My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 12
Episode Date: December 5, 2016On this week’s selection of hometown murders, Karen and Georgia read a tale by a 13 year-old, share a listener’s Ted Bundy connection, and more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/pri...vacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Hi Karen.
Hi.
Hi.
This is my favorite murder.
This is a mini-episode.
So a mini-episode of your hometown murders where we scroll and scroll and scroll through
our My Favorite Murdered Gmail account.
We hustle up on your hometown murders and we read them back to you in our own voices.
So many.
We could do a fucking telephone of these.
No brag, but we have so many emails.
It's not, it's not, I don't think it's bragging that there's so many people who are interesting
that are emailing us and yet you, and yet here I am.
And yet here we are bragging away about our emails.
You know how like you're trying to impress someone so you're like, I have over 10,000
emails?
Yeah.
Well, that's us.
Is anyone impressed by that?
Yep.
Really?
Yeah.
I think like people that run internet servers and, oh my God, I'm getting like an alter just
thinking about that.
Yeah.
It's like we have 10,000 book reports to do is how it feels to me.
Good times.
Hey.
Do you want to go first?
Sure.
Okay.
This is called Into the Woods, a murder mystery.
And this is by Robin.
Hi, Robin.
Big fan of the show.
No matter how many times you guys joke about 12 year olds listening to your podcast.
I am 13.
No.
I am absolutely in love with true crime and think you guys are so funny.
Oh no.
Oh no.
Someone called the police.
Please.
Robin's been kidnapped and someone else is emailing this from her.
Robin.
Her account.
Robin, stop it.
Go to the nearest adult and tell them.
Robin, put a chair under the doorknob and listen to this.
Okay.
In 2012 in Carterville, Illinois, and then they said, that was just a test.
Hopefully you passed because they know how bad I am and stuff like that.
Two people by the names of Jake Wheeler and Jesse Evans were camping in the woods.
Uh-oh.
They came across a neighbor, Danny K. Costin, and they were found shot to death at their
campsite in little Wabash River.
I bet you can't guess who did it.
Yeah.
It was Costin.
So they come across, I guess they come across the neighbor, then they end up thugging.
Okay.
Then they end up dead.
So he's...
Watch the Fs.
Watch the Fs.
13.
No.
You got it.
That's fine.
You got it.
You got it.
He is currently serving a 52 year old prison, 52 year old prison sentence and will probably
get out.
Hopefully my parents will have moved from our incredibly small town by then and I won't
have to find out the hard way.
I know this is not the most interesting murder, but I freaked out when I found out about it
on an episode of Nightmare Next Door, the investigation discovery show.
I've watched that show.
Fuck yeah.
Yeah.
This episode is entitled into the woods.
Anyway, hope you got to read this and if you don't, if you didn't, this was a complete
waste of time and I could have read at least two articles on H.H. Holmes.
He's one of my favorites.
Oh, and by the way, I found Karen and you a picture of an alligator and a raccoon riding
on its back.
Yes.
Probably.
Sorry for the typos.
Some of the keys on my computer won't work because I'm using my school's laptop.
I am in science, but our science teacher is kind of stupid, so I won't get caught.
No.
Don't get murdered.
Goodbye.
Wait a second.
That was a 13-year-old riding us from science class.
Why am I not as cool as this 13-year-old riding us?
You little asshole.
You are fucking cooler than us.
I couldn't figure out how to work anything when I was 13.
Do you know I just only want 13-year-olds to listen to this podcast?
I think we can, we can start really focusing toward the 13-year-old demographic.
We can shape the fucking future.
Do you know that?
It's in a shitty fucking old person's home when we're old, it's like 13-year-olds.
If they just band together and take care of us.
If they like us.
That's right.
Hey man, chill out, cool chill pills, Robin.
All the chill pills.
No chill pills.
That's wrong.
Yeah.
And then go crazy.
Okay.
There you go.
That was great.
Thanks, Robin.
That was rad.
And also.
Chill.
And chill.
All right, this is from Lauren and the subject line is my best friend's grandma was Ted Bundy's
Sunday school teacher.
That Ted Bundy got around.
Yeah.
My best friend's grandma was Ted Bundy's Sunday school teacher.
Holy shit.
And it starts, hi girls and kitties.
I recently found her podcast and binge listened to every episode this past week.
It has really helped me pass the time while my husband is deployed.
I'm listening all the way from Japan.
Oh my god, thank you.
And what a rainbow flavors we have on this episode.
Beauty.
13 year olds, people that are deployed in Japan, everything we could possibly want.
Okay.
Love it.
My best friend from high school recently told me her grandma was Ted Bundy's Sunday
school teacher and she said he was such a cute and charming boy.
Yep.
Shutter and parentheses.
