My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 120

Episode Date: April 29, 2019

This week’s hometowns include librarian stories and some hidden traysure. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Three in one day. Two. You. Three. Hello. This is my favorite murder. The mini-soad. Welcome.

Hi. Yeah. How do you feel about that? You like it, right? You love hearing your own voice coming out of our mouths. Why else would you have clicked the little arrow forward button if you didn't love it? That's very weird. What are you doing?

Hi. Are you doing okay? Hi, we're with you, but at the same time, we'd love for you to take a look in the mirror right now and tell us what is going on. Say your name out loud. One, two, three. Marie. Oh.

Marie? Okay. I was doing some role-playing. You were doing someone else. I was doing me. It's fun. This is how it is. It's fun.

It's wild. It's crazy. Here we go. Are you ready? Go. So, subject line of story number one is librarian story. Yes. And then I'm going to stop reading because it's just a giveaway of what the thing is.

Okay. Hey, MFN crew. Uh-uh. Yes. MFN. You're a librarian? My favorite nerd. Nerd.

You asked for librarian stories in mini-soad 119, so here is my story from when I worked as a library assistant during undergrad. I worked in this library from 18 to 22, and as one of the student assistants, I was tasked with manning the library alone from 6 p.m. until closing at midnight. No. No. When was this? No.

1975? Who would do that? Now, this was a small campus and a small town, and despite the fact that I was manning the desk alone all night, I felt very safe in the well-lit library. Incorrect. Yeah. You're wrong. Your instincts are wrong on that one.

Light means nothing. Nothing. Um, after my shift ended, I would wait for security to walk up, lock up the library, and they would offer me a walk back to the dorms. When I first took the job, sometimes I took them up on it, other times I would refuse and headed back by myself. You're being polite. No, it's fine.

It's too far. Take the walk. Yes. But also make sure the security guard isn't a psychopath, too. Don't go down that path all the way. Right. There has to be trust. Okay.

Okay. And also, at this point, if you went to that school and you worked there, probably maybe would have known that security guard had a familiarity. But, okay. Small town, small campus. Let's do it. This is not Sac State. The world is in Sac State, Georgia, which is what you always think.

I always think the world's Sac State, and I'm always proven wrong. Okay. She then ends that paragraph by saying, this story takes place while I was 18. So basically saying, I realize. Okay. Okay. So now, now this was the type of liberal arts college where you could know the face, if not the name of everyone who attended.

Oh, that's probably why I said that to you, because I pre-read this. Oh, right. But not stupid. But even if it wasn't, it would be clear that this one guy didn't belong. The other library assistants called him Movie Guy, because he was always trying to talk about the movie script he was writing or filming. Run the fuck away. And that's not a personal safety issue.

That's a boredom issue. As someone who's lived in Los Angeles for 20 years, no one wants to hear about your idea you haven't done. Sorry. I've had a lot of coffee. He was an older local man, rail thin with an odd smell. That means something. Odd smells?

Yes. It means... You're not self-aware. Yes. And you smell. You're not paying attention to the right things. Right. And you smell.

His mannerism spoke of someone either doing drugs or suffering from some mental health problems. The guys who worked late at night called him harmless and entertaining, but he set off lots of alarm bells for me. For example, once he stood at the desk and told me in detail about a film he was working on where a young woman's body, parentheses with hair like mine, he made sure to point out, washed up on the bank of a river and proceeded to describe exactly how he would want the body to look and how he would film it, how he would have his protagonist cradle

the body and caress her face. This quite creepy description had me letting security walk me to the dorm while I informed them about Movie Guy. Security didn't seem that concerned, of course not. But it told me that I could always call and that, quote, it would only take five minutes for them to sprint across campus to me if there was a problem, end quote, as if a lot couldn't happen in five minutes. That's in the email.

Now the library layout was such that there was a large desk in the front and behind that was an enclosed employee only room where I would sometimes have to work on processing new books. Sorry, I'm losing it. On this particular night, the Movie Guy had caught me several times as I made my rounds through the library. He would try to talk to me about his creepy movie and I would make an excuse to move to another part of the library to help someone or I would escape into the employee only section.

