My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 32 - Just The 32 Of Us

Episode Date: September 1, 2016

This week on My Favorite Murder, Karen and Georgia talk the life and death of pop singer Selena and then give the lowdown on the Zankou Chicken Murders.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. Hello, welcome to my murder. My name's Karen and I sure love murder. How about you, girl over there? This week, girl over there was played by Georgia Hartstark. Georgia Hartstark. And gee, I love murder too. And of course, engineer Steven is here standing by with his mustache and his

stuff, his equipment, his general style, his general style. Of the Percast. Oh, thank you. Yeah, welcome. Still trapped in the baseball. Vince, so we have our murderinos that we call people who listen to this podcast. I don't, we didn't make that up. No, we didn't, but that's what people call it.

Okay. And Vince said that, so Steven has the Percast about cats and it's been said that he's the people who listen should be called pervert. Three hours. You got to do that. I'm going to start doing it. I said you can have it. Thank you, Vince.

He said, go, you can tell him you can have it. That's a free one from Vince. Free one. Cool. Hi, everybody. It's episode 32 was up. I'm going to bring was up back. How are you? I've already threatened to do that was up.

And that's how she got murdered. She was so hacky. The town killed her. The city kills her. She, she got killed. Do you have a housekeeping? I mean, I have things I just generally want to talk about. Well, I'll say mine that are internet specific.

That are important. Yeah. Mine are for years are forced or just babbling. And you be quiet because it's mine. How much I hate TV. Oh, did you watch the last night up? I fucking, I just, I don't, there's a block and I mean to, and I haven't.

No, the answer is no. Well, then you don't want his DNA inside you. And you'll never get to have it. He was also on cold bear. We actually watched it work because enough people at my work like him that we are all like, let's watch. He's so as he is he cute and he is perfection. It's there's something like Disney ask about the scale of the

size of his eyes to the rest of his face. His nose looks like he got a nose job. It's so perfectly shaped. And then in general, he just has the he has the charisma, but he's very low key. Like he's smart enough to know not to overplay it. We're talking about Riz Ahmed. We're talking about Riz Ahmed.

Britain's own and he's got the British accent, man. Like the like the like street British accent. Yeah, stop it. But he can do any British like I only heard I only heard him speaking in a British accent when he was rapping. So I was like, yeah, he was trying to, he was turning it a little bit on, but okay, well, but also I saw him in the in the the unwilling fundamentalist.

What's that? He stars in a movie about an fundamentalist that doesn't want to be unwilling who doesn't the word isn't unwilling. No, sorry. It's part of the title. I'm his number one fan. But in that one, he had like a posh British British accent. No, I want it.

I want it to be dirty, please. Jesus, keep it dirty. Hi, Vance. It's this Karen. She said more gross stuff about Rizem at this time. The thing I wanted to mention was a woman named Liam Moffat made us this amazing animated opening to our podcast theme song. You can see it on the Twitter page.

You can see it on the Facebook page. I'll put it on the I'll put it on the we have a new Facebook fan page because people told us that that's how you're supposed to do things. Don't don't be closed off all the time. Maybe open some stuff up. Yeah. So we have a new Facebook fan page. I will post it on there.

It is it's your like how do you how did you feel watching it with your music and your voice? I couldn't breathe. Yeah. And but also it's that weird thing of like it's very strange when someone holds up something you did and goes now here's something I did to match it. Like it's just magical. I love it. Gorgeous.

And it's the cutest like the style of it is so like there's a little skeleton in every scene. No. And the way it moves the way everything flows. It's like but it's creepy. It's very creepy. It's all perfectly done. So Leanne Moffitt thank you so much for thank you doing that and thinking of us and participating in that very creative and cool way.

Thanks to everyone who like there's so many cute drawings of us even though we berated them last week. They like it. I know I keep posting them on Instagram. We have an Instagram my favorite murder and I just am constantly I like can't stop posting all day and I feel like I'm getting annoying because there's just so much cool shit to post. Well it's fun to be able to go like oh here's here because the people like it. Yeah. You notice their shit.

It's you know. Can I tell you my favorite one from our last episode is you know the part where I go dough a dead body a female dead body. Someone took a photo of my face and put it over the face in sound of music sound of music where she's singing on this on the hilltop to all the children. And it's just my little face like a perfect photo of me with my mouth open like looking like I'm saying and it says dough it is Stephen showing it to Karen right now. I will put that on the page.

Really. Who did it. Jessica P. Thank you Jessica P. Well done Jessica P. That is hilarious because also the George's face her mouth is open. It looks like she's going hi but it but she's holding a guitar. That's hilarious.

So much good shit. It's very good. You know sadly somebody put my face inside of Selena's face. No no no it's not not truly sadly. This is a comedy podcast but it was a picture of me before I stopped drinking. You can find such a range of hideous pictures of me online. It's hilarious. I hate it.

It's not cool at all. When your weight fluctuates it's you just and you get photographed first things a lot. Yeah. And you just you just kind of have to separate and you just I like for my thing is just like whatever I know what I look like. Might not. Oh my god this one where they put my face and just I'm pretty sure it was Selena's picture. It was like Big 80s hair with the pink background.

Did you see that Stephen? It was I was like is that Charles Bronson wearing a wig. Like it looked horrifying. I hate that. But of course I'm not complaining because of course all the people who saw it were like oh my god this is so cute where you're just like what. Anyway I had to complain. And also just we looked it up.

