A woman who has been receiving anonymous hate mail for three years has said the terrifying campaign has left her “sick to her stomach”.
It all began for Susan in 2021 when she received a letter to her workplace that contained "false accusations and name-calling".
The letter was intercepted by her husband who kept its contents to himself while she was dealing with the sudden loss of her mother to cancer.
On Lunchtime Live today, Susan said she was finally told about the letters after four more had been sent to her workplace and an additional letter to her home.
“They were slandering me saying horrible, just awful things,” she said.
“More and more letters came and they mentioned the fact that my mother had died and said, ‘I hope you feel every bit of your pain now, you deserve it.’
“It was that kind of nastiness that was in these letters and at the time I felt sick to my stomach - I was red raw at the time from grief.”
Paranoia
Susan said she felt “very isolated” by the letters and could not trust anyone around her.
“I have never met anybody in my lifetime who has received physical hate mail to a home or a business,” she said.
“I was sitting there thinking of every person I had met in my life, asking if I had an argument with people I’ve met in my life or if I had any enemies.
“You start to think to yourself ‘why me? Why am I the only person who has received a letter like this?’”
'They knew everything'
Susan said she began to receive more letters and the sender “knew everything” about her.
“They knew the inside of my home, the inside of my business, places I’ve been, places I’ve worked, and stuff I had done on radio,” she said.
“They knew everything and put this information in letters.
“You say to yourself, ‘This is someone close, someone who knows me’ and that’s the worrying part.”
It appeared Susan was in the clear after the letters stopped in late 2021 until a colleague told her about a worrying anonymous call that had been made to her workplace.
“My colleague told me that somebody had called and said horrendous things on the phone,” said Susan.
“The type of things said on the phone were very similar to the stuff in the letters.
“They basically said, ‘Do you know what sort of person you have working for you; she is this and that’.
“[My colleague] said I’m just telling you this now because this person sounds like they want to kill you - that’s what she said to me on the day.”
Investigation
While Susan managed to record the contents of a subsequent phone call and handed the hate mail she had received over to Gardaí – there has been no luck with the investigation to date.
“I had all of the letters in plastic and went to the guards but I was told there was nothing that could be done, absolutely nothing,” she said.
“I asked could they get fingerprints from the letters even, but apparently you can't take fingerprints from paper - they don’t stick.
“That’s what I was told by a member of the Gardaí.”
It comes after a couple from Loughrea in County Galway last week told Lunchtime Live about their own horrific experience with hate mail.
Susan and David Plower have received over 400 letters from an anonymous source over the last four years containing allegations and abuse in a campaign they described as "terrorism".
You can listen back here:
Main image: A woman reads a letter. Image: Andriy Popov / Alamy Stock Photo