My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 103

Episode Date: December 31, 2018

This week’s “New Year’s”-themed hometowns include family skeletons and solving a murder.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. Hello. And welcome to the mini-soad. That's my favorite worder. This is the one where we read your emails that you sent to us while you're crazy different interesting stories. Apparently it's New Year's Eve right now for you guys. That's right. Goodbye 2018. Go fuck yourself. Truly and deeply. Just let's fold that year up. Let's light it from the bottom with a big lighter. Watch it go up. Don't burn your thumb. Please drop it. Right as it really starts to take

you. Take light. And then just let's look to the future of 2019 being peaceful, beautiful, success, satisfying. Give me an adjective. Happy. A full of cats and dogs and happiness. Yep. Here's your stories, guys. Happy New Year. Wow. One of the better infros we've ever given. Can you tell it's late at night and it's not New Year's? Do you know what you're going to do for New Year's right now? No idea, you. I never know until the last minute. I have to tell you I just got invited to my friend's party and it's a party of people that I like that are like adultish and kind of cool where I'm like, this could be the New Year's Eve that turns it all around for me. Great. I'm coming.

Just saying I'm going to grow my nails out real long for New Year's. I'm guessing Vince and I will stay at home and watch movies. Think so? Yeah. I've been treating the past I'd say eight New Year's like they had nothing to do with me. Just like that there were none of my business. I mean, that's yeah. Right? Yes. Because what am I supposed to do? If you're sober, you really have to do some internal work to enjoy New Year's. Do you like barfing and do you like 20 year olds barfing on the sidewalk? Well, then get out there and get into it. But if you don't, do you like not being able to park anywhere and other people drunk driving? And Uber rates up in the 3,000 percentile? Right. Okay. So let's see. This is an interesting email

to kick off. It's a New York story. It's a ghost story. Oh, shit. And then there's there's also a tech aspect to it for all you techies. Weird. The subject line is haunted Apple Watch weather report. Okay. Hi, Karen, Georgia, Stephen Menagerie Associates. Here's a little ghost story for you. For nine years, we celebrated New Year's Eve at a family friend's house. And because we all have kids, we do a countdown at 9pm and call it good. Love it. It's so funny. Everyone goes home because no one ever wants overwired kids. A few years ago, the host family's husband took his own life. But we've continued to have this party anyway, because it's been such a long tradition. It's bittersweet. And this was the second year he wasn't there. This year, when we got home, my mom

called to wish us a happy New Year to talk to my kids, etc. And because it's been super cold, she asked the weather. Since I was on the phone, I looked for the temperature on my Apple Watch, where I use an app that does snarky weather updates. For instance, right now it says you're gonna take these clouds, you're gonna like them versus mostly cloudy. I like it. It's more fun than the basic weather app. So while talking to my mom, she asked the weather, I checked my watch and the update had nothing to do with the weather. Instead, it said, I sent a ghost to haunt you tonight. His name is Jerry. And Jerry is the name of our deceased friend whose house we were just celebrating. Oh my God. I made my husband come over and take a picture before it went away,

because again, I was on the phone and couldn't do it myself. And 20 minutes later, the message was back to the regular goofy weather updates. You know, what's cooler than a million dollars, the weather outside. I immediately texted my close friends knowing Jerry was an early adopter and love tech. Those that knew him decided that if he was going to send a message, a snarky weather app would totally be the platform. I now check the weather all the time. Haven't heard from him again. And I hadn't seen any non-weather related updates since. Anyway, as says DGH, say sexy, don't get haunted, Gretchen. Steven has a photo of it. The actual photo. Wow. Oh my God. That's amazing. We'll post it on our Instagram with this post. Because also, it's like... That's creepy.

Tragic deaths happen and people have to go on. And that is that kind of thing of like, no, you don't stop doing it. You keep on doing the tradition. And that's what a lot of people just do. You make do. Yeah. So that's kind of amazing. And then it's like a little weird little message. That's super creepy because it's not like it's someone at the app was like, midnight, I'm going to send a goofy thing. It's like 9.50 on that clock. And that's not a goofy weather thing. No. It doesn't have anything to do with anything. And that's this fucking rando name of the person. Right. Is it Jerry Garcia? All right. This one was sent to me and I just, it's not New Year's theme, but I just, I love it so much. Okay. And I think you'll love it too.

