My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 12 - Our Bodies, Our Twelves

Episode Date: April 14, 2016

Karen and Georgia get deep when they discuss the murder that started their obsession with true crime: a kid on fire and a mom that assassinated her children. Happy listening!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We at Wondery live, breathe and downright obsess over true crime and now we're launching the ultimate true crime fan experience, Exhibit C. Join now by following Wondery, Exhibit C on Facebook and listen to true crime on Wondery and Amazon Music, Exhibit C. It's truly criminal. Tune, do you know that song? What's that? That's the beginning of a song. Do you know it? It's an 80s song. It is. I'll do it for it. I'm doing marching rhythm. I see that. Arms. Yeah. No, what is it? Thorn in my side by the ear and neck. Now I feel stupid. Oh, no, it's great. If everyone could see they're marching, they would understand how great it is. Someone at home is yelling, thanks for everything. There was someone that got it on the first note.

Totally. The reason I was doing that, everybody, is because Georgia has gotten these beautiful mic covers, so now we can pop our peas. We can pop any peas we please. Pop our peas and sing our song. Welcome to my favorite murder. The most professional murder podcast. Slash Sports Announcing podcast. Slash. Distant video game music. And singing. It's going to be, this is going to, it's going to take the internet by storm, this new combination of entertainment. Do you think they can hear the like, the shooting helicopter video game noise coming from the apartment downstairs? I don't know. There is a video game being played with that kind of really high pressure music

and definitely some version of murder happening in that video game. It's a wall shaking, like, war video game. One would think I would be rich enough to buy a house. You will be. And yet? Very soon. There goes a motorcycle. There goes a fucking motorcycle. Is the motorcycle in the video game or is that separate? That was separate. Okay. I mean, I've learned to ignore it and then I realized that we're recording something and it's like, oh, it's embarrassing. I think people like ambient sound, it makes it real. They know we're real. We're street. We're real as fuck. We're as fucking real as they get in this apartment complex. They're real. Super real. Let's talk about the woman

who was found in a dumps in a recycling bin. I mean, recycling bin is better than a trash can. Also idiotic. You should have put her in a trash bin. I don't know if I can, I don't know. If it, is it better? Yeah. I mean, it's like cleaner. It's more organic. I just feel bad. This woman from Seattle, she has three kids. She's just given dating another shot. She's just trying to find someone who will love her and like her kids. Are you trying to make me cry? Because I will. I am. That was my mom and she goes out with this guy to a fucking whatever the sports team is in Seattle game and Seahawks. Okay. And then goes missing Mariners. There we go. And then gets fucking found. What happened? That's the worst.

It's awful. It's heartbreaking. I don't like the, do you know if it was match.com? I don't. Tinder? I don't know what, I don't know what dating site it was, but I know they'd gone out a couple of times. So he wasn't like, it wasn't like a warning, like don't go out with strangers. It was like, she knew this person. So it was Christian Mingle. And like they showed a photo of the guy and I would never have guessed he was a psychopath. What is it about the Pacific Northwest? I mean, seriously, this is like, I always think of Twin Peaks where it's like the haunted forest. It's bad spirits emanating from an ancient site and then going into downtown Seattle and just fucking up lives. There's so much land in which to bury

and hide people. There's, there's, there's depression because the weather is so fucking dark, right? Like everyone, everyone there has seasonal defective, effective disorder all year around. Across the board. It's called depression. It's called depression. Everyone's got it and it makes them serial kill. No, it's heavy. It's a, I have to say the couple of times I've been to Seattle, I've had a lovely time and it's been in the summer. It's so beautiful. I can't stand it, but it's always the, it's like LA people go there in the summer and then they're like, what are they saying about Seattle and everyone's wrong and then you leave. I have a message for everyone in other parts of the country. Okay. Move to Los Angeles. It's sunny. Literally, it's,

it's what you make fun of. It's constantly sunny. There's no seasons which I'm like, I love seasons, but you love it until mid-February. Yeah. And it's kind of dirty. Yeah. But in a way that makes you feel like you, you're going to be okay. And would you rather get dismembered or just like get a random bullet on the freeway in your head? I mean, pick one. Karen pick one. Right now. Yeah. Yeah. Random bullet. Random bullet. Yeah. Although once you're dead, the dismemberment doesn't affect you. Better to affect your family. No, that's very true. Also, stuffing someone into a garbage can of any kind is such an aggressive act of there's so much hatred in that act and that's file. It's amateur hour too. Cause like what do you, of course they're

going to find that they're going to find that which maybe he wanted that to happen. So he got caught. I think they immediately like just went on her computer. I think so what I think happened is it wasn't, it wasn't premeditated. Oh, you know what I mean? Because he snapped because if he, if someone has that much information about you on their computer and like match that you were going out with that person that night and you went missing from there. Yeah. Something went wrong. Clearly it's going to come straight back to you. Clearly you have an anger issue and you snapped. Here's the thing. Fuck everyone. Right. That's, we should have said that right at the beginning. This podcast should be called here's the thing. Fuck everyone. Here's the thing.

Everyone. Fuck everyone. Except for you guys. Except. Thanks for listening. Except for our 2,800 plus members on our fucking Facebook group. It's grown like a wildfire and no one is a pervert. It's the best. Well, just the one, that one guy. No one acts like a pervert. Right. Oh yeah, exactly. They keep their perfect perverse private. Their private parts pervert. Like us. Everyone, the Facebook group is like my, my, my bloodline. I love it so much. People keep like taking quotes from us and putting them in beautiful settings. Georgia keeps texting me the quotes that, that play into my ego where somebody puts, somebody put a quote of mine from this podcast over a sundial, which made it look so regal. Yeah. And like it was like wisdom