This was in oh wait this if it if it was from the Minnesota then you might not know what we're talking about but last week's Minnesota corner. What's that we have to say correction corner correction corner meow meow meow. Georgia talked about a lady who had a disease and many doctors frighteningly enough listened to this podcast. Yeah because those are the people or medical students I'm not sure people who know how it's actually pronounced. Well sorry not sorry I'm not a doctor or a medical student.

Never say sorry not sorry just don't be sorry. Oh okay yeah I thought you were berating me for trying to bring that back when you're trying to bring what was it. Oh good point no throw that right in my face. I accept that you're 100 right but I hate sorry not sorry because you don't have to be sorry at all. Yeah is that I I saw that crop up in like girls talking where it's like look sorry that's not sorry where it's like no no no what you start out as look motherfucker and then you say your actual opinion.

Sorry I'm yelling. Don't apologize. I'm so tired oh you're right. I'm so tired. Here's how you pronounce it. Well now I'm having a fucking seizure. I got it there's like that's a sound clip from some guys on the radio or something in England who also didn't know how to say Guillain-Barre syndrome.

Guillain-Barre well so there. Well consider me wrong again. Consider me always wrong. Correction Corna Correction Corna. That's it for me. I let's see what do I want to say. I don't know people are getting their shirts now and like okay this is so I'm so mad that I I don't have it ready to plug this week but it will be by next week.

We had I'm gonna just tease it we had a good friend help us create a new design for shirts. You guys all your favorite quotes yeah and they're fucking tits you're gonna love them. They're very cool looking they're very wearable and there's some of the quotes that you love and so we have the official t-shirts coming out the official my favorite murder podcast. You're in a cult call your dad t-shirt don't tell don't tell oh well that's a okay sorry that's a tease that was more than teeth well that was one of them that's just one of several one of several get ready and so shirts are going to be like happening maybe totes are going to be happening fucking me let's do some I don't know let's do some mugs why not do mugs you want to drink coffee

out of murder cups our friend is a very talented designer cat so it's going to be an appealing looking thing that also is the thing you like right so those are coming sorry to tease the shit out of it but um that is that uh what else how are you what do you want to say anything I wish you guys could see georgia right now her legs are so far up in the air she is the most casual person I've ever seen in my life this is the loungiest you're fucking lounging in your home lounging so hard right now as is your american right steven can you take a photo of me lounging right now i'll put it on the vent it takes my sweat i'm also sweating that's cool sweat lounging and uh i got a i got a me me cat on the

cool photo just happened check it on the well let's plug our places instagram.com slash my favorite murder oh the face that's like a picture finally a picture of myself i'm not mad look at those cheekbones karen i i wasn't even really sucking them in your parts a bit off look at you look so larry that's my entire butt also that's gonna end up on that's gonna end up on wikifeat i promise you can i have a wikifeat page i mean look at my feet they're pretty fucking cute let's be honest you deserve it thank you yeah i'm gonna own it you know why because i don't have a wikipedia page so i'm okay with wikifeat so you're gonna be fine here we go um you gotta break in somehow do you know what else pisses me off i'm not gonna tell you never mind i pissed off that my high

school they have like a list of like alumni who have done things not on there where's the list on wikipedia oh please will someone who's good at computers go on to wikipedia and edit that page what's the high school name woodbridge high school in irvine california woodbridge high school irvine california also let everyone know i hate i hated them all i hate them all no don't put that burden now this is your high school wikifeat page um okay the fan page okay here's this is hilarious so i try to start the fan page we can't use the word murder in the title because facebook is like we recognize a word that you can't fucking you can't say because you're not you're a grown adult okay you know what i mean i'm fine so it's mfm podcast is the name of the facebook fan page

cool so you kind of have to be an insider to know that it's the just the initial it's like winky wink and then i think that means also that maybe your front your family and friends won't know that you're part of a murder group it'll just say mfm yeah i think that's what people are worried about until they see the logo again grown adults yeah i mean that's the other thing too of all the people we know that that say i'm not weird i'm not alone you know all that excitement well now it's turning into because then the second wave seemed to be um people at work keep catching me listening to this and giving me those are seeing my the logo and giving me a weird look yeah but we just got a tweet from somebody who sent a picture that said was it on the facebook page

or twitter i can't remember were they hang up a sign on the door that says murder time do not come in and then listen to the podcast at at work all together like the whole crudas yeah well i mean she didn't she was very vague about all of it um i should i should find the name but if you guys hear this will you please send us at least slightly more information so we can give you a legit shout out because i it made me laugh so hard when i saw that or send us a photo of all of you listening secretly listening also i love that i've been i've been noticing in the facebook page likes i'll like look at some comments sometimes late at night and it'll be like comment comment comment and then someone will comment to someone who already comments and it'd be like alex you're in

this group you're in a arena like oh my god i can't believe it we're like we're totally good like it's people keep recognizing their friends in there and it's like hilarious i love it well the same thing happened to me with my sister's best friend adrian who i talked about i think on the very first episode she had a home count yeah she well she loved richard ramirez right so when i said who should i talk about she it came out of her mouth so fast that that's when i discovered she was a murderer before the podcast had even started and it was shocking because i've known her since she was 12 years old and i was 10 years old so and never knew that that was an interest of hers so she recently started listening she went backwards through it and has been texting me

