Apple Mail

For the past few months Apple Mail has been opening up when ever I start or restart by computer. I just usually close it as I use AOL as my main mail resource.
I use a Mac Pro operating on system 10.5.8

I have checked the preferences of the operating system and the mail system but I don't see any way to turn mail off at startup. Any suggestions?

I'm new to this forum so I hope I'm posting this in the right place. If not let me know.

Do you have the Mail program selected as a startup item? Check in your System Preferences application under Users and look in the Login items option.

I suspect what's really going on is that you're not actually quitting Mail. Clicking the "little red button" doesn't actually quit the program.

Try actually quitting mail BEFORE shutting down the machine and see if the problem reappears.