It's a little long. Okay. My favorite murder story that I helped solve. Hi, Karen and Georgia. And just so you know, I got permission from the scroll to read this. Oh, good. Okay. First of all, your podcast is amazing. I'm a huge fan and fellow serial killer murder obsessed weirdo. I'm an artist and all of my art actually has to do with bringing peace to women who have been murdered. But onto the real reason I'm emailing you my favorite murder story that I totally helped solve. So I work as a manager at a restaurant in Brooklyn, New York. I have dealt with anxiety and depression for years and earlier this year to started to start micro dosing with psychosib, how do you say it? Silo-sibin mushrooms, shrooms.

Silocybin. Silocybin, thank you, as a way to cope. Now when you micro dose, you don't actually trip, you just feel a little energized and much happier. So mid July of this year, I'd been micro dosing for a couple of weeks and everything had been going fine. I woke up late one morning and didn't have time to eat before I left for work but still decided to micro dose. This was a mistake because I took them on an empty stomach. By the time I got to work, I was full on tripping. I was managing it and staying calm and things were going fine until the bartender wanted his lunch break and I got behind the bar to cover for him. No. Next thing I know, two NYPD detectives with guns strapped their hips, wearing fancy suits, walk into the restaurant, come over to me at the bar

and ask to speak with the manager. Me. No. At this point, I'm starting to panic but managed to remain calm. They then introduced themselves as homicide detectives and my face lights up. I literally obsessively watch true crime, listen to true crime, read true crime, etc. They proceed to tell me that a couple days before, a young female nurse named Samantha was murdered in her home in Queens. She had been raped, strangled, wrapped in a sheet, and then shoved in her closet. Her brother and father had found her after they broke into her apartment when she didn't respond. Horrible. The detective's going to tell me that they believe she met the man who murdered her quote on a popular dating site and that they had just started dating but had not yet met any

of her friends and family. They tracked down, they tracked the last known place the victims credit card had been used and lo and behold, it was at the restaurant across the street from ours. Then the police tell me that the other restaurant does not have good security footage, but the couple had walked in right in front of our restaurant and security camera and restaurant security cameras. So they need me to get the footage so that they can run facial recognition software on it in order to identify the suspect. Let me remind you that I'm still tripping balls and all I can think is oh my god, this is real life true crime shit happening right now right in front of me so I can't shake this freak of a grin off my face. Legit they must have

thought I was crazy. So I managed to pull myself together and go downstairs with the detectives to look through security footage. After about 30 40 minutes of searching, our time stamp was awful up and luckily allowed me for time to start coming down from my mushroom trip. Yeah, they were able to find the footage they needed and both the victim and the murderer walked right under our cameras. They then thanked me took the footage with them and told me to stay updated on the story. Ooh, not two days later, I follow up with the story and find out that detectives ran the footage from our security cameras through facial recognition software and identified him. They then track him from New York to guess where Los Angeles. Now this is a really other crazy,

really crazy other part. They raid his hotel room where they find not only him but another woman tied up who was being tortured. No, they saved the woman and he is currently in prison in California facing charges of rape kidnapping and torture before he can be extradited back to New York to be charged with the murder of Samantha. His most recent interviews with a reporter who visited him in prison, he said that voices in his head told him to murder Samantha along with four other women in Connecticut and New York area that he met on dating sites. He said he quote liked them and didn't want to kill them, but the voices in his head made him murder them. So that is my favorite murder story and the story of how I helped Thomas had detectives identify and catch a killer while

I was tripping balls on mushrooms. I hope you all enjoy my story. And I was like, this is bullshit. I wouldn't have heard about this. But then she's like, here's two fucking links about it. And it's 100% true and even fucking crazier. Wow. It's bananas. Thanks so much. Best regards, Kelsey. Wow. That's so crazy. I know. Just the idea and it's hilarious and insane and also kind of makes me panic the idea that she was tripping. Yeah. And then have you ever been around an actual detective? Because I had a homicide detective knock on my door one morning. Thank God I was like, I think I'd already miraculously taken a shower, which normally wouldn't happen if I was just around the house and was like wearing a bra. But somebody, there had been

a shooting like down the street from my house. Oh my God. And so it was just a guy asking if I'd heard anything or seen anything. And I had the exact same reaction where I was like, um, um, and I was like, I was like, I heard something. The dogs barked. I checked my back fence to make sure no one jumped over my fence. And that's it. But it was the it's a whole different realm of person. Yeah. Because it's all fucking holes. It's I kind of have a lunch conversation with him. And I was just like, I can't speak. Yes. There is a there's a gravitas to these people. They they're in the shit. They do the shit. They're trying to fix the shit. It's and oftentimes they wear really good suits. Yes. So there's colored suits and they have but then they have a gun.