constantly like dude i love this podcast so much and adrian and my sister were two of the most evil teenage girls anyone could have had the nightmare to grow up with they were sullen and sulky and i the only way they would let me hang out with them when she spent the night on the weekend she would come and stay the whole weekend with us but they would lock the door and leave me out of the room and what i had to do to get in the room with lauren adrian was make up a lip sync dance routine to a pat benatar song well we're not moving forward right now in this podcast and tell you fucking do that let's relive your nightmares we just basically play a pat benatar song but yeah that's all it'd be and then you'd be like right now she's lifting her legs straight above her head oh my god that's

so sister big sisters man well and also just if you're younger and you hate your sister just know that's gonna change around when you're like 22 and then you're gonna be besties for the rest of your life you're gonna become the cool one well exactly my sister knows what's up well and also i have my sister made room to thank for like all of my training because that's pretty much the most professional training i got and then oh yeah on stage it was pretty exciting i think my i'm scared i think my dad might start listening to this because it's what i thought he was already i don't think so because he was like i was hanging out with him over the weekend and he was like tell me about your thing like they don't understand it's a thing and i was like oh it's this thing and i'm

like well he doesn't know how to download podcasts and then he would like looked at his phone he like showed me the podcast and he was like this and i was like uh-huh yeah no it's okay he's cool he doesn't care about the f-word does he no my god no my god you can't have me as a child and care about the f-word i'll care about a lot of things honestly i think he's happy that i'm alive survived my own i am too i mean that i'm alive or that you're alive both of us me too it was supposed to be a compliment oh thank you um all right you guys we're gonna get into our favorite murders yes we're gonna take a quick pee break we'll be right back for my favorite murder skippers this is your time to come on home come on home be right back

what makes a person a murderer are they born to kill or are they made to kill i'm kandace delong and on my new podcast killer psyche daily i share a quick 10 minute rundown every weekday on the motivations and behaviors of the criminal masterminds psychopaths and cold-blooded killers you hear about in the news i have decades of experience as a psychiatric nurse fbi agent and criminal profiler on killer psyche daily i'll give you insight into cases like ryan grantham and the newly arrested stockton serial killer i'll also bring on expert guests to dive deeper into the details share what it's like to work with a behavioral assessment unit at quantico answer some killer trivia and even host virtual q and a's where i'll answer your burning questions hey prime

members listen to the amazon music exclusive podcast killer psyche daily in the amazon music app download the app today hey we're back skippers hey hey friends all right my favorite murder this week is salina continuea Perez no and the reason i'm doing it is that it is audio engineer stevie ray moore so the podcast favorite murder attributes i yeah no i you've been sending me shit yeah i was like sending me texts and i was like oh my god i'm watching it and then you see this erin brockovich did like a true crime it's crazy about it that i watched the day well i grew up listening to salina because i'm half my yeah i'm half mexican and so that music was always playing and i remember like even listening to music just feeling really sad for

you were you little when she died so you didn't know yet i i mean i knew it affected because i would still go over to my family's houses and stuff and like she was huge she was like madonna uh times 20 well i'll tell you all about it oh oh and then i see them continue continue oh i don't i mean i'm not mexican but i don't know how to speak spanish okay i wrote it down like i was very i didn't know to speak spanish either i know i know i know you shut up oops oh karen your doorbell phone is ringing um salina continuea Perez was born on april 16 1971 in lake jackson texas and was called the mexican american madonna oh i must have known that i've watched the movie with jaylo i haven't seen it it's wonderful gosh she's beautiful they were both beautiful and she was

poised to become a crossover success when her death turned her into a legend um salina's father discovered salina's quote perfect timing and pitch and helped his kids form a band and she was like nine years old when they started performing well the band once the pair his parents her parents lost their family restaurant the band became the family's main source of income and they were in poverty and this career salinas career just took them out of poverty um because they were evicted from their home during the texas oil buster 1982 and they moved to corpus christy texas which sounds very hot doesn't it yeah i think it's super southern in texas like down on the gulf maybe right um the family don't get i know i was like right do i want it well my cousin sure lived in corpus christy

when i was like in junior high okay but uh why do i ever say anything is that a big military town i think it is yes in fact it has 25 that i have no fucking clue let's just talk about corpus christy for the rest of this um so then the family band began recording music professionally and in 1984 when salina was i think 13 the band released its first LP salina uh los dinos i hope i hope you don't get salina uh and fred flinstown's dog dinosaur hate mail can be sent to karen kill gareth karen i'm just translating karen kill girl apartment or house at the address is all right um um so yes steven you are correct salina was a third generation texan of a mexican descent so she didn't grow up speaking spanish so she didn't know any but uh she learned all her songs phonetically

and when her popularity grew she had to learn it and she did it very quickly just like rock set like what the band rock set what were they german uh yeah our swedish or something oh they had to learn english well no they just sang phonetically they didn't know what they were saying that's funny must have been love but it's all that she had no clue what that song is oh but it's so powerful but it sounds so the ignorance makes it powerful that's what it is like because that's what love does to you like she's a stupid idiot that's right um uh okay room popularity in the year 1987 she won the uh uh tenejo oh god i like tahano tahano music award i like i was watching videos to get this correctly and i'm just screwing it all up tahano music award for female vocalist of the

year and then she landed her first major record deal with capital uh latin in 1989 so she performed several times at the houston astrodome to sold out crowds of more than 60 000 people well and after her death time described her as uh the embodiment of young smart hip mexican-american youth um from a titanate family and a down-to-earth personality a Madonna without the controversy essentially she was a huge mexican-american star in her community and was poised to become a mainstream sex and that community was obsessed with her and proud of her and felt like you know she was one of their own yeah and she was a big fucking deal yeah and she seemed like a very sweet person everyone in her band was her family except the guy the guitarist they hired who she ended