from the ages. Yeah. And like the, the, um, the font is beautiful. Yeah. It's terrible. It's like papyrus. So it looks real. People are just really hitting it out of the park in terms of their participation. It makes us so excited. Yeah. Please go join the Facebook group. Yeah. It's good times. I mean, it doesn't do any, it doesn't, nothing for us would make us happy. Like we're not gaining anything out of it. No, I don't think so. Not yet anyway. I mean, we will figure out a way to monetize it. We're going to hunt all of you down and make us by a thank you by a t-shirt, but right now we're just having fun. We actually are talking about getting t-shirts made. So this is, this is going to be a real dividing line that, um, the hardcore people you will buy and wear

a t-shirt that says my favorite murder on the front of it. And then that's going to weed out the week of the people who say, I don't know if I can commit to public love of murder. And then the fucking hardcore people are going to come to the live shows we eventually have. Yes. Because we're definitely talking about doing live shows here in Los Angeles. Yeah. So we would love to see you if that's something you'd be interested in participating in. We would love for you to come. Let us know on the Facebook group if you'd come. Yeah. We'll make it worth your while. I'm really excited about this, um, this topic, this episode. Yeah. Because I see you have usually you have this, these like this crazy serial killer notebook full of writing of my seven writing. Yeah.

I think we both, and I usually have a few pages printed up, but we both have like only a little dialogue because, or a little writing because the dialogue around it is going to be intense. Yes. Because this week, uh, we decided to go, uh, the topic is the one that started it all. And that is somebody actually guessed this on the Twitter page. I'm sorry. I can't remember. They don't want their names known anyway. That's true. But he said it was a guy and, uh, he said why don't you guys, you guys should do that. And I think maybe hearing us because we mentioned something about that last week. I don't even know if we did because you texted it to me randomly. And that day he was like, you guys should do the one that made you interested in murder.

I felt like we talked about it on the last episode, but maybe I could definitely be wrong. But my memory is shit. I know I'm minus two. I have no idea. But it doesn't matter because that was super, uh, ESP on his part because that we, that's what I texted to Georgia. And that is what we were talking about this week, the serial killer or the murder that kicked off our fascination with murder. Hey, I'm Aresha. And I'm Brooke. And we're the hosts of Wondery's podcast, Even the Rich, where we bring you absolutely true and absolutely shocking stories about the most famous families and biggest celebrities the world has ever seen. Our newest series is all about the incomparable diva, Whitney Houston. Whitney's voice defined a generation and even

after her death, her talent remains unmatched. But her incredible success hit a deeply private pain. In our series, Whitney Houston, Destiny of a diva will tell you how she hid her true self to make everyone around her happy and how the pressure to be all things to all people led her down a dark path. Follow Even the Rich wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad free on the Amazon music or Wondery app. Yeah, you want me to go first? Do you want to go first? Do you want to go first? Whatever you want. I think you went first last time. Okay. But I might cry. Really? Yeah, this one fucked me up. Okay. For life. Okay. Want me to go first? Yeah. Okay. This is Georgia. But can anyone tell her voices apart? I don't know. The intense list.

And the one who says we're like eight minutes and you're like, this is Georgia. You don't know. Oh, someone was like, someone drew caricatures of us on the Facebook group. And they're like, I don't know what Karen and Georgia look like. But in my mind, this is what we, they look like. And we just look like it was hilariously ridiculous. And someone was like, just look at their ins like, look at them like Google them. They're both like public figures, which I was like, so charm that someone just found it and doesn't even care what we look like. Did I have curly hair just by chance? No, we both, we both, we both looked a little bit like Cappy from the cat cartoons. God bless. I was like, amen. I like, I feel in my mind, I look like a

little more like Pat Bainatar, but really the reality is I'm like a fucking cat. The reality is always Cappy. All right. So, so the one that started it all for me is actually an attempted murder. Okay. But I feel like it's the same thing because it was attempted. It was like supposed to be murder. And it happened in 1983. And I was, hold on. Okay. Say the name right now. You say it. This is one, two, three. David Rothenberg. Oh, thank God. Who's that? Is that yours? Yeah, that's mine. Oh, shit. Oh my God. And mine happened in 1983. Shut your face. I swear to God. Is an attempted or real? Well, there was one. Oh, no, no, no, no. It's a mix. That's why I was like just staring at you like, holy shit. One of these days, one of these days, we're going to get the

same one. Okay. Sorry. Well, I think we should like set like a rule that if we get ever get the same one, like something crazy has to happen is we should have a third murder in an envelope that we just ran have someone else randomly print up and then we just have to read wouldn't that be funny if we had like a random murder that we don't even know? Oh my God. That's there. That was that's very weird. That was crazy. Okay. So 1983 in Orange County, which is where I'm from, so I was only like, I was almost four at the time. So my parents needed to stop watching the news because I fucking saw this entire thing and remember it from when I was three. In 1983, a six year old, you know, so it's around my age named David Rothenberg was brought to a motel

at near Nottsbury Farm, which is in Buena Park, California by his father, Charles Rothenberg, who was taking him, his parents are divorced, they was taking him on an authorized visit. And that night, David or Charles, the father got in a fight with the mom on the phone and said to her, if I can't have him, nobody else can. And then and this has stuck with me since I was four. He gave the dad gave David a sleeping pill. You ready for this poured kerosene on his bed. Oh, I remember this story. Yeah, kissed him goodbye and struck a match as he stood in the doorway. He watched from a telephone booth across the street as the fucking flint. He said he was he was going to kill himself too, but he was too much of a coward. You fucking light your

fucking child on fire, but you're too much of a coward to kill yourself. No, you're not a coward, you're a sociopath, you're a psychopath piece of shit. So thankfully, a bunch of people in the motel dragged him from the inferno. He's I mean, the pain that this kid went through, he suffered third degree burns over 90% of his body. It's not supposed to live. If you see photos of him day, I don't want I really don't want to say his new name because he changed his name because he didn't want his dad's last name. So it feels a little like Salacious. Yes. But you can find him and I remember seeing him in updates in the newspaper throughout the years, especially because so the dad was convicted of attempted murder arson and other charges. Karen, guess how many years he