It's a gun in a suit which scares me. I'm scared to be around guns. It's sexy and scary. It's attraction repulsion. It's blood sugar sex magic. Okay. It wasn't that funny. It was because also you couldn't see listener home is Georgia like looked down at her hand and listed those off on her fingers like like it's clearly this red hot chili peppers album. Anyway, okay. Thanks. Homicide detectives around the world. Yeah. And you're wonderful suits from the men's warehouse. Your service and your suits and your sex and magic and your sex and your magic and my blood sugar. Okay. Here's this one doesn't have a subject line. Hello, beautiful people and animals. This happened in 1998. I just graduated high school and I thought I was grown

like all 18 year olds do. Nope. Number one, I met a guy in a chat room online. Nope. Number two, we started meeting in person. He was in college and lived in a dorm. So when he invited me over, I thought it would be fine. Yeah. Nope. Number three, I went at night. I got into the dorm, which was tiny. It consisted of two beds and a tiny kitchenette. Nope. Number four, this guy walks into the kitchenette and is in there for what I thought was too long. Suddenly he turns around and is holding a fucking butcher knife and is walking toward me with the most maniacal look on his face and smile, smiling from ear to ear showing all his teeth. I can still remember what he looked like at that moment. Oh my God. So I just took off my shoe, which was a steel

towed Doc Martin boot and hit him in the face as hard as I could and just booked it out of there. I've never told anyone the story, but decided to share it with you guys. Stay sexy and don't meet people online. Hope. P.S. I still have those docs and I wear them when I meet new people. Hell yeah. How fucking hilarious is that? And sorry, the subject line, which I didn't read you because I didn't want to blow it, was my Doc Martin saved my life. That's one of those really cool things that you always wish you would do and you tell yourself to do is to not wait till he's like, just kidding. That was a joke. You fucking hit him in the face because how dare you fucking pull a knife on me even as a joke. Well, also, if that's a person, if that is

a person who would do a joke like that to you, that's a dangerous personality. You don't know them well enough. Get the fuck out of there. That's not a joke, actually. As a person who's studied jokes for quite some time, I can tell you right now, a butcher knife and people who are half strangers, that's not a joke. No. That's a person that's trying to scare you. A butcher knife when you know someone so fucking well is not a fucking joke. Hit your sister in the face. Hit your sister in the face. You pull Doc Martin if she pulls her knife on you. Do the practice of, and you can say this too, you can be like, this is just a boundary I draw for myself. If you walk toward me with a butcher knife, I will kick you in the face. Totally.

That's just my personal rule if you don't want to be friends with me because of that. So be it. And the end. I have my boundaries in life and you know you hit the boundary when I hit you in the fucking face with my shoe. I'm not against also hitting people in the face with a shoe if they smile and show all their teeth because you don't need to do that. Too many. That's too, that's, you're doing Stephen King shit when you're showing all your, even your back teeth when you're smiling. No, no, no. Stop it. We don't need to see all of them. You're no one's that happy. The two in front convey the message. Yeah, if that, I get it. You could try to do it like me where if you're worried about your yellow corn niblet teeth, you can smile as if you're always

not that happy with the situation. It's a smile that goes, I wish it wasn't like this. I'm mad at you for making me laugh. Okay. Looking for a better cooking routine with meal planning, shopping and prepping handled. Hello Fresh has you covered. Hello Fresh makes home cooking easy and affordable so you can stay on track and on budget in the new year. Hello Fresh meals are convenient, seasonal and delicious. Stay cozy all winter long with classic comfort foods available weekly. Why stop with just dinner? Now you can enjoy Hello Fresh's expanded menu of quick lunch solutions, weekend brunch, simple side dishes and amazing desserts. Karen January is going to be my month for Hello Fresh. I am so sick of takeout. I miss cooking so much. I haven't lifted a knife

or a pan since like early fall. So I can't wait to get back in the kitchen and Hello Fresh makes it so easy and also makes it so that my food tastes good, which is hard to do on my own. It gives you everything, everything you need. So get up to 20 free meals with purchase plus free shipping on your first box at hellofresh.ca slash murder20 with code murder20. That's up to 20 free meals plus free shipping on your first box when you go to hellofresh.ca slash murder20 and use code murder20. Goodbye. Hey, I'm Mike Corey, the host of Wondery's podcast against the odds. In our next season, three masked men hijack a school bus full of children in the sleepy farm town of Chowchilla, California. They bury the children and their bus driver deep underground,

