Unmarked and anonymous is how these letters have arrived to the homes of St. Clairsville Council members and private citizens, and although the notes have been composed in a discombobulated style, the intent to damage the city and personal reputations is clear to comprehend.
“Whoever it is, they’re trying to hurt people,” said St. Clairsville Council member Perry Basile. “They’re trying to destroy reputations and careers, and it’s just wrong.”
Basile knows this because he has been one of the author’s targets.
“I was the recipient of the letter back in September,” Basile recalled. “It’s written terribly with horrible grammar and misspellings, but I believe that’s intentional. The letter was written in a way to set you off and make you very angry.
“It was directed at me and it’s one of those letters that just cuts you down and tries to make you feel horrible about your service to our city. It calls me names and degrades me throughout it,” he continued. “That letter, and all of the rest that have been received by someone in the city, have been unmarked, there’s no return address, and they are not signed. That right there tells you that the writer couldn’t be a bigger coward.”
The Lie Detector
Accurate and factual, the letters are not, Basile insisted.
“There was a follow-up letter that was about a couple of our council members, and whoever wrote it had to have a long history in the area,” he said. “Otherwise, there’s no way they would have been able to dig up the subjects included in it. Plus, what they do in this letter is twist the real facts so much that it was completely wrong. Every fact, and every person named and blamed in it, I believe, were incorrect.
“It’s convoluted, and the letters are meant to hurt people and damage their lives,” Basile continued. “There have been four, and there may be a fifth anonymous letter that has been sent that are composed the same way as the one that was sent me is, and it’s terrible. It’s so low-class. Those letters are critical of regular, common folks who have owned businesses in town for many years. Whoever is writing them is trying to hurt people. That’s their motivation, and it makes me sick.
“And sometimes, the writer attempts to get deep into someone’s personal life, and they are so intrusive and so incorrect, but the author tries to put it out there as fact. A person’s life can be destroyed because of the way people are thinking these days,” the councilman said. “Not only were the letters mailed to the mayor and to one other council member, but they have been distributed throughout neighborhoods like mine.”
The Final Shot
And then, in late December only days before Thalman would be sworn in as St. Clairsville’s new mayor, the defeated incumbent, Terry Pugh, released a letter that further accused one of the city’s police officers of breaking municipal rules. On Dec. 30, 2019, Pugh’s correspondence was distributed to several people, including Thalman, Council President Jim Velas, and to local media members. It alleges that police officer T.J. Stewart conducted personal business while on duty, that he left one shift four hours early, and that he failed to properly report an alleged assault.
Thalman reacted by stating to media outlets: “I think it was indiscreet and showed poor judgment on the part of the outgoing mayor to bring forth information about an unresolved, ongoing investigation and to make it public. I cannot comment on the matter since I have not been privy to any of the underlying information. As soon as possible my administration will look at it and will request an impartial judge to look into the matter. I think that publishing this could open the city up to potential problems.”
“In my opinion, that letter was his final shot across the bow to make things difficult for Kathryn and the new people that she brought into her administration,” Basile explained. “He’s a sore loser, and I believe he just wanted to make it tough on the new administration from the very beginning. But a decision has been made not to do the people’s business like that anymore because our city needs to be allowed to move forward.
“The people who remain on our council, I believe, have figured out that the way we’ve been doing things has not worked at all,” he added. “Now it’s time to change the game a little bit. I can’t say that doing such a thing is out of character for (the former mayor), but the letter he wrote was very negative and very wrong. We’re talking about a lifelong resident of this city who has served the public in many ways over the years, and if you go somewhere with him, people line up to say hi to him.”
Search for Answers
An investigation into the anonymous letters has been launched by the municipality mainly because of the content of the fourth letter sent to one of Basile’s council colleagues.
“This time it was threatening. Ignore what you heard on the news; it was a threat. I can’t tell you how right now because of the official investigation that’s under way,” Basile confirmed. “We have sent everything that has been received for testing for everything from fingerprints to anything that could be on record from around this area for something similar.
“We want to catch this person because all those letters and the mayor’s signed letter about one of our police officers are distracting attention away from the positives we have here in St. Clairsville,” he said. “Kathryn (Thalman) would not have run for mayor just because of the issues with our water service. She loves this city, and now she is focused on it, and it’s great to finally see us have a mayor with that kind of motivation. There will be a lot of issues our council will need to address this year, and we’re going to have to make a lot of important decisions, so it is her goal to offer the most honest guidance she can.”