got? Oh, God, is it going to be something like six? More than that, but it's 1213. So I remember in 1990, I remember I really like distinctly remember the newspaper article was that was a photo of the kid with like his, you know, a little older now looking behind his back. And it's like, if this guy gets set free, he'll always look behind his back and see if he's there. And actually, the dad said in 1990, when he was supposed to be allowed out of jail, do I deserve to be set free? And he said, no, it's an unforgivable act. Like he even knew that he should not have fucking been set free. And I remember like, so my parents divorced when I was five. And so my dad got custody of us like every other weekend. And I feel like it fucked up my relationship with my dad. Yeah, because this,

you know, this guy could have been a drug addicted fucking crazy person already. But I wish my dad isn't and wasn't. But in my mind, it was like just someone's dad. Someone's daddy. Yes. And he and he was still able to do this to him. So it really fucked me out for the rest of my life. Wow. And actually, weirdly, David, the kid, the person who became a father figure to him, which is hilarious, is Michael Jackson. Heard of the horrific circumstances surrounding David's accident and reached out to him and they become life they became life on friends. Which is like another so sad. It's very well. It's sad, but it doesn't necessarily. But I mean, nothing happened. I don't think anything happened. I don't think so either. I don't

think I think Michael Jackson was inappropriately comfortable. But I don't think he was. I think he had an incorrect sense of what you were supposed to do. Like I think he had an incorrect sense of himself. Yes. And and of and I think he wanted to be around children because he still wanted to be a child. And I think he was protecting this kid who suddenly just like that got a lesson of what it's like in the real world. Yeah. Which is horrific and terrible on the person that you trust, you know, sets you on fucking fire. I mean, it's I feel like I know that story because it's probably because of the Michael Jackson part or probably because it was like one of those stories. But like, didn't didn't he go on to like speak at schools? Yeah, he's like a

well, yeah, he's he's a pretty he's a pretty big advocate. He does a lot of advocacy. Yeah, you know, he's turned it into into good. He speaks out against child abuse and all these things. And he's finally, you know, when your body is burned over 90%, you're you have chronic pain constantly. And he found someone who was able to relieve that. And he's like an advocate for that. And it's just so but his dad served less than seven years of that sentence. Oh my God. Yeah, he settled in Oakland in 1990. But then he was arrested that January and charged with the attempted murder of an of a man and being a felon in possession of a gun. So I don't know where he is now, but I bet it's not in jail. Well, oh God. Yeah, it fucked me up. The divorce

thing and this than the like, my dad had us every other every summer for a couple of weeks, I would take his places and it was very stressful for him. And I feel like it clouded my childhood a little bit like this was a thing that divorced parents. This is how they reacted sometimes. Yeah, that that was even just a possibility. Yeah, especially because it was, you know, 20 minutes from my home. Yeah. Well, it's uncomfortable enough and hard enough for little kids. They don't understand why it's happening every it's like the whole world changes. So why wouldn't that change too? Yeah, like how can you feel safe? Yeah, my mom is angry at my dad. And this is stressful for my dad. And so people react crazy and it's unexpected and, you know,

adults adults make it complicated. And kids have an easy solution to everything. Yeah. Well, and also just that idea that that a father, the idea that I mean, we always talk about that, but it's just like the second a father makes a decision to light his child on fire, I think that that man should die. Well, the thing is like, why, what I don't understand, and I mean, I get it, but why did he get tried for attempted murder? His plan was to murder. He, it just didn't happen. Why did he only get attempted murder? Because because the kid didn't die. That's ridiculous. I know, but your plan was was actively to murder someone. And it just didn't go that way for whatever fucking circumstances, you should still get murdered.

Yeah. Yeah. It's the difference between life in prison and fucking seven years. Well, and also there should be special circumstances, which is something that they do a lot more nowadays. I think nowadays, yeah. Which is that thing of like, yeah, you like there's nothing about this, it isn't the most evil thing on the planet. You should not get out of jail. I feel like a lot of people would be horrified to hear that this person who did that did this got seven years. Yeah. It's yeah, it's not right. That's crazy. I know. And then there's the, Oh, what was I gonna say? I don't remember. Anyways, it's just awful. I'm sorry. No, it's a terrible start in the world of murder for you. That was a start. And then and then

unsolved mysteries was a thing that somehow my parents let me watch. What the fuck? Were you a latchkey child as well? Oh, I was a latchkey kid. Yeah. Yeah. Me too. You just do whatever you want when you're a latchkey kid. Nothing. And we, I mean, I talk about this all the time, but like kids today and even young people today don't understand how it was the Wild West for kids in the seventies and eighties. It was just like nothing was, nothing was thought of through a child's eyes. Nobody was like, Hey, maybe we should throw up a warning before this show to be like, don't watch this if you're home by yourself. I learned how glamorous being bulimic was from lifetime movies. Yes. You know, that's right. That Jennifer Jason Lee.

Yeah. And bulimia movie taught everyone how to do bulimia. I learned that relationships had to be insane and rocky from nine to one. Oh, like they had to be dramatic and fucked up and crazy. Yep. And then when I was like 22, I was like, Oh, wait a minute, they can just be happy and it's fine. Like I don't have to have like, it might even be better. Like a tar riff in the background only get like when I'm mad at him or like how Tori Spelling's boyfriend, didn't he beat her up? He pushed her down a fucking flight of stairs. Yeah. It doesn't have to be that way. Turns out you can just watch TV and get high and like, and really like each other and laugh and it's cool and really laugh your asses off. Yeah. Make each other cheese toast. The best part of

relationship to me is when someone makes you cheese toast. Oh, I like it when people pick you up from places. Oh, like when you get to go do your thing, but then somebody comes and picks you up. Do you know what happened the other night? I was supposed to go to like a girls night party at this bar and it was like, guys can come later. But like Vince and I spent the whole day together and like on the weekends, I have a hard time. Like that's what we do. Yeah. I'm I'm a little codependent anyways. So he drops me off at this bar. It's like dive bar where we're supposed to meet at five and I'm two minutes early because I'm Georgia and I'm fucking early at everything and I walk in and the light the music is incredibly loud and no one is there yet.