planning to hold them for ransom. Local police and the FBI marshal a search effort, but the trail quickly runs dry. As the air supply for the trapped children dwindles, a pair of unlikely heroes emerges. Follow against the odds wherever you get your podcast. You can listen ad free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. Okay, here we go. Okay. Holiday Boozen reveals skeleton and family closet. Oh, hello, Karen, Georgia and Stephen. You guys mentioned recently, sorry cats. He doesn't, this person doesn't. You guys mentioned recently that the holidays were a great time to pride long hidden secrets out of drunk relatives. There's no better holiday for drinking than New Year's Eve in my parents' house. And it was

actually child's play to get my mom to confess something Soto voiced. What does that mean? Soto voice, it's whispering. Oh, that's a theater major right there. Thank you. After astronomical levels of wine, while the men in the family were safely tucked away in the garage to better access the beer fridge. I could fucking picture it. Got a beer fridge. When I was born in 1991, my parents lived in the small town in Iowa with a population of about 4,000 people. Everyone knew everyone, but the way she described it, more menacing than a cheers vibe, everyone was all up in everyone's business. My dad work as a butcher and was handsome but shy, a combination that charmed all the old ladies in town into knitting me baby blankets and sewing

me quilts. But apparently there was one customer at the meat counter who took things too far. One day shortly after I was born, the police showed up at the meat counter to tell my dad that he'd been subpoenaed to testify in a divorce hearing for a couple in town that my parents didn't know. He said there must be some huge misunderstanding because he'd never met the couple in question. He sat down with a husband's lawyer who showed him a picture of the wife and though he recognized her as a customer of the store, he was adamant that he did not even know the woman. Oh, no. The lawyers then showed him hundreds of pages of crazy sex sexcapades that this woman had written about in her diaries that supposedly went on between herself and my

dad. Oh, shit. Like crazy level stalker fantasies. Just whole diaries filled with kinky ramblings. Don't get your hopes up though. No amount of alcohol was, no amount of alcohol has made my mother give up the dirty details, trust me, which I think is probably best for you. You don't want to hear your, no. Yeah. Let's try to get your mom to tell you dirty shit about your dad. Absolutely not. Anyway, needless to say, my dad, my shy dad was mortified and the lawyers know in no certain terms that the lady was making all this shit up. All of a sudden done, he didn't have to testify and he got a restraining order. Shit. I asked my mom what the woman's name was. I wonder where she's living now, i.e. it better be freaking far away. It's been 26 years and she no longer,

no longer remembers. I personally would have prioritized that shit as something worth remembering though. I am also sworn to secrecy. Didn't ever let my dad know that I know he was a subject of crazy lady's erotic fiction. Maybe I'll pull this story out of him next New Year's Eve. Stay sexy, but not so sexy you become an unstable mid-western housewife's unwitting news, Katie. I'm sorry, but it's true. Like a hot, shy butcher. Oh yeah. And you're just like, you're just some ignored housewife that's just kind of trying to make it, make your day-to-day work. Totally. And then you're just like, I need pork chops again. I need something. I need a hard pork to pork chops. Hard. There's a sexual innuendo there that I don't feel like.

But there's sexual innuendo all around the whole butcher situation. Yeah. It's very carnal literally. It's very, you know, it's basic. It's almost caveman shit. Yeah. We're just like, look at him cut that thing. They're like, make this thing for me and wrap it in a pretty package. But he's all like eyes down like, well, excuse me ma'am. And then you're like blushing while he cuts your pork chops. He likes me. He likes me. Dottie. She's got Defiance Disorder. There you go. Goodbye. Dottie. Just be cute, but not loud. Amazing. Butchers everywhere. Uh, now I'm going to write some butcher fan fiction. Butchers. All right. Are you ready for this lighthearted Christmas found in Wall Story? Sure. Hi. When my grandparents were tired. That was such a sweet

butcher, a shy butcher high. That's a shot. Oh my God. I have to go. I have to go get a couple of sausages. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hey, you want to go in the back and show me where the real meat is? I don't know. What's the thing? Is that sexy? Is that sexy? Was that flirting to me? Where are the, where are the? Hey, do you want to show me where the real meat is? And he's like, holy Christ. Hey, where are you? You forgot I was shy. Let's take your gizzards. I'm not shy. Hi. Let's take a look at that. Sweet bread. Show me your gizzard. Big boy. Okay. Sorry. We'll continue practicing this. Okay. Hi. When my parents, sorry, when my grandparents retired, they sold the house my mom had grown up in to my parents. Right. Keep it in

