'It's vile' Mystery of poison pen letters in Yorkshire deepens

'There's nothing as funny as folk," mused a resident of Shiptonthorpe in East Yorkshire, a quiet village currently in the grip of a mysterious poison pen letter writer.

- Robyn Vinter

"It's a lovely village," she said. "I only moved here quite recently and everyone's been really friendly." But, like lots of locals, 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 across the village over a span of two years and, despite police inquiries and local suspicions, the perpetrator has not been caught.

And now the mystery has deepened as the anonymous letter writing campaign is thought to be the work of at least two people.

Victor Lambert, the chair of the parish council, who said he had himself 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.

Most people thought there was a political factor, as most of the victims had been former and current parish councillors.

A dispute that erupted over the parish hall a number of years ago was thought to have been the trigger, but those who were previously part of the parish council continued to receive letters after they had left their post.