And I call him he had driven away and I was like, come get me. Fuck this. Then he drove back around and got me and I took a nap and then we went back to the party together when guys were allowed. Nice. I just couldn't. No, no, you don't and you don't have to. You get to do exactly what you want. Any weird preconceived idea of what how things are supposed to be quote unquote, isn't the truth and you get to do what makes you comfortable and what makes you happy and exactly the do things the way you want to do them. If any teenager is listening right now, which what are you doing? Please don't do that. You I promise you like your life gets awesome. Yes, because you get to choose whatever you want to do. Yeah. Although I think kids these

days get to so much more. That's like a revelation for us. Probably most kids these days listening. This would be like, uh, how else would it be? Yeah, because you have connection to every human being in the world. Yeah. The pre-internet days were dark, my friends. No, they were real. They were super real just like us. Like we wouldn't be we wouldn't be as awesome. You wouldn't be wearing all black right now. This is my weekend goth look. Casual goth. Well, unfortunately, we didn't have the same one. I feel like that would be I kind of feel like it would be majestic. I feel like if we if we ever have the same one, we have to like treat ourselves to like an incredible dinner. Like it's like celebration. That's right. Of our minds melding. Yeah, we'll go to if we ever have

the same one, we'll go to Musso and Frank's and get fucking steaks. Oh, good idea. Let's just do it anyway. Sandabs. I don't even know it. It's like old fashioned food. Let's do it anyway. We'll get roquefort dressing. Yeah. Sides and sides of roquefort dressing. Oh my gosh, you know what I want? Scalloped potatoes. Yes. You know what I want? I want a dry martini. I want five dry martinis. Girl, can that olives or onions? Olives. Fuck yeah. Can I just have that one night where I get to start drinking again? Listen, let's let's have a how about episode 15? This is episode 11, right? 12. 12. Episode 15 will celebrate by going to Musso and Frank's classic old school steakhouse here in Hollywood. I love it. I'm gonna wear a snood. I don't know what that is.

Yes, you do. It's the back hair net. Oh, that holds all your hair in one little pile from the 30s, 40s. I want to say I'm gonna wear one of my vintage dresses, but they are so tight that I can't eat anything in them. And I have multiple times ripped open the seams in the back of my dress because of that. Why don't you wear your vintage sweatshirt? I'm gonna wear a vintage sweatshirt. I'm gonna wear my vintage gap jeans that I wear always. I'm gonna wear my vintage pregnancy pants. Karen. Georgia. Karen. Here's my favorite murder from the from the jump. Okay. I thought it was John Wayne Gacy because I always talk about seeing that picture. At a very young age, I saw a graph of how he buried the boys' bodies in his house. Right. And it blew my mind apart. But I realized

before I saw that picture, because then I was like, wait, maybe it was Ted Bundy. But I realized the reason I read The Stranger Beside Me, which was the Ann Rule book about her and Ted Bundy, I had read Small Sacrifices, which is an Ann Rule book about this woman, Diane Downs. And I will now tell you the story of Diane Downs. Tell me everything. And this was a, this is a paperback book that I found on my mom's nightstand because my mom used to just plow through any book. She would read almost a book a day, any, almost anything. That's awesome. And she liked kind of pulpy stuff. Yeah. And this one, she, I just started reading and she didn't, she didn't notice that I was reading a book that I was probably 12 or so.

Yeah. But again, in the 80s and 90s, like they weren't as, they didn't understand what makes a crazy anxiety-ridden person. Right. You know what I mean? Yes, exactly. But this would in any way have like long-term effects on my brain. Their parents were in World War II. Like they didn't understand. Yeah. This wasn't, it was a book. It couldn't hurt you. It wasn't a bomb. It wasn't an unexploded shell. Actually, I must have been 14 because this happened in 1983 and she went to, she went to court in 1984. So it, then the book was written. So, but here's how it starts. I'm ready for my paper. My expertly typed paper. So on May 19th, 1983, in Springfield, Oregon, 27-year-old divorcee and male woman Diane Downs. Again,

Pacific Northwest. Pacific Northwest. She went sightseeing with her three young sleeping children at 10 o'clock at night on a school night. Oh, I know. You know this one? She was listening to Hungry Like the Wolf. When she turned on the road, she'd never been on before. She said that she saw, oh, because they were exploring, that they liked exploring. And there she saw a shaggy haired man who flagged down her car. So she said she pulled over and turned off the ignition and asked him what he wanted. He said he was going to take the car and he pulled her, he opened the door, pulled her out of the car, reached in and shot all three of her children at close range. She says that she then faked throwing the car keys into the field across the road. And when he

turned to look where the keys went, she jumped back into the car. He shot her in the left arm and then she sped away to the nearest hospital. And at the hospital, her seven-year-old daughter Cheryl was pronounced dead. Her three-year-old son, Danny, was found to be paralyzed from the waist down. And her eight-year-old daughter, Christie, had lost so much blood that she had had a stroke. Oh, my fucking God, real quick. I just want to get that out of the way. Okay. Okay. So almost immediately, the cops smell a rat. Sure. Because of the story I just told you, that's her official statement. Jesus. They were sightseeing at 10 o'clock at night. Yes, as you do. As you do with your three children, one of whom is a toddler who doesn't even know

what sightseeing is. Right. So they're like, huh, interesting. And they then notice that she, in telling this story, is completely emotionless. The cop who I watched on an old 2020 said, not one tear did I see as she was telling the story. So she's explaining how her children are shot point-blank range by... Yeah, but she could be in shock because they say now, like, don't judge someone's reaction because you just never know how they're gonna... Absolutely. However... The night of, true. But that it is going to raise the alarm bells in a cop, where you're either not crying or fake crying. Right. Then when they brought her in to see Christy, when she had woken up from her, like, when she was, you know, conscious again, when they got her