Still, every hour I would have to come out of that area and do a lap at the library. After one of these laps, I was just sitting down in the employee only area when I heard a sound behind me. I turned around and there was Movie Guy moving quickly into the employee only room and in effect boxing me in. I can only assume it was the look on my face of pure fear and shock along with the fact that I quickly grabbed the security phone that caused him to sheepishly stop, stumble over his words saying something about a script and then back out of the employee only area.

I gripped the phone as I watched him go back to his normal table and tried not to completely lose it. Shaking, I had to call security and they handled escorting him out of the library and off campus. I always let security walk me to the dorm after that and a few days later, I was informed that he had been banned from campus because I wasn't the only person he was freaking out. Part of me has always felt bad because maybe he was just a lonely, crazy person who meant no harm and just wanted a friend.

More of me, however, is like, fuck that guy and fuck my coworkers for making me think I was wrong in being creeped out by him. That's exactly right. I love your podcast and all the others on the Exactly Right Network. Keep up all the good work you guys both do and thank you for my new favorite catchphrase you introduced me to, quote, if you don't make enough of your own neurotransmitters, store-bought is fine, SSDGM Emily. That's amazing.

I'd like to go ahead and say that we didn't make that one up, but we've said it, so I don't want to take full responsibility for that. Oh, the neurotransmitters, quote, well, I was going to say the beginning of that paragraph bothered me. Part of me has always felt bad because maybe he was just a lonely, crazy person because there is a difference, there are gradations of that and you know the difference and the difference is that someone doesn't look you in the eye and describe a dead body that looks like you washing up and you had plenty of reasons above and beyond to be like, I want

this guy out of here. Right. And even if you're not totally sure, there's only one way to find out and that's that they ... By being attacked. Exactly. So you're allowed to follow your instincts and if it was other women who were threatened by him as well, then you're correct.

Yes. And it must be satisfying because ultimately she was like, oh yeah, not only it wasn't my little petty problem, he's banned from campus. It's just so annoying when people are like, he's harmless and it's like, you're a dude, he can't attack you the way he can attack us. You don't ask dudes, they don't know. They're not having the same experience. And men don't tell women people are harmless when they're threatened by them.

Right. Especially your weird friends. Okay. Here's one called My Sister the Prison Librarian. Okay. Heyo. My sister's first job after earning her master's degree in library science was as the head librarian at a maximum security prison and she wrote, as you do.

As you do. Of course, this prison house the worst of the worst of society, but after months of searching for a job and to the horror of my parents, she decided to go for it. We could literally spend hours talking about the oddities of this job and the characters that my sister encountered on a daily basis. My work story is always paled in comparison to what she brought to the table at family functions. While I complained about people who couldn't get to work on time, she talked about sending

guys to quote segregation for threatening to find her on Facebook after they got out or for telling everyone that she was sleeping with her library clerk, also a prisoner. One day while on her way back to her library, she was passing through a stairwell that is accessible to both prisoners and staff. To avoid any confrontation, a guard is posted to lock and unlock the doors to the stairwell allowing for safe passage for the staff. When my sister got to the bottom of the stairwell, she found that the exit door was locked. When she looked up at the guard station, it appeared empty.

After a brief time debating what to do, she heard the door at the top of the stairs open and footsteps starting to come down. Aside from this being a generally frightening situation, at this particular time, it was known that a gang leader was very upset with my sister and it says, insort obvious joke here, overdo books perhaps? And she knew that- It's such an obvious joke. And she knew that if a member of that gang were to appear on those stairs, it was quote,

not going to be good as she puts it. When the person came to the landing leading down to where my sister stood, she realized that he was a prisoner but not a gang member. He explained that he was on his way to Bible study and proceeded to talk to her about God as she nonchalantly attempted to catch the attention of the guard who had returned to his post and had unknowingly let a prisoner into the stairwell without realizing that she was waiting at the bottom. Thankfully, the guard quickly noticed her standing there and buzzed her through the door.

My sister made a habit out of looking up the offenders she encountered in a prison's database. She did this because many of the men that came to the library were friendly. Only the quote, good ones with privileges were allowed to actually enter the library. And some of the offenders were actually considered part of her staff and worked with her every day. Checking their history in the database helped her to keep an emotional distance between herself and these men who seemed friendly despite the horrendous things they had done to earn their spot in the prison.