up marrying oh like they were they seemed like good people there it's like a joxson five situation totally like super talented young kid yeah but not creepy and her dad was the manager um so they were very more like a partridge family but there we go but actually yeah we're like a manson family fuck um cut that out don't cut that out not sorry all right where am i cut to mid 1991 yolanda saldevar she was so you see all these photos of her and videos of her she was when she got arrested she was 35 years old what that's quote unquote my age she's 35 she looks like a fucking grandma yeah okay so 91 yolanda saldevar was around 30 and she was an in-home nurse for patients with terminal cancer and just a fan of tahano music just a fucking random woman

she had a history of stealing money from her employers as well as trying trying to become intertwined with the lives of other performers and she attended one of selena's concerts and became a fucking psychotic fan with the intent of starting selena's fan club she started obsessively calling selena's father leaving almost 15 messages until he gave her permission in June of 1991 to be the president of the fan club which sounds like okay you know what take this run with it to your thing right right because you're harassing us yeah so i mean that's it's it's the thing that they didn't know back then that people know nowadays which is don't engage right yeah 15 calls to anybody at any time is too many yeah i don't care if like you have a

flat tire and you're going to play it's too many calls and she wants to run this thing and make us more money and it's the thing that we haven't started and maybe it'll help her with her like this is what i'm thinking was there you know what i mean i'm just saying that's three calls totally in a day totally totally also like you don't need to have contact with her after that okay so as president of the fan club she was responsible for membership benefits collecting money and promoting selena um all that kind of thing and she actually didn't meet selena until december 91 but they became close friends and in london became a trusted trusted by her whole family in 94 she became selena's assistant and quit her job as a nurse

oh i didn't know that yeah i did not know that i thought she was just the fan club no she became her assistant she quit her job as a nurse even though she was making more money as a nurse than she was doing this like she was just so obsessed and had posters all over her house and people come over she would just make them watch selena videos talked about nothing else and was just like kind of like crazy about selena wow yeah i was kind of that way about kids in the hall for a little time but it was a dark period of my life yeah i was just i had flunked out of college and i was just weirdly obsessed it was when they were running them on comedy central and i just it was the only thing that made me happy oh that laugh was the creepiest that was i've never heard that laugh before i just

realized i mean every we all have the potential everybody likes a thing sure like crazy and wants them like has this feeling of like ownership and like yeah and like no one understands it the way i understand it it's almost made for me kind of a thing yes but have you met them and told that see my thing is that and maybe it's just from working in tv i i really don't like celebrities like there's nothing more disappointing and i think most people know what these days from reality tv and stuff celebrities are very disappointing in real life except for us uh yeah no they're just i mean the most they'll be is slightly pleasant but for the most part you will you will have regretted trying to be like hey can i get a picture i'm a big fan or whatever

you're not gonna get you in and it's some obscure thing and they're like okay they don't care it's super weird it's like you know yeah it ruins it almost so yeah good luck everybody good luck in life with your fucking cute little fantasies all right well then so in 94 Selena starts opening fashion boutiques she has two of them opening up it's called Selena etc i didn't know that yeah i didn't either because she has this crazy style it's very 90s and very like on point like you know almost Madonna-y but a little more hip cute it's those cute well from what i remember in the movie there's like a lot of ruffles yeah and a lot of like you know shimmery velvety pants and stuff like that hoop earrings and red lipstick and yeah it's totally pretty

fucking sweet um so so she she's opening these clothing these fashion stores and asks saldavar to become the manager of the boutiques so saldavar because of doing this is authorized to write and cash checks had access to the bank accounts associated with the fan club and the boutiques and salina gave her an american express card for the purpose of conducting company business so she put her stalker she made her stalker the ceo of the company doesn't know that she's the stalker though oh right oh yeah she's salina has no idea that she's the stalker she just thinks she's a good friend of hers that's like willing to do all this hardware yeah that's like you know salina's in this bubble of becoming famous and touring and all these things and this person is

becoming a trusted confidant and and is a huge fan and clearly is an intelligent woman if she's a nurse yeah a lot of other yeah totally okay yeah and everyone said she was very manipulative and good at you know being manipulative yeah um 15 calls that's all i have to say yeah 15 it worked somehow so within a year saldavar um had mismanaged the boutiques and they were failing and then upon investigation the family finds out that saldavar had embezzled more than i i saw 60 thousand but i also saw a hundred thousand dollars wow and forge checks from both the fan club and the boutiques but salina refused to believe it she was like no way that's my friend like even her father who was a manager and her husband and brother were like dude they were like dude

probably not like that um but eventually salina kind of sees some shit going on and believes it and the family fires her tells her not to come near salina um but salina still wanted to become friends stay friends she was like you don't work for me more but let's stay friends so at this time saldavar purchases a snub nose 38 caliber revolver and here's what i think is the fucked up thing is a 38 caliber hollow point bullets then the bullets were designed to cause more extensive injuries than normal bullets oh no which like throws out later we'll talk about it so on march 31st in 1995 she convinces salina to meet her alone in a days in a motel room promising to restore just return financial documents that she had stolen and telling salina