going, there was a detective and then two doctors in the room with her when they brought Diane in. They said her eyes glazed over with fear and her heart rate that was on the heart monitor went from 104 to 164. Holy shit. So everybody was like, uh-oh. Because like, this is, she's, this is a little girl surrounded by strangers and her mother, the one person who's supposed to give her comfort. Terror. In the world comes in, she's terrified. So that's alarm bell number three. Two. Then, then they find out that almost immediately after arriving at the hospital and her children being wheeled in to the ER, Diane made a call to a guy named Robert Nickerbocker, who was a married man and a former colleague of hers that she'd had an affair with in Arizona,

made a phone call there. And they also noticed that even though none of the children had been given any first aid of any kind, Diane had a dish towel wrapped neatly around her gunshot wound. Good to know. So these are things everybody's dinging off one by one and going, ah, this is, all of this seems weird. Is that shitty for me to say that in nine, I'm surprised that in 1983, these things dinged? Because I feel like a lot of shit got passed people. Oh, I think, yes, I think because it was still the early days of this kind of crime being like, there because there was no, you know, forensic files and you didn't see this all the time and hear that same story of like, but then the cops. So it was like smart cops and smart doctors.

Yes, paying attention. Yeah. And I think it's when three little kids get killed, or, you know, one gets murdered and two are horribly injured. Everybody's on high alert and paying as close attention. It's there's less of a lack of days go feel as opposed to our usual. Oh, they ran away. Yeah, bullshit. Yeah. But yes, definitely these cops on this case were on it. And this one cop that talked the most in this 2020 special, which you can see if you go on YouTube or whatever, it was his first homicide case ever. So I think that's probably another thing like poised. Yeah, he wasn't jaded. He wasn't like, Oh, this old thing, you know, he was like, they're trying to figure it out thinking about all the paperwork that need to be

done. He was like, yeah, that's pay attention. He's like, what the hell happened? And they say that the shot, the phrasing here is shaggy haired man, but that's not the that's not exactly the wording she used. That's actually a police term for that fake person that people who kill people and then blame it on a random person who came in, they call that the shaggy haired man. Wow. So she but she actually said and she described it and you can see like the police sketch. It's it is a shaggy haired man. It's like some man who fly down like some like Drifter kind of a drifter type that no mother in the world would ever pull her car over for now on an empty country road, much less turn the car off. That's the craziest part to me. Why did she

have that in because it wasn't necessary? No, because she's a bad liar and she's one of these psychopaths who thinks that she's the master martyr. Yes. And those are the funniest to me because they're the most obvious liars. Yes. Well, because they don't know how dumb they really are. I really love watching interrogations when you know someone is good. Like when you're not, you're like not guessing that you actually another guilty. Yeah. And the lying they do. And how loud lying sounds. Yeah. It's just so blatantly obvious. And I love when the cops play along. Yes. And they like sympathize. So with her, this is what I love. They this these cops decided to let her talk. She started talking to the press almost immediately. And because of

course they were like, we've got to find the shaggy haired man. So she was giving these interviews and the more she did it, the more she loved it. And they called her she looked a little bit like Lady Diana. So they would call her Lady Di. And she kept on giving interviews. Well, four days after her daughter, Cheryl is pronounced dead. She's doing a reenactment for the news. And you can watch this. All this, all this stuff is on YouTube. She is laughing and joking along with this reporter, reenacting the murder of her children, but literally like, Oh my God, I just hit my cast like, like she looks like a flirty high school girl. Can you explain my face right now? Georgia's all of her orifices are open as wide as possible. Oh my God. Jesus, Karen. This is an X rated podcast.

How dare you? But no, no, it's great. It's so unnerving. And then you and also you see these the interviews, they she talks more and more as each one goes by. So the the one that they end up having to hold, because the reporter knew if they released it before her trial, that there's no way she would get a fair trial in Oregon. In this one, she's quoted as saying, and this I kind of made me sick, like I had to turn it off and turn it back on a couple times. Because this woman is overtly crazy. She has the hallmark of crazy, in my opinion, which is anyone who's plucked their eyebrows down to just like two little lines. He always to me, that's like either you're on speed, you're on some kind of white drug, or you're just totally crazy. I love it. Because she's it looks

like two upside down use over each of her eyes. And it's like, it's like one eyebrow connected to the next eyebrow connects like one hair. Yes, exactly. Like she just left on the bare minimum of eyebrow. That's always a very bad sign. So she's getting interviewed. And the reporter asks her, do you feel lucky that you only got shot in the arm in this terrible crime? And she says, my children's are my children are the ones who are lucky. I'm the one that has to live with this pain and scarring for the rest of my life. What a fucking cunt. And in the same interview, they catch her, you see her as she talks, she can't help, she smiles at the end of every sentence, she giggles a little bit. And at the, at during one point, it's almost like, it's almost like her

brain doesn't know what the correct face is supposed to be for this situation. Because she's a not like, what was that? Yeah, she's a narcissist. Yes. Oh, that's the thing I was watching. I read a thing recently about sociopaths. And you can tell them because when you yawn, you know, normally when I yawn, you'll yawn too. Yes. When I yawn, they don't yawn because they have no empathy, because they, they don't catch the yawn because they don't picture, they don't feel, yeah, they don't have any of that. She's like, didn't she doesn't understand that facial expressions read. Yes. And she doesn't know to mask. She is enjoying being the center of attention. Yeah. And she doesn't know to mask that joy while she's talking about the blood coming out of her daughter's mouth.