the fam. Got it. We lived there for 15 years until my parents built their dream house, moved out, and started renting the old house to friends. Several years later, the house was burned to the ground in a wildfire. Basically, the only thing left was the chimney. Once the ashes cooled, my parents and their tenant picked through the rubble. One of the few intact things they found was a little ceramic figurine. No one knew anything about the figurine, but my mom brought it home as a memento. A month or so later, my grandma noticed the figurine and started to laugh. You finally found it, she said. My mom was totally baffled until grandma explained. When you were little, you loved playing with the figures in the Christmas nativity set that we displayed by the

fireplace. One year, you lost one of the wise men. I was so mad. There's supposed to be three, and you just can't get a replacement wise man. But you just found him. On close inspection, you can see that the figurine was molded into old fashioned clothes and was painted until the fire burned it off. We figure mom must have dropped the wise man into the crevice between the chimney and the wall, making him irretrievable until the wall was destroyed. Oh my God. There's a happy ending to the burned down house too. My parents donated the land to Habitat for Humanity, and now a family lives in a new house built there. Blue. It's not blue. That's the person. Blue's the name. Okay, but was that an evil fire starting wise man? Yes, but he waited years and

years. He's going to make a quick funny joke about it. Wow, that's creepy. I'm going to wait till everybody related to losing me moves away. Yeah. That's creepy. I know. Isn't it good? But it's like, imagine, then I just go crazy thinking about like all the things hidden in a house. Yeah. If it's a family house that's passed down and all the things are just like, this was in a crevice. One time at our old house, I remember looking into a heating vent and seeing something down there. I bet there's so much shit in heating vents. And pulling it off and finding a ring down there that was like, it was either mine or my sister's. We had lost it like a year before. But then being like, I think that was one of my first treasure experiences

where I was like finding lost things where it's like, oh yeah, you don't think about, is something drops and you didn't notice it? Well, the weird thing too is when something should be somewhere and disappears, like my mom, my sister was a little baby toddler, dropped my mom's wedding ring. It was never found like on the floor. One time I threw a Barbie at my sister's head, the shoe flew off into the closet and we never found it. It was like, where did the shoe? The shoe should have been there, you know? And I always figured we'd find it when we moved, but we never did. Yeah. Where'd it go? I don't know. But that just made me think of my favorite picture I ever saw in Tumblr was someone put Barbie shoes on two cigarettes.

It looks like... That's funny. It looks like a person walking down the street. It's my favorite picture. I like that. It's really, I love Barbie shoes. Yeah, they're really ridiculous. They're such choking hazards. Right? Because you had to chew them. Oh, I totally chew them. Did they still have them? I chew them all the time. I don't know. Does Barbie still have normal shoes, choking hazard shoes? Like a seven-year-old right in and just tell us. What's the Barbie shoe status right now? That's right. Is she still in permanent high heel position? That's perfect. That used to stress me. You know, my mom didn't let us have Barbies. No. She was against. Huh. My mom should have been. If someone gave them to us, we got to keep them if it was a gift, but she wouldn't buy

them for us. We were obsessed. Like, that's all we did is played with Barbies. Yeah. We got weird, hippie. Like, this is a family that owns their own RV. Yes, exactly. They own their own organic farm. For real. My sister got a thing one year and we were both looking at it like, what the fuck? We've never seen a commercial for this family where the mom is shaped normally and the children are, you know what I mean? Like no one wears a corset in this family. I used to steal my brother's fucking GI Joe and he and Barbie would bang. Hell yes. I would just smash those plastic bodies together. There was something so satisfying about smashing Barbie doll bodies together and whatever weird made up sex idea that you have. That's what you think fucking is. Right. And you

just got to work through it. It's kind of, I feel like in a way they kind of gave them to us that was part of like, get ready for this weird panic that's coming in four years. And that is what sex is. Just smashing your plastic fucking bodies together. Smash your plastics together. God, I got to get my plastic smash pretty soon. I haven't had my plastic smash in fucking ever. Oh, I haven't had my plastic smash in 25 years. Has a bit of plastic smash in 25 years. Hey, y'all. Happy fucking New Year's. Happy fucking New Year's. Listen, let's all promise each other, right? Fucking now, let's set our intentions for 2019 that we're all going to make it happen. Make it happen.

Let's make it happen in 2019, everybody. Let's all smash our plastics together on 29th day. Plastics tonight, but safely, but say safe, safe and consensual plastic smashing all night. Let's do this thing all of 2019. Y'all stay sexy and don't get murdered. Goodbye. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Elvis, want cookie? Good boy. He's like, yeah. App's a fucking tip.