that she had to come alone and that she had that yolanda had been raped and needed someone to talk to oh no and this she has to make up this lie because three other times in the past like couple weeks yolanda had tried to get her alone and it had been foiled every time and her husband had come or did they had met in a parking lot or something like that so she's so yolanda was trying to get her alone yeah so in the hotel room they kind of they kind of fight over um the the documents and as they're doing that the gun comes out and salina turns to run and out the door and saldavar shoots her in the back as she's running out severing an artery leading from her heart and it came out the front of her chest on the other side so it's kind of like a shoulder shot

uh-huh and salina is running towards the motel lobby as she's bleeding and saldavar comes there was a witness said that she she chased after her pointing the gun at her and calling her a bitch salina ran 130 yards to the motel's lobby and collapsed on the floor and meanwhile yolanda is now trying to escape in her car um and it was theorized that she's heading to the recording studio where the rest of salina's family is to kill them oh that's what they thought but a police officer who was around the corner responded stopped her and instead of getting out of the car she pulls the car into a parking space um and gets kind of blocked in in this parking spot so she's in her car in a parking spot with a gun won't come out in the meantime the motel staff is trying to

help salina and ambulance comes in less than two minutes but salina's pronounced dead at 105 from loss of blood and cardiac arrest her last words were this fucking makes me want to cry her last words yolanda saldavar saldavar room 158 those were her last words like not tell my family i love them she was just trying to make sure they knew yeah which makes me so sad it's just like the last words out of your mouth are the about your killer's name well yeah i mean i know like i know like you should get them out but then it's just a wish it could then be like something sweeter she was only 23 years old oh no no baby well an autopsy is performed and this is what i thought when i heard about her running after getting shot she died of heart failure wait no we realized salina's

heart fueled by adrenaline and i think from running pumped all the blood out of her respiratory system so i feel like if she hadn't run she either might have gotten shot again by yolanda but but or the blood might not have it's those hollow point bullets yeah i mean i don't think you can get shot and it comes out the other side and you can survive that right no because isn't that part of it is like they explode inside you and so when they come out they just instead of a bullet hole size coming out it like rips out i mean those things are right yeah well that's the thing is so event so salivar is trying to say i was trying to say that it was an accident that she was going to kill herself but it's like well why did you buy those bullets then yeah like you clearly had a motive

so meanwhile there's a nine hour standoff with yolanda in which she is in her car with the gun to her head hysterically on the phone with the hostage or with the negotiator trying to say that she didn't mean to kill her she was an accident she was trying to kill herself um and all these other excuses but ultimately um let's see da da da da da she gave herself in and she got arrested she's tried for first degree murder and claimed that the gun quote accidentally went off and all these other excuses but ultimately it didn't work and the jurors deliberated for less than three hours and on october 23rd 1995 they found salivar guilty she sentenced to life in prison with a possibility of parole in 30 years which is going to be march 2025 but everyone's like she is so

incredibly hated in texas she will be murdered and she has to be in um solitary confinement because of that because the rest of the everybody wants to kill her in jail yeah everyone in jail who is huge salina fans her whole life wants to fucking murder her yeah that's i mean yeah yeah so she's she spends every day 23 hours a day alone in a nine by six foot cell um let's see so the case has been described as the most important trial for the latino population and it was compared to the oj simpson murder trial um it was one of the most publicly followed trials in the history of texas wow her posthumous 1995 crossover album dreaming of you debuted at number one on the billboard charts and became triple platinum and that just gave me

chills i know she was the first hispanic artist to have a predominantly spanish language album debut and peak at number one that's so fucking cool i know i mean terribly sad but also because i remember that being in the movie where it's like the it's a tragedy anyway yeah but this was someone who was poised on the verge of crossing over at a time before that was like before jailo before any of those things were happening we remember like in the late you and i and people in the late 90s like this huge this huge latin pop explosion it became that was like the first time it became mainstream so selena's doing this in the early 90s yeah so she's for ricky martin right before like any of that where it was kind of like the sexy you know yeah chikira any that wasn't that

wasn't on um on american pop radio yeah like that was not on there at all so it she was kind of a trailblazer and seemed like a good person and this fucking psycho bitch fan like i didn't i didn't know i always pictured it differently and it's just like so fucking tragic well it's also fascinating that thing of like when you can it's like when you were saying you know she's just this random person but you do trace those things of like a person who embezzles a person who um like those kind of smaller crimes it that's how every story goes like this where it's like they always have a background where they're trying to get anything they want at any price and they have like gray area morals too yeah like i don't like yeah someone if i knew a friend embezzled

money i would not trust that person you're not allowed to steal money from other people it's not your money no no you don't get to have to abide by certain rules in life and not screw other people over and you don't want to be that person like i remember there was a cafe i was working at when i was uh a teen and i had it in my mind i decided that i could take a $20 bill when i was closing at night so i could buy beer because they only paid me minimum wage i had this whole rationalization totally and i did it two times was wracked with guilt about it and then the manager told me did i tell you this or the manager who was also my friend like someone i hung out with he goes i don't have something's going on we're always short i think it might be the janitor and then i

was like oh my because that's what happened you steal somebody else could go down for it or like i mean the idea that he even would suspect this person who has nothing to do that it then i thought maybe he told me that because he knew it was dead because it was always me he did or it was me the two times and that was just a manipulation which god bless you genius move yeah but also like and then i like the next week i was talking to my dad on the phone and we were talking about something else and then he goes karen there's some people out there that just can't keep their hands out of the till oh and then i almost threw up because i was like i almost wanted to go that's me my dad it's my my sweet dad is talking about bad people and i'm the bad one you don't want to be the bad

