“There’s nothing as funny as folk,” mused a resident of Shiptonthorpe in East Yorkshire, a quiet village in the grip of a mysterious poison pen letter writer.
“It’s a lovely village,” she said. “I only moved here quite recently and everyone’s been really friendly.”
But, like lots of residents, hearing about the letters had made her uncomfortable. “It’s scary,” she said. “It’s that fact that it could be someone you know.”
That is almost definitely the case for the victims.
More than a dozen letters have been received by different people in the village over two years, and despite police inquiries and many local suspicions, the perpetrator has not been caught.
Now the mystery has deepened as the anonymous letter-writing campaign is widely thought to be the work of at least two people.
The parish council chair, Victor Lambert, who said he had received letters, one of which hoped he would be “run over by a bus on the A1079”, estimated there had been about 20 in total, but the Guardian has not been able to verify that figure.
Most people think there is a political factor, because most of the victims have been former and current parish councillors.
A dispute that erupted over the parish hall a number of years ago was thought by some to have been the trigger, but those who were previously part of the council continued to receive letters long after they had resigned or lost their post.
The victims who spoke to the Guardian all said they were baffled as to the connection but that it felt personal.
The ward councillor for the village for East Riding council, Leo Hammond, received letters to his office written by someone who “has quite an obsession with my sexuality”, he said. The letters accused him various times of being secretly gay, “which me and my girlfriend find quite funny”.
He said he thought the letters written to him were not from the same author as those received by others, which had been more menacing. “I think somebody has felt empowered by the fact that no one’s found out who sent the other letters, and now they felt that they could start sending really nasty letters,” he said.
“I’m pretty confident I know who’s sending mine, but sadly I can’t prove it.”
Many victims felt they had an idea of who had written them – some differed in their accusations – but did not want to go public because, as Lambert said: “I’ve got no evidence.”
Some of the letters were deeply personal and suggested knowledge of their subjects. One wished cancer on someone who had suffered it, while another hoped a resident whose home had been flooded was washed away.
The letters all seemed to have been posted but were written in different styles and fonts, some made to look as if they were written by different people using a variety of voices, though they were sent in identical styles of envelope. At least two letters to different people purported to be from an anonymous “friend”, some were unsigned, while others were signed with a fake name.
One person received a blank novelty Christmas card covered with the word “cunt”.
The letters began in late 2022, with one of the first victims a woman who was quite shaken. She tore up the first, but more soon followed. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to have done to deserve it,” she said. “It’s vile.”
She said she had support from most of the residents, but that she still felt afraid to be in Shiptonthorpe and was constantly looking over her shoulder. As she spoke, her phone rang and she jumped at the noise.
“It’s been terrifying, absolutely terrifying,” she said.
Her partner also found it difficult to talk about. He had received an anonymous letter, written in a different style but in an almost identical envelope, accusing his partner of having an affair.
Many people seemed to think the spotlight would cause the perpetrators to lose their mettle and stop writing, while others thought they would eventually give away enough clues to be caught.
However the saga ends, for the man whose partner was targeted in a campaign of harassment, one thing was for sure. “Shiptonthorpe will never be the same again.”
