anyone about this, they talked to a local Columbus, Ohio TV station who confirmed this as true.

Letters to Ronald Gillispie were sent saying "That if he didn't inform the Westfall School Board about his wife's affair with Gordon Massie," that he would be killed. That they knew his truck and where he lived and yes, Ronald was killed a short time later.

On the night of Ron's murder, he received a telephone call,,argued with someone, ran upstairs, got his gun, kissed his little girl goodbye and was dead a short time later. I'm positive his grown daughter will remember this. Should she not, I'm sure others do.

While the Sheriff’s investigation showed Ron was drunk and hit a tree, anyone who knew Ron knew this was untrue. The truck was totaled, taken to a Certified filling station in Mt. Sterling, Ohio and immediately disposed of at a junk yard. Unsolved Mysteries asked Sheriff Radcliff about the bullet missing, however, he would not respond or comment about it. Ron had fired his sun.

4. Letters claimed Roger Kline, now Appellate Court Judge, had a school

teacher pregnant and murdered, because he knew it would destroy his career. He did do very well, confirming how Judge Kline handled my trial, denied me discovery of the letters for trial preparation, yet referred to the letters throuehout the trial.

He for some reason controlled the obscene and threatening letters. In fact, Sheriff Radcliff kept contacting the prisons and even visiting them, because there were many, many letters still circulating after my incarceration, and Sheriff Radcliff constantly claimed it was me from prison.

Paul freshour also talked bout his ex wife who sounded like a real handful. He stated that.

His ex-wife assisted Sheriff Radcliff in obtaining evidence against him. 

His ex-wife for some reason was the one who contacted and threatened Unsolved Mysteries and even one of Unsolved Mysteries segment researchers who was pregnant causing her problems due to his ex-wife's threats.

His ex-wife assisted Sheriff Radcliff while we were in the process of divorce. Confirms the evidence she took to Sheriff Radcliff was completely cleared.

Final Thoughts

While Paul Freshour was convicted of setting the booby trap intended to kill Mary Gillispie in part based on the anonymous letters, neither he, nor anyone else, has ever been charged with writing the Circleville letters. Additionally, Paul Freshour’s conviction was based solely on circumstantial evidence. And, while Paul’s conviction relied on the idea that he was the letter writer (and that the letter writer and the person who set the booby trap were one and the same), it is impossible that he is responsible the hundreds of letters that were sent while he was in prison. One theory of the letters is that there were multiple letter writers, not just one. This would explain how the letter writer knew secrets about such a large group of people (literally hundreds of people in Central Ohio received these letters) as well as how the letters continued after Paul Freshour was put in prison. While it's unlikely that there would be numerous letter writers who all managed to keep this huge secret for over 40 years, it's not possible to rule it out.

Sources: 

https://unsolvedmysteries.fandom.com/wiki/Circleville_Writer

https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/rrh499/who_was_the_circleville_letter_writer/

https://circlevilleletters.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/the-full-story.pdf

https://listverse.com/2020/08/16/top-10-strange-facts-about-the-circleville-writer/