person no you don't you don't need whatever the thing is you think you need you don't and get your own get your own get your own you can yeah keep your hands out of the kitty that's super weird that i talked about that picture it is so weird sorry about the time you know i don't care it's super like we've never talked about her before no not at all that is super weird um did i talk about your murder yet um what's interesting it no no all right karen but you've lived near it i'm sure you've heard uh about it okay because um it's the zanco chicken murders and there's one on my way from work driving here there's one here i drove by one yeah let's tell everyone

let's give everyone directions from zanco chicken to my apartment that's why i got real vague yeah um but this so my mouth is watering um zanco chicken is so good zanco chicken is legendary in los angeles if you've ever visited here if you have friends that live here and you're not wealthy you've probably eaten here because zanco chicken is the best food that you can get for a decent price um and everybody knows it and everybody talks about it it's up there with rosco's chicken and waffles um in that way of like if you're here you have to go try this definitely and pinks pinks hot dogs i think pinks is shit it's so shit but it's fun to stand in line drunk so go there i'm not gonna lie i have fucking chopped some chili dogs my day but i

for 20 years i've driven by pinks and watched people standing in line at three in the morning to get those hot dogs so the first time i went there i was like this is gonna be crazy and it was just hot dogs it's just hot dogs but yeah they're gross in a good way yeah it's like greasy drunken food total totally okay so um there i got most of my information from this awesome article from los angeles magazine that was written by a guy named mark arox and it's from april first 2008 there's way more information than i could even entertain so if this interests you at all um look at that you can google it and it'll come up right away and i remember reading this um probably five years ago because the when this murder happened everybody knew about it

all of a sudden and everybody was crazy freaked out about it it'd be like your local mom and pop cafe like some terrible thing happening there but the story behind it is kind of fascinating because it's like so in los angeles there's a there's a city that's right behind the hill that says hollywood on it right behind that city is both burbank and glendale i mean right behind that mountain is burbank and glendale and glendale has the single largest population of armenian people that isn't armenia in the world wow it's huge and armenians came there after um they were there was the turkish genocide which there we see parades about and and flags about and it's like it's weird because i never heard of anybody being armenian until i moved to la and now i feel like

i know a ton of stuff about the armenian culture simply because like i live in burbank i live close to glendale yeah so anyway this is this um restaurant zanku chicken was started originally in beirut lebanon by a man named uh vart and the pronunciation on this is going to if you're armenian or if you're just not uh a valley girl it's going to offend you uh vart kiss is kindarian and his family started the first zanku chicken in beirut in 1962 oh wow and um then they brought it over here in 1983 um and and it was the the chain actually was opened by marderos who is the son and um his parents were not interested in having a restaurant in america they wanted to do your do dry cleaning maybe go into the suit business they looked into all these other businesses that were

more um kind of reliable than a restaurant but um uh marderos believed that this he looked around and he saw how few um middle eastern restaurants there were with so with such huge populations of people that would appreciate the food there was almost no food to feed them that was like from their home totally um so they opened their first restaurant um at the corner of sunset in normandy um in east uh east la halla hey and um the la times said it's the best roast chicken in town at any price which is kind of really saying something for the all those shishi restaurants they have here totally the zagot guide um would say that zanku was one of america's best meal deals america not just la which is cool jonathan gold who's a very famous um food writer he adores zanku chicken

and reviewed it and said it the chicken was superb and nothing in heaven or on earth compares with the garlic paste oh my god that garlic paste the garlic paste is what everybody talks about and it was invented by um marderos's grandmother shut up and his mother makes it made it all by hand so it was a secret recipe people still don't know what's in it it's this white paste that you get with your chicken and your rice and your hummus and your pita this little tub it's like a side on the side and it is tangy and pungent and garlicky but there's something else going on it's kind of like butter like you can't figure out all you want to do is eat it and put everything that you eat into it and then for the next day you're belching garlic yes it's like you're filled

with garlic you it's it's quite an experience yes um so that was kind of their secret weapon aside from the fact that they figured out that other rotisserie chicken places they realized you have to move the chicken itself and you have to play with the temperatures you can't just keep it on one temperature all the time so they basically kind of went in there and tried to figure out how to give people who wanted to eat authentic middle eastern food the best version of that food and not just go like here yeah here's whatever so which is amazing apparently one time on curb your enthusiasm larry david referred to it as chicken so good it could end the rift in the middle east so like everybody in la knows about this was also in a beck song that's right that's right um there

was a there's a list on wikipedia of all really all the popular culture things there was somebody on buffy the vampire slayer also like to eat there um so they started as this hole in the wall chicken place um and after i would think like over two years they were making two million dollars a year holy shit and half of that was pure profit oh my god so they um they were doing obviously great so there were rumors oh so in this article this is one of my favorite things in this article um this guy mark the writer talks starts out by talking about the Armenian culture and everything and he says there's a saying that little old Armenian ladies say in Armenian which is let's sit crooked and talk straight which totally made me think of us oh my

isn't that the best let's sit crooked and talk straight that's basically let's gossip i that is us to a T and i'm fucking in love with it it's the best so of course in the Armenian um i keep saying culture but what i mean is community um they uh this family rose to prominence obviously because they're all of a sudden started making this um tons of money and their food was crazy popular but they also were huge philanthropists and gave so much back so they were kind of famous within that community because they were a huge part of it yeah um so there was gossip it was never confirmed that Pepsi was offering the company 30 million dollars for the chain and the trademark holy shit um and this was when it was kind of like peaking in in its popularity um and at that same