It's like one of the creepiest things. I want to call it munchausen by proxy, but it's not because she, I mean, like shooting someone is so aggressive. And yeah, no, munchausens is more, you're getting the, the, the sympathy from people. This is a person who thought she was going to get away with a triple murder of children. So I'm scared. So, so as, so basically she keeps doing these interviews. And now everyone around is seeing that this woman is not the victim of a random crime on a country road. Like she initially said, everyone in like nearby is like, Oh my God, there's something wrong with her. And so then as, as all that's happened, and she's, she's doing it like she was volunteering for these interviews, the police are still investigating,

they find her secret diary. And that's where they find all the information about that guy, Robert Knickerbocker and her obsession with him and how she basically wanted to kill his wife. Well, when she still lived in Arizona and that this guy had no interest in children, didn't want to, thought it was inappropriate to be around her when she was with her children. And so clearly the motive was on the page. She killed her children so she could be with him. Right. Listen, don't have a secret diary unless you're going to kill someone. Like it's the only people have secret diaries are going to fucking kill someone. Yes. That's just evidence waiting, waiting to be found. Just think about it. So don't write them down. So then,

then a guy comes forward that says, because her story was she raced to the ER after this happened. A guy comes forward and says, I drove behind, she had a red Nissan. I drove behind a red Nissan that was going so slowly that my speedometer needle wasn't coming off the peg. He said she was probably going seven miles an hour. And he had to pass her came up behind her going so slow had to pass her. And her story was she was racing there. She actually drove so slowly to ensure her children would bleed out because she could hear them moaning. I'm going to throw up. It's fucked. So she was arrested February 28, 1984, like nine months later. And then during her trial, her daughter Christie, the one who got scared when she came in the room had recovered enough

and Christie testified against her own mother and told everybody there was no man in the street. My mom shot all of us through crying, you know, tears and everything testified against her own fucking mother. But here's the sweet part. Is there a sweet part, please? There is a couple. First of all, she was convicted. She got sentenced to life in prison plus 50 years. So she's never getting out. Good. But she did get pregnant before the trial. So she was pregnant during the trial by whom a guy that she seduced on her mail route. So she knew she was going to get arrested. So she she slept with this guy and got pregnant and then so that she could garner sympathy and look like I would never do this. Look, I'm such a loving mother. I think you also get put

in a better prison if you're pregnant. Yeah, you get treated way better. Right. So so here's the this is the quote that she had about being pregnant. I got pregnant because I miss Christie and I miss Danny and I miss Cheryl so much. You can't replace children, but you can replace the effect that they give you. And they give me love. They give me satisfaction. They give me stability. They give me a reason to live and a reason to be happy. You fucking cut. You fucking shot your children. And now she's gonna make more. So that child was immediately taken away from her and put up for adoption. And that girl never knew who her mother was until like recently. Wait, that's me. Wait a minute. What if it's me? And then here's the beautiful part. The prosecuting attorney that

sent her away adopted both Christie and Danny. His name is Danny, right? Yes. Adopted them both. Him and his wife. They're legally now their parents. I don't cry. I have no feelings in my heart. Are you really about to fucking cry? Isn't that beautiful? Because they need so much. Yes. They need so much. And that prosecutor from he he was the first one who was like, you need to get a therapist with Christie and have the therapist with her all the time. Because at some point she's going to need to start talking about this and someone needs to be there and be ready for her. Yeah, dude. And so she just had like constant support and she like they did it. They did right by these kids one time in one of these horrible stories. These kids I mean got

done right by even if they hadn't been shot. They they got a better life than they would have had. Oh, yeah. Yeah, apparently she was horrible. They they they a psychiatrist said she was a narcissist, a sociopath, and a hysteric. Wow. So she must have been a nightmare mother. Like they the kids said she hit them all the time. She's someone who in the 1800s would have been like a good mother. You know what I mean? Like in Brooklyn and the fucking 1800s would have been like, well, she keeps her kids in line, you know, and like would have never Yeah, would have never gone to trial. That's right. She would have had like a funny name, like a, you know, yeah, bully Betty, and then exactly would have never. Oh, Mrs. Slappy. So

that's the first one that like affected you that was the first that I read that story. I can still remember the feeling of reading it and being and the whole description of her turning around in the car and shooting the children and just being like, it was basically, I had an equal opposite thing of like, I realized this was a possibility. Right. I didn't ever have to consider. Although my mom did own the book. So clearly she was interested in this situation. She's like learning about it. She might have been doing research. Yeah. But it was just that thing of like that adults just not to trust adults. These are very hard lessons that we both learned. And I wonder if they they've taught us what we what we started a podcast about, which is anything

can fucking happen anytime and you need to be on guard for it at all times. And don't and don't don't take things for granted or like judge books by covers and don't do the things that that average people get tricked by. Yeah. Because this woman, it was like, she looked like Lady Dye. And she was like, I would never hurt my children. And everyone's like, okay. And if she herself had stopped doing interviews at that point, right, it it may, I mean, who knows, they would have had to prove everything else by evidence. I think it's funny that like my my story is a dad story and yours is a mom story. And what it is is that anyone is capable of anything. Yeah. Yeah. Anyone could be lying to you at all times. Also, it's we picked the worst dad and the worst

mom was kind of of all time. Yeah, but these are the things we remember as children. This is what you and I remember as children. Yeah. Yeah. Dude, kindred fucking spirit. You know, what's funny is so I wrote before we pre came over, I wrote like on the Facebook page, like, you know, I was right, like, we're about to record. Here's the topic comment with your story. Yeah. Which I think is like, so smart. Yes. And it's really smart of you, Georgia. The same murders. But some people wrote things and I was like, quickly looking over them. And one of them is yours. Is Diane Downs? Diane Downs is fucking in there. Yay. Should I read a couple? Yes, please. People's. Yes. And thank you for the people who are now running the Facebook page. Aren't there,

didn't you say there's two people who are what do you call it? Yeah, we have a couple moderators moderators. That's the word. I'm burping. Can you hear me burping or is that like, I didn't hear it. I saw you whip your head back. I think what's in your head and then you realize it's just going straight into a microphone, which sometimes you just don't even know. I'm like, that's life. I'm going to read you a couple. Okay. You just made me want to die, but we're just going to keep going. So someone wrote, do you smell chicken soup right now? I'm like a fucking. Do you think it was your burp? No. No, I'm like a bloodhound working fucking smell shit really. Okay. Someone says Zodiac, my mother had a book about him and I