But that's not why I'm here.
Oh, she lured us in with that.
Good job.
My hometown murder is from Spokane, Washington, the killer is Robert Lee Yates, Jr.
Shortly after high school and dropping out of college, he worked as a prison guard and
then joined the army.
He was stationed in Germany and Somalia during his service.
He was living in Spokane, Washington when prostitutes, we like to call them sex workers,
were showing up murdered and raped.
The police had discovered a pattern and started following people that had picked up sex workers.
He was pulled over in his white Corvette.
Oh my God, red fucking flag.
Just after picking up a woman and he told the police her father requested him to pick
her up and take her home.
So the cop just let him go.
No, no.
It worked.
That worked.
She was taken just out of sight and let go.
Oh, so she was let go.
He sold the Corvette to get rid of all the evidence because that's where the murders
took place.
Then the police finally narrowed in on him as a suspect.
They tracked down the new owner of the Corvette, which was a local cop's sister.
Oh shit.
Yeah, back.
Goodbye, Robert.
DNA evidence led to his arrest and he had 16 victims.
They also suspect him of 26 unsolved.
What?
It says miseries.
Probably was sex workers in, but it's probably murders.
Again, I guess it's miseries.
I bet it was miseries of sex workers in Germany.
God damn.
This was so scary to me growing up because he was most active between 96 and 98.
So I was five to seven.
What made it worse was he was a beloved neighbor father and had been my brother's cub scout
leader.
Oh my God.
Oh shit.
He was finally apprehended in 2000 and was sentenced to 408 years and then sentenced to
death in another trial.
And they got out in six years.
He had this same attorney as Gary Ridgway, the green river killer.
That guy's got it not feel good about himself.
Yeah.
He's not doing well.
Thomas Kumaro who said Yates, oh that's them.
That was the attorney's name who said Yates and Ridgway are virtually the same person
in terms of crimes and life history and yet were treated differently.
I also have to say how much more I love you for mentioning my favorite childhood story,
the green ribbon, where the girl's head falls off at the end.
That was at Halloween.
We're talking about that.
Yeah, scary stories to tell in the dark.
It's from the book in a dark, dark room.
Photos below.
I don't know why I love that so much as a child.
My mother always thought I was a creep.
There you are now.
Great work.
Love the podcast.
It's now my favorite.
Thanks for bringing laughter to such a depressing topic.
I have a cat, Lily.
And every time she hears Elvis, she starts meowing.
So I think she has a crush.
Love Lauren.
Oh, do you remember this picture of the green ribbon?
Oh, that's a really even if I don't remember.
I don't remember this one super creepy in the dark 70s illustration.
I don't know that one.
In a dark drug room.
Mine was off of a record that we all sat around.
Yeah.
I think it was just like a fairy tale.
Dark tale.
He's so creepy.
Thanks, Robin.
I'm going to do one.
Lauren.
That was from Lauren.
More.
Robin was 13 year old.
Robin was 13.
Hi, Robin.
Hi.
Thank you.
Okay.
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Goodbye.
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This one's called From Arcade in Yorkshire, New York.
This is by Lindy.
Okay.
I just finished listening to your podcast.
Love it.
So this is what happened in my hometown.
Okay.
Back in the early 90s, there was a man that was killed in his truck behind the Ames store,
Andy Gasper, with one fatal stab wound to the chest.
Speculation was that the killer was his wife's boyfriend.
Look forward to when I became driving age, my insurance agent was Sheryl Gasper.
Just a few years ago, the case was solved and Sheryl Gasper and her former boyfriend
were charged with murder.
And she confessed to coercing her boyfriend to kill her husband.
I was so fucking shocked.
My second story, in the mid 90s, my second story in the mid 90s, my parents divorced
and my dad lived in an apartment above a divorced mom with her two kids.
I stayed with my dad and his girlfriend, now wife, off and on, but my mom had primary
custody.
Been there, done that.
Yeah, that's really...
Not fun.
My downstairs neighbor always seemed to order food every night.
Little did we know it was actually an FBI agent, FBI agents changing shifts.
She was being stalked, I think she means her stepmom, was being stalked by a well-known
rapist whose name she doesn't know, from prison and she was under protective custody.
This man was in prison and had an accomplice that would follow her and give explicit details
to the man in prison and he would write her letter saying how good she looked in that
skirt and creepy shit like that.
One evening after change in FBI shift and after her two children went to bed, the accomplice
tried climbing in through the window and the FBI agent was there, pointed a gun on him
and said, if you wake up those kids, I will shoot you.
Oh my God.
We had zero knowledge of any of this.
She's one of the kids.
No, no, no, she was saying the divorced mother with the kids that live downstairs, remember?
The FBI agent was in the apartment.