time even though uh Medeiros's parents did not want to expand they just wanted to keep that one the first shop um he was like we he kept fighting to expand he's like we have to do what we have to do it so finally they agreed to split and what they agreed to do was um mer i think it's Merderos sorry if i'm i know i'm pronouncing his name wrong but they agreed that that he would take the concept and he would build the chain and any stores that he opened um doing that whether they failed or succeeded would be on him okay um because that's basically what the family was afraid of don't don't let's not lose all our money we got a good thing let's just keep this good thing going and in return he would sign over his stake of the original in Hollywood to his parents and his two

sisters but they weren't splitting it wasn't they weren't they weren't um you know it was they were still completely together as a family the garlic paste was still made by his mother um at all the zancus which i just can't get over is this woman who was probably at the time in her uh i would say probably late sixties early seventies um and and they say in this article they talk about how this mother um what i think her name is margaret um spelled with r it she worked she got up at seven thirty every morning and went into work and worked till seven o'clock at night and when she was done cooking for the restaurant she would start to cook for the people that worked at the restaurant oh my goodness like cook people they're homemade you know food from home that they liked take a

break honey no she couldn't do it she was like obsessive which i love oops sorry that's uh that reminds me of my grandma like my grandmother's index fingers were both bent at almost like right angles because of how much she cleaned oh my god she was she came over here from Ireland when she was seventeen and she was a maid for most of her life until she met my grandfather so it's like those old country people are just like we're here to earn it we're here to get you're able to you're able to do it yeah that's right and also if you start a business you got to put give it your all so you make it into something and they really did they were this amazing family success story um and merderos well he would constantly say to the whole family success means nothing if

we don't stay as one greed must never rear its head there's plenty for all of us and so he had a sister and she had two sons and they uh they loved all of each other they were cousins but they were they felt more like they were each other's you know he had four boys she had two sons they were all you know very very close um in fact his wife was quoted as saying uh before we married he told me i'm going to live with my parents my whole life i will never leave my mother um uh she was queen of the house not me next to god it was his mother holy shit so just to give you a sense of that uh so merderos is diagnosed uh sorry i'm i don't have the date on this but i believe it was in like 2001 i think or so um he gets diagnosed with

inoperable bladder and brain cancer holy shit um so he basically felt like he knew something was wrong he had pains in places but he didn't go to the doctor he avoided it and so by the time he went in it had spread um so he holds a family meeting and he tells his mother and his sister and his wife that he's dying and that when he dies he wants the zanku business to go to his four sons now the problem there is that his four sons were at the time and had been for a couple years fuck ups and in ways where the oldest son had been caught um trying to cheat on a law school entrance exam and so was had been a top student at i think it was woodbridge university and so he basically got kicked out and was like barred from ever taking the test because he was

going to cheat wow so after that he became an evangelical christian he was like one of those guys that stands on the street holy shit with a bullhorn yeah um the second oldest son uh was tried for attempted murder when the pimp of the sex worker that he had just uh visited um stole money from him and he ended up chasing him up the freeway and shooting at his car and he he ended up getting uh tried for attempted murder wow and it it turned out to be a mistrial um so he never had to go to jail but of course that mark and and of course you know if this is the richest family in the community and like this starts popping off everyone's talking about it um then the two younger were basically just on drugs but when i was reading this article it sounded so harsh but

it's like that's that thing of like i i feel like you can't get rich quick like that and have things just go great yeah because once you start getting all the money you want and you can buy all the things you want then you start wanting the things you can't have yeah and it gets a little nuts like that oh i got it um look at my riches i just please watch your behaviors what i'm saying um um okay so when he makes this announcement the room goes silent because that's he's saying yeah they're the ones that should get it and his sister and his mother are both just staring at him and um let's see it says his mother sat stone faced she didn't ask what kind of cancer he had or what the prognosis that the doctors gave him instead she blurted out in Armenian your sons

the shadow they cast is not yours and then she got up and she walked up the stairs and shut the door holy shit now she lived with him as he had said him and his wife Rita um she wouldn't speak to him so she would get up at 7 30 every morning go to work come home they'd be standing in the kitchen she'd get a glass of water and go upstairs and shut the door your son's dying yes and as he was getting chemotherapy as he was losing his hair he ended up losing 60 pounds oh my god uh he was he was dying of cancer silent treatment that's so sad it's really fucked up and it's um it's very old country i mean it's it's it's how some people are it's hard um and obviously i think knowing at least based on what the wife says the relationship

that he had with his mother this was breaking him it was it was terrible sure um so after a year of the silent treatment he went into his mother's room and he took down there was a picture of him as a child in Beirut with her when he was like four years old that she had kept up on her dresser he took it down he took out the picture he ripped it in half he burned the half with her on it and he crumbled up the half with him on it and threw it away and then put the frame back up and holy two days later their house catches on fire yeah yeah and their house they him and his wife almost get caught in the house they have to get rescued by firemen the house burns down the mother takes you know her stuff or whatever i don't know how much she had left and moves in with the sister

so she's gone and that's the last house catch on fire or we don't know no but he as he's going into his sickness and on you know i'm sure tons of painkillers and in a weird place he's telling his son steve that the fire is his mother's doing that she knew based on what he did to the picture that that's that was her and oh my god i can't stop doing that okay steven we need a new setup sorry uh so yeah he's hallucinating basically and saying that uh that it was somehow her doing um he believed that his mother and her sisters and his sisters were plotting against him um they are to not give your fucking kids this goddamn business well yeah i mean i mean yeah yeah they were it's it's everybody's worst nightmare it's kind of