snuck up. I snuck it at age 10 to read it. So that's, I think that's what happens. Yes, I do too. Oh, I just got a whiff of the chicken soup. Yes, I do. How good is that? It smells really good. I remember my mom took away my brother's copy of the outsiders, which made me want to read it even more. Oh, I loved the outsiders. Betty Broderick hometown murder all over the news when I was 10 or 11. My dad's boss's daughter was murdered when I was around 15. Oh no. That started it all. Yeah. Uh, Diane Downs, she shot her three kids and still to this day will and try to say a man on the road shot them. And there were six replies saying, yes, this is the one. Yes. I read this book and I haven't seen the movie, but I think about it all the time. Oh, that's

right. Farrah Fawcett stars in the lifetime movie. Shut up. Yeah. Yeah. And Ryan O'Neill. Brilliant. Not actually a movie, but the, uh, a murder, but the spontaneous human combustion episode of unsolved murderaries, unsolved murders. And then she said, actually, actual murder, probably Ed Gaine. Ed Gaine. Ed Gaine. That's a classic. Yeah. But I remember that episode of unsolved, is it unsolved mysteries? Yeah. Because it's the picture they show is just this lady's legs. That's the only thing left. Sticking out of the chair that she combusts. And it's amazing. If you actually look at spontaneous human combustion, it's actually really interesting that like there, there might just be a friction in of things in your pocket that lit on fire.

And, but you're so gassy and fatty that you're basically a human candle. Yeah. Oh no. I think you mean me specifically. I can shake the walls of my farts. Anywho. Someone wrote Red Helter Skelter in seventh grade 1982. Girl. Unsolved mystery in general was my gateway drug. And someone said, uh, let's see. Yes. That number, the, uh, son of Sam got obsessed after the crazy John Leguizama movie about it, which just shows how young people are. Summer of Sam. Yeah. That I was in, I was on a speed, speed when that movie came out. And I couldn't watch John Leguizama. He was real annoying. Someone said watching silent witness with my mom. Which one was that? Was that the, uh, silent witness? Someone said, uh, the, you know, the

Kara Homoco and Paul Bernardo that we've talked about before. Let's see here. The West Memphis, the West Memphis three. Yeah. When I was in fourth grade, my friend's dad, perhaps foolishly, let us run a VHS of paradise lofts, the night of the slumber party. Oh, no, honey. Just too young. Honey, no. Oh my Lord. Me, me. That is like, I'm going to step on the stop button. Um, let's see here. The clutter family, the, from the cold, in cold blood. Yeah, that's heavy. Of course. Son of Sam. My mom was a pretty girl in the seventies and in New York. Um, and she's, this person says New York in the seventies was an awful sounding and, and scary place while also being fascinating. Yeah. Like I would go back in time and go there. Yeah. But you'd need

like an armored car. Yeah. Or to be like a punk rocker. Yeah. Uh, someone says, I just remember our stumbling across the date line one night when I was in high school. Fuck yeah, dude. Lizzie Borden, Manson, Zodiac, another Lizzie Borden, Jonestown, best month of three, helter, skelter, helter, skelter. That's how you say it in Yiddish. All classics, all good kickoffs. I'm not a lot of Ted Bundy's. I thought there'd be many more. I guess he's, he's a bit old baby for this group. There are some more and rules like she just like rolls. She enrolled. Yeah. She was the greatest. And those books, she just wrote books that were so easy to read. They were easy. Like Stephen King books that were like, this is intense

and complicated, but I don't feel stupid. And also she would, she's made single like one-off murders interesting, which I never was interested in, but like, you know, we're getting behind the mentality of a person who like killed their wife or whatever. I need to go back and reread a couple of those because like in my mind now, I'm too sophisticated and I don't care and I don't want to know about Ted Bundy anymore. And like, I know everything, but like, if she's such a great writer, then I should just be able to go through it. Yes. Well, and also her Ted Bundy that's a stranger beside me is great because it's her first person account of working with Ted Bundy. How stoked is she that that happened to her though? Like she's a little stoked for real.

And she's also, she is in, if you look up down downs, she's interviewed in that 2020. No way. She's still alive back then. She's since past. She's the best interviewer. She's like someone's sassy mom. Can we do a book club and like read one of them together? Like when we haven't read before. Okay. I'm actually really interested in the Lacey Peterson case. You're not. No, I am. That was in your, that was in your area. It was in Modesto, which is very, it's in the East Valley, basically, the Central Valley East Bay. Like there's no way he didn't do it, right? Oh, you 100% did it. I know. It's so, it's so gross. This is a new Simpsons. It is. Oh, and how many people, I loved how many people wrote to us because they're going to do a true, a true version,

not a, not a, not like OJ, but a real version of Jon Benet. And we had maybe 10 different people going, you guys have you seen this, which made me so happy. This is our Super Bowl, Karen. Yes, it really. Like, I know we've said this before, but we need to watch this together. Like we need to have special episodes that you can, we'll just, we'll all watch it together. We'll all watch it together. That's actually a great idea. Because you know, our friend, Joda Rosa and Pat Walsh, they have a horror movie podcast where they watch the movie and talk during it. And it's so hilarious because you can watch the movie yourself, but then you can watch it with people. It's as if you have two friends that are dominating the conversation. We watch wrestling does that too, but they'll

watch like, um, they'll watch, uh, WrestleMania four and just fucking talk about it. And there's like silent moments in it. And it's fine because we're all watching it together. Yeah. I mean, but you and I won't check up. We'll get high. I won't be able to. Yeah. I'll be talking a lot. Should I edit that out? What? That we're going to get high. Well, we could do whatever we want. The only way I yell at television is when I'm high. And it's pretty funny. I remember because I watched the Oscars with you. One of the greatest. Oh, it's funny. Oh, wait, we do have a, I have a corrections corner moment because a couple people wrote this and I was so embarrassed, but it also made me laugh. I like cry laugh. I can't wait. I do not think that Manitoba is a

city in Canada. I know I said it the way I said it made it sound like that. Although I can't claim to know, uh, inherently know the geography of Canada. I do. No one said that. Did they? It was the way I said it. Cause I said the bus went from Brandon to Manitoba when someone was like, which is like, that's like saying it's from, goes from Las Vegas to California. There's or essentially calm down. Well, but just so people know. But I mean, at the same time, if it's written in Wikipedia, I'm reading it to you and I'm not going to double check anything. Listen, this is not, we're clearly the most researched podcast. Manitoba is a province and I know that. Okay. Right now I am looking up the word whore in our, uh, my favorite murder