When my sister returned from her encounter in the stairwell, she researched the man she had been trapped with there and all the caps. He had been previously charged with raping a man in a fucking stairwell. No. Yeah. Oh my fucking God. Needless to say, the warden flipped his lid and the stairwell guard got in some kind of trouble.

Can't remember now. My sister, shaken up or undeterred, continued to work there for another year before accepting a position at a much safer, albeit much more boring, research library. Believe it or not, she misses her prison gig as it did afford her the opportunity to take part in the rehabilitation that takes place behind bars. She left some disappointed offenders who hadn't had a literary advocate on their side in quite some time. They even drew her a giant farewell card, complete with Disney characters and signed

with their names and prisoner ID numbers. She has some of their artwork hanging in her office today. Anyways, you guys are great and make my commute worth it. Stay sexy and don't get caught in a stairwell with a rapist, Natalie. Jesus. What a reveal. It's later. It's not even as it happens.

It's so much later and still so scary. It would have been bad enough that she had gotten caught in there with a prisoner. Everything ended up fine. But that specific little detail is just insane. Because also then the first thing I think is, does that prisoner stand by that door and wait because he fucking loves stairwells so much? Dude, maybe. And it's probably not that easy for a prisoner just to slip by that way.

Right, at that exact moment. Yeah. It's like he has a stairwell fetish. So horrifying. 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.

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Are they born to kill or are they made to kill? I'm Candace 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&As 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. The subject line of this is, I didn't fuck politeness and almost paid the price. Light-hearted. Okay.

Okay. Hey, I'm FM Fam. This was one of the scariest things that has ever happened to me, but people really seemed to love the story, so I thought you guys would like it too. One night, I was waiting for my friend to get out of her shift at the mall. The parking lot had cleared out, and I was waiting in my car by the secret side entrance that employees use. Out of nowhere, a middle-aged white guy started walking towards my car.

Since I was parked by the sidewalk, I assumed he was just going to walk right by, but still had that feeling of, quote, lock your doors. Well, I was worried about what this random ass stranger thought of me by hearing me auto-lock my doors. I get it. Yes, I get the same thing. To my horror, Homeboy opens the door and tries to get the fuck in. I thought to myself, oh, hell no, motherfucker is going to work for this bitch.

Oh, hell no. Motherfucker is going to work for this bitch. Got it, got it, got it. And I put my car in drive and started driving with him half in and out of the car, so he was crab walking quickly with one leg in and one leg out. I was going to gun it when he screamed, equally terrified, wrong car, wrong car. I could tell he was genuine, so I stopped my car and we both apologized profusely. Can you imagine what he was thinking?

He was just thinking his sweet wife Debbie is coming to pick him up from his trip to the mall. And before he can even say hi or see who's in the car, you're trying to survive having your legs run over. Well, anyways, he went back to the curb to wait for his ride and I continued to wait for my friend. And every once in a while, we would make sharp, all-caps, painful eye contact with each other for both thinking we were going to die.

I'm still kind of proud that I had that reaction. I always thought if I was in that situation, I would just squeeze my boobs and scream. Anyway, stay sexy, always lock your car doors, if anything, to avoid an awkward-ass situation, Mariah. Amazing, Mariah. You should be proud of yourself. I think so too. Yeah.

I mean, like, sorry, but you got in. Yeah, that's a split second decision and you fucking, now you kind of know going forward that you can trust yourself in your instincts if something happens. Yes. Which is a really great feeling, I think. For sure. Also, what are the odds that she's driving the car that he knows to get into? Yeah.

No, it's bananas. I've done something similar without those consequences. Because you thought you were getting into a lift? Yeah. Yeah. Which now, you know, they're saying, like, there's this along a lot of campuses, they're saying that you have to make sure, like, check the license plate number before you get in because women have been kidnapped or, like, there's people who purposely wait near a lift

so someone gets in. Yes. They kidnap them. They just think, yeah. So I don't, that's how I identify my lift is the license plate. Yeah. Usually. Let's just all make sure we do that every time.