I didn't follow any of that.
It's harder to follow when you're reading.
It is, you're right.
I'm just the listener.
You're right.
I'm the receiver.
Thank you.
We had zero knowledge of any of this until after it was over.
Those are my stories.
Love your podcast.
Can't wait to listen to the rest of them.
Lindsay.
Lindsay, I follow that now.
That was crazy.
Dude.
You're just upstairs like watching the love boat.
You have no idea what's going on.
I feel like you should tell the neighbor should know.
But then when you'd be freaked out, would you want to know that if right now there was
an FBI agent in the apartment beneath you?
If I was a woman in an apartment, in an adjacent apartment to someone who was being stalked
by rapists.
Yeah, that's true.
Yeah.
You'd just be like, give me the chance to once again move to a holiday.
All right.
Here's my second one, second and final.
This is from Ariel and the subject line is 15 hits of LSD and it's party time.
Oh my God.
Hey ladies.
This is just going to go fine.
My favorite hometown murder is what really got me interested in murder.
I grew up in Westchester, Illinois when I, and when I was 13, my third grade teacher
was murdered by her 18 year old son.
Sorry, let me belch out the sorrow of that.
Deborah Tom Porowski got a call on Sunday from her son, Steven, who was 18, who was
on a trip with his father and uncle in Wisconsin.
He asked her to drive up because they were having car trouble or something.
She arrived in the evening, brought him something to eat, and they sat on the porch to chat
all while his dad and uncle were dead inside that's a horror movie right there.
While he ate his fucking burger and fries, little shit face.
Really violently murdering your family really works up an appetite.
He went into the house before her and shot her on the way in the door.
Steven had taken 15 hits of LSD and proceeded to shoot both his uncle and his father.
His uncle did not die.
So naturally he grabbed a kitchen knife and slid his throat.
After he shot his mother, he covered all of the bodies with drapes or sheets or something
and get this, oh, God, no, no, placed baby toys and dolls around them.
He was so fucked up.
He was so fucked up, dash.
This is the creepiest part to me.
It's like he gulp tucked them in.
Oh my God.
He also took all of the family photos off the walls and burned them in the bathtub.
He had time for that, apparently.
He was caught after he drove home to Westchester, got stuff from home, including the family dog
and took off.
I think they found him in Kentucky or something.
He is in jail forever.
My parents never knew how fascinated I was in this case and its details because I was
worried they would think I was a psycho for being interested.
We hear you.
I'm so glad I found my people.
Hi.
Give the kitty snuggles for me.
Yay.
Oh, I wish just my cat keeps me company while I watch creepy Netflix documentaries about
murders late at night.
That was the best.
His picture is below, if anything.
If anything, Steven will enjoy it.
Hey, Steven.
Stay sexy.
Don't get murdered.
Ariel.
Wow.
That was amazing, Ariel.
Dude, the thought of taking 15 hits of LSD.
Oh, it's...
No.
You are insane.
Yes, you can't.
Your brain is just all chemicals at that point.
Nothing makes sense.
You're not human at that point.
That's terrible, terrible, horrible nightmare.
Oh my God.
I mean, it's a funny thing.
I keep thinking about this over and over, we tell these stories, and so many times these
people are on drugs, and it's just like, it's people are on drugs, addicted to drugs, and
it's like, I'm not paying them drugs.
Or needing drugs.
Yeah, needing drugs, needing money for drugs.
And you and I have both been there.
It's so ugly, and it's like, don't do...
Don't just...
Don't go near it.
You and I have been there or seen people closely who have been there, and it's...
It's a one-way street to living hell.
You're not you anymore.
It's terrible.
And you're a horrible person, and then when it's over, you have to fucking live with yourself.
You don't live with yourself.
And then shit you did.
And you sober up, and it's just awful.
There's shit that I tell my therapist that I would never, like, I'm so embarrassed of
saying this.
I know.
Back then.
I know.
It's because you just...
I mean, because...
Yeah, it's just a mistake.
It's not you.
And it's...
A lot of people make it.
It's not who you...
Who you would think you are.
Yeah.
What was I gonna say?
Oh, and also, I'm never having children, because fuck.
Oh, and also, stay in school.
Stay in school.
Stay off drugs.
Be cool.
Stay in school.
Be cool.
Write a fucking alligator.
And if you're a fucking raccoon?
If you're a raccoon, write an alligator.
Dude.
That's our best advice, I think.
Yeah.
Hang 10 on an alligator.
And just be chill.
Just be chill as fuck.
And stay sexy.
And don't get murdered.
Bye.
Elvis wanna cookie?
Cookie?
Yeah, one more.
Elvis, cookie.
Elvis.
Wanna cookie?
He's just staring.
There he is.
There he is.
Bye.