Gmail. Cool. Because I needed to find the email that said notes and resources about sex, sex workers in episode 10. Oh, so someone named Sam, uh, wanted us to know that, um, um, I know that neither of you are involved in sex work. Thanks Sam. You don't know that. So I figured I would just let you in on a few things. First off, a lot of sex workers and people in the quote adult industries take a lot of justified offense at the word prostitute, which is another way of saying whore, which obviously doesn't fly. Some prefer to be called escorts, but over, over calling people involved with sex works, sex workers is really the right option, which I, I did feel there were some people pointing out that like we were like, uh,

kind of rude. I was kind of rude about sex work and I, I want to clear it up. So this person said, the way the quote work is highlighted, that it's a job that should be considered as a norm, as normal as being a paralegal or construction worker. Furthermore, most cops really don't give a fuck about sex workers in any capacity. This extends to people in porn as well. That is why safety and clarity and communication and a level of protection are inseparable in sex work and why hearing about a male porn actor raping and harassing female costars is just as, if not more, jarring than hearing about another piece of trash serial killer. That said, there are really good resources out there for people in sex work that offer help and advice for

awful situations that may arise. I highly recommend SWOPUSA.org and sexworkersproject.org for anyone in sex work. Um, I just wanted to clear that up that like I said, I said something about like how no one chooses to be a prostitute. Yeah. And I, I understand that it is so much bigger than that. And I felt, I feel bad for saying that. Well, and I like the fact that we have listeners that then send us information, like constructive information, because that's very true. Yeah. And we are, and we've said it a million times, but to people having conversations about something that we're interested in, we definitely make mistakes constantly. And so anytime you hear, any of that, especially if it's something that you take offense to, or that you think needs,

we need education on, we are happy and open to hear about it. Especially because nothing terrible has happened to us, either, either us. Like it's not like we're, we're saying this from experience. We haven't had our fucking sister or a cousin or whoever get murdered. So we're, we're a little more flippant about it than we would be if these things had happened to us. Right. Exactly. And we don't, we, we just have the interest of the, of, we have just the interest from distance. And that's the reason that we can take, take the take that we have, but we also in no way want to offend people or, or, and we certainly aren't judging anybody at all. And we absolutely would never judge a victim of any crime. And this guy made a good point, which is like you guys, we have a,

we have a platform that we can announce these things. And so we're lucky and we should do it. And I totally agree. And I, I don't want to seem flippant about sex work being like a lark, you know, or like, like not a big deal or not a choice, which it is choice. And it doesn't mean that you're a bad person or. No, not at all. And if you get yourself into a situation, it's great that, I mean, that that's a beautiful way to end that email, which is here's some constructive like a direction someone can go if they want to go in that direction. Totally. So they do have options. I agree. Very cool. Yay. I feel like this was a more serious episode of my favorite murder. It's kind of like personal. Well, because it was kind of about us. It was about us a little

bit. I mean, these, these are the things that fucked us up. These are the reasons this podcast exists. I have to say it, it definitely fucked me up, but it also, I got, I was also thrilled to understand. I feel like I was, I was raised very, um, kept away from like the realities of life, both of my parents or like blue Carla workers, my dad's a fireman, my mom's a nurse. So they saw a lot of the bad stuff of life and they wanted to keep my sister and I so far away from it. And I, it drove me crazy. Cause I think I always had the sense of like, there's more going on than they're telling me. So every time I would find an Ann Rule book or I would read an article or whatever, I felt like I was getting one more piece of like what's really going on. Yeah. And

I think that that's, that's another way to look at it and maybe a good way to look at it too. It's just like, as we said a million times, it's almost like the more information you have and the more you know, the better off you are. Yeah. Like the adult, we are as children, I think children, especially understand that the adult world is, is something we don't, we don't totally get. Yeah. And we're always like, as children are trying to understand it. And so we know someone's hiding something from us and we know like when something happens, our parents react to it and we can sense it. Yeah. And we want to know, like you and I are curious fucking people. Some people aren't. Yeah. I think the people who are into, into murder and into true crime are curious

fucking people who want to, who want to know the dark side, even if they know that it's going to ruin them a little bit. Yeah. Because but it's almost like the option, it's like better that than not knowing. And some people are like, I just don't want to know, which completely makes sense. But I'm just, I've never been that person. I've always talked to my therapist, like how great it would be just to be like a fucking, I want to be him. I want to just live my life in suburbia and be unaware of all the awful things that could happen. And I wish I really, truly wish I wanted to be that way. But you don't, but I'm so fucking happy. I'm not me too. Because then we get to do this. Yes. Yeah, we're dark and it's okay. Hi. Hey, Karen. Hey. Well, this has been episode 12

of my favorite murder. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe. Please do that, you guys. That helps us a lot. And we're doing so crazy great. Our numbers are huge and it's because of you guys. So thank you so much for listening. Totally. Go to feralaudio.com and buy your Amazon shit from from there and listen to their podcast and and tell them how much you love us. And of course, don't forget to stay sexy. Stay sexy and don't get murdered. Bye. Bye.