Okay. We're all fine. Okay. St. Louis VIP hometown. Hi, Karen, Georgia. Stephen and Pets. It was nice meeting you at the St. Louis show tonight. I was writing to tell you about the hometown murder that I wanted to tell on stage.

I went to college at a weird small liberal arts school called Truman State University. It's located in rural Kirksville, Missouri. Missouri? Missouri. And all that the town really has to offer is meth heads and a high V. I don't know what a high V is. I'm guessing it's some kind of grocery store, H-Y-V-E-E. It's probably some, you know, one of those.

It's a chain. We don't know. Yeah. Since there was nothing to do in this town, the townspeople always got into all sorts of shenanigans. Well, back in 2013, some crazy shit happened. One night police responded to a report of a vehicle on fire. Upon arrival, they noticed that there were also two apartment buildings down the road

when they went, I think, on fire. When they went to check out the apartment fires, a few witnesses were standing outside at the building and objects were being launched at them. The police took a closer look at these objects, only they realized that they were human arms. Oh, I remember, oh my God, that girl that walked away and goes, this is what I was going to do. Okay, go ahead. That's right.

Human fucking arms. They got the fire under control and arrested the guy who was throwing the arms. It turns out that he had murdered some dude the day before because he thought the dude did something wrong to his son. Because he didn't know what to do with the body and was still full of rage about this son bullshit, he decided that the best thing to do would be to dismember the body and set it on fire in his apartment. For some reason, he decided to keep the arms as weapons.

Who knows. Perhaps even crazier than that, than the fact that he threw arms as Eddie pleaded not guilty. Oh, dude. Pled not guilty. Like what the fuck? He ended up with a bunch of charges anyway, one being first degree murder. I assume he's currently in prison. That's why you don't do meth, kids.

Yeah. Thanks for an awesome show. My life has improved so much since MFM came into my life. Stay sexy and do... Oh, sorry. Stay sage and do God's mission. Lindsay, P.S., I tried to bring you a gooey butter cake, but the bakery was sold out. Oh.

Guys, if you ever go to St. Louis, get a gooey butter cake. They're fucking great. It's so crazy. It's like eating cookie dough and butter. The subject line of this one is grandma finds treasure after grandpa died. Oh, yay. Hey, all. A few years ago, my husband's grandpa died and his grandma, being an older lady on a

fixed income, was planning on selling his grandpa's guns for some extra money. She has no business operating or owning a gun, so smart move. Grandpa kept his guns in a gun safe, but she had no idea where the key was. She asked my husband and me to come help look for it. She had looked in all the obvious places, so we started searching in the less obvious. After scouring the house, my husband started looking through grandpa's closet. In a couple of the coats and pant pockets, he found fistfuls of small bills that totaled to about $200.

His grandma was stoked, but we kept searching for the key. We finally found it in one of his shoes in the back of the closet. Love it. That's such a smart place that then you have to tell someone you put it there. Yes. You have to remember you put it there. After the hard-earned search, we opened the safe and started inventorying the contents. At some point, my husband noticed the shotgun was next to the shotgun case, which in parentheses

looks like a shotgun-shaped duffel bag, and the case was oddly lumpy. He unzipped it, and a pile of small bills came falling out. The money totaled just over $12,000, mostly in ones and fives. Oh my God, grandpa. From the small denominations, we were able to piece together their origin. Grandma is an avid slot player. They used to go to the casino regularly, withdraw some cash, split it, and go to their separate ways to play.

Grandma thought grandpa was bad luck, and he wasn't allowed to play near her. Oh, that makes me sad. Instead of gambling the money every time, he would literally pocket it, likely where all the cash in his coat came from, and move it to the gun safe for a rainy day. Turns out when he claimed to always be losing, he was just being smart and saving. Grandma was relieved to have the money as she was stressing out about his funeral. I'll never forget the image of a pile of money on her kitchen counter and her cursing and thanking him in the same breath.

Stay sexy and don't assume grandpa is bad luck, Nicole. Oh, I'm gonna cry. I love it so much. That's like, it's like sweet and sad and smart and... And to me, it's the most romantic thing, which is someone thinking about you. Not like, I'm thinking about you and trying to get all this credit, but just doing it in the way that actually matters. Am I wrong that that sounds like something Vince would do?