like oh so this this is actually what it comes down to really at the end um so steve having to hear this and of course loving his grandmother and being in the middle of it said can't you ever forgive her and um merderos was quoted as saying god will forgive the devil before i can forgive my mother holy shit um and then he said because this is a mother not a devil which is super sad it's like yeah ultimately your mother turned her back on you when you were in your worst place and also it's that thing of i'm sure after years and years of busting her ass to make this restaurant work he was gonna come in and be like here's how it's gonna happen so it's like giving bad news and bad news like she could also be like you know how some people get mad at someone who's sick because it's

easier than the sadness you can feel yes so she might have been mad at him that she had to watch her sunday yes and it's easier than it's a thousand percent easier yeah yeah that's it's a stage of grief totally but she um yeah it's it's hard yeah because when someone else has a disease then it's all about them and how hard it is for them you can't be mad at them yeah i'm sure she had tons of guilt it was just this impacted problem yeah um so anyway on january 14th 2003 merderos who had been bedridden and was dying gets out of bed puts on a white silk suit that he hadn't worn in 20 years wow gets a nine millimeter handgun and a 38 caliber revolver and walks down the stairs of his house his wife rita couldn't believe what she was seeing dude and she she said in the

way it's written in this article for a man so near death cancer everywhere he looked beautiful so he's having some weird last yeah later on in the article they went uh he does not have that outfit on okay so they think that she's remembering it because it's this yeah crazy moment and she's remembering him basically as his beautiful young self that she fell in love with because it's a really beautiful story but she they lived across the street from each other on bay route and she he was 19 and she was 12 and he was like no no no they did that that's not when it started that's when she first noticed him because he was like okay the high roller yeah don't be freaked out it's actually very sweet and then when she got older like she was 18 and he was like 26 yeah

they started dating okay um so it's very sweet like she was in love with them all her life um so she said you're too weak to go anywhere please get back in bed and he said i feel better don't worry i'm just gonna go down to zanku and see my friends so she to see an old friend and so she you know was like all right i'll see you soon but he didn't go to zanku god damn it he didn't go to zanku he went to his sister's house um the housekeeper lets him in um he sits at the table housekeeper gives him lemonade his sister comes downstairs she was in the shower um they sit and have a pleasant conversation and share some lemonade um then a margaret uh the mother comes home from work uh around 2 p.m and uh she greets him she says hello to the daughter first then she says hello

to him puts her stuff down sits at the table and the housekeeper goes downstairs to her apartment because she knows that they need to talk to each other um so they talk for about five minutes and it's just normal chit chat and then he reaches into his waistband for his gun and he shoots his sister across the table shut the point blank and then his mother screams and runs for the door and he runs after her and he blocks the door he stands in front of her about like 15 feet away from the door it said and he raises the gun in our meeting and she says don't shoot me please please and he shoots her eight times he shoots her once she goes down on the ground and then he stands over her and shoots her seven more times holy shit he looks around the room and sees his

23 year old nephew is on the stairs no no no no no and he just turns around goes over into the living room sits on the couch and shoots himself in the head holy fuck are you serious yes so oh my god now Rita the wife well at least at the time of this article was had to be in charge of all the zankos no and it was this whole they were in court about the trademark and and who owned the rights to it was it's this huge thing and uh i didn't even get into it because there's there's so much more to this article the poor woman after year maybe years or maybe however long taking care of her sick husband yes that's fucking stressful as hell and raising four boys who are not doing who are fuck ups who

were rich kids you know who were like who were rich kids and she was a very traditional uh kind of old school wife where she didn't work she didn't go to the store she stayed home and was a housewife and took care of that family and suddenly just got thrown into this i wouldn't ever want to raise rich kids you know no well but also because that's not anything you have experience with so like they're having a whole life that you don't even they give you whatever they want yeah so then then after taking care of her sick dying husband then this happens and she has to be in charge of so much shit she didn't expect to be in charge of yeah that poor woman yeah so i don't know that's um that's that rough story behind the best restaurant in LA who owns it now is it still in

the family i think they still do but i'm not sure i didn't get like once the um murder part was over that article goes on forever talking about all that part yeah so i figure if people are super interested in who owns the rice chicken you can go for it but i don't give a fuck um i want to a my stomach is growling i know are you hungry now oh that's i want to eat four chickens i do sure i'm like already thinking about what i'm gonna order tomorrow oh my god there um wow i know what a messy bloody scene to be cleaned up i know oh yeah that housekeeper was bombed stop it karen um wow yeah that was good that was a good one i like that one at least it didn't it i liked it because uh yeah there was food there's delicious food that i got to describe it wasn't all tragedy

yeah that was good good food talk well well well you've done it again speaking of food talk oh uh yeah go all over the place can you guys rate review and subscribe on itunes and thank you if you've already done it because we've uh we're we're very popular podcast because of you people that listen and tell each other and make little groups at work and shut the door and you'll tell your everyone tells their sisters too which i love i know everyone tells someone you and then they bond over it and i love it and the new trend is dad's dad's because i just got a tweet today about a girl who's no way just discovered that her dad listens everyone tell your dad tell your dad if he's chill with the f word right um don't tell my dad don't tell karen's dad please um thank you

guys so much for listening it's really lovely and stay sexy and don't get murdered damn Elvis you want a cookie do you want cookie