Oh, absolutely. Right. But... Yes. If Vince is the person that just like, yes, he's the take care of it big picture guy. Yeah, he has me sit at Buffalo while I fucking blast through a bunch of money, and he goes, and plays, okay, good night. Okay, this one's called...

Okay, here's a library hometown story. It starts, y'all. I heard you call for librarian stories on the most recent mini-sode, and even if you don't read mine, I'm stoked to hear other stories, because let me tell you, librarians see some shit. I bet. I have worked as a children's librarian for five years now in a small town in West Tennessee, and I've dealt with domestic abuse victims, creepy corner masturbators, vague sexual harassment,

and teenagers trying to watch porn, but the most scary event happened less than a year after I started working there as a fresh college grad. There's a bank right behind the library, and the staff driveway butts up to the drive-through teller window. One morning, I came to work to see cops swarming the parking lot. I went inside and found my assistant director visibly shaken and near tears as she tells me that Janice, one of the consultants at the bank, had been shot and attempted robbery. The perp had apparently been staking out the bank from across the street and had followed

Janice home one evening to her house that was less than a block from the bank. He had hidden her garage and car overnight, and when she'd gotten to drive to work that morning, he held her at gunpoint and forced her to open the vaults. Whoa. This is why, and this is not, it's because I'm fucking anxious, but I'm gonna have a garage for the first time in my life when we move into our new house, and I'm thinking of all the ways to make sure no one follows me in there when I go in. Don't get a job at a bank.

Okay, great. Set all everything settled. Great. I'm gonna have to call my manager and quit. Hello Bank of America, I've made a mistake. Unfortunately, the vaults have a two-person security measure on them, and Janice couldn't open them alone, so he shot her three times and busted out an office window and took off running up Main Street.

A crossing guard who worked the corner by the bank and library saw him and alerted police, and he was apprehended less than a mile from the bank. Janice was life-lighted to Memphis and survived, because one of the bullets had glanced off the large piece of jewelry she had been wearing. Yes! What's up, broaches? Yes, broaches. Broaches.

Yeah, y'all, broaches. Minimizing injury to an extent. When we saw the photos of the perpetrator on the news, we realized that he had been at the library all that week and had at one point gotten into a fight over the phone while using our computers and had been belligerent with staff, had asked him to keep his voice down and stop swearing, because this is a library, gosh darn it. He was tried in federal court, pled guilty and was sentenced to 37 years in prison. Wow.

Janice recovered and retired a year later and continues to be an active part of our community through volunteer work. Thankfully, nothing else of that caliber has happened since then, and since my director is a former parole officer, we are always on high alert for suspicious behavior while still trying to provide fair service and open access to library materials, as librarians do. This is STGM, Sarah, the library girl. Oh, that's awesome.

Yeah, great library stories. And yeah, hell yeah, Janice, if I get living through that shit. Janice! Always, wear a brooch. Yeah. Or just be a piece of jewelry. Yeah. Awesome.

Thank you so much, you guys, for sending those stories in. Send any and all stories that you have, that you like to tell at parties, that you want to tell at parties, but you think people are going to think you're weird. That's good. Tell the story that your friends make you tell that you think is inappropriate, but your friends are like, no, no, no, tell it again, and then you say something, but you didn't include the part that whatever, or the ones that you want to tell other people, but you're embarrassed to.

Yeah. Gross ones are fine. Gross ones are great. Look, one time I got stopped at fucking TSA. Should I tell this? Yes. Look, I shouldn't have started this. I had an enema in my bag, and I totally forgot about it, and I got stopped at TSA, and they

were like, ma'am, what is this? And then I was like, oh my God, please don't take that out of my bag, and then she held it up for everyone to see. Was she mad at you for some reason? No, she thought it was fucking hilarious, and it was later. Yeah, later. Later it was awesome. Man.

Look, traveling is hard, okay? It's just hard. You don't drink enough water. You don't think about what should be viewed, what wouldn't be viewed. Right, you don't take your vitamins and your probiotics, so send those in. Yeah. Let's be vulnerable. We want all of it.

Please be vulnerable. We do it for you. Don't get murdered, Gmail. And stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, you want a cookie? Thanks for watching.