My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 124

Episode Date: May 27, 2019

This week’s hometowns include two close calls and a sickle-wielding maniac.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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And welcome. To my favorite murder. The mini-soad. Where we read you your shit. Are you ready for it? Are you ready for your shit? Are you ready for this? I think we've done that a few times.

I don't think it's fair. I feel like what should we do? Break it up and then each write a different intro for every week? Done. Like it's some kind of a weird news show? Yeah. This week. Tonight.

Tonight. On mini-soads. You want to go first? Absolutely. Great. The subject line of this is, my mom's some pigeons and a serial killer. Great. Hi, MFM crew.

My mom grew up in Northern New Jersey, the middle child of seven, what up Irish Catholics. In the late 1950s when my mom was about eight, a family moved in across the street. They had a daughter my mom's age, let's call her Debbie. My mom and little Debbie became good friends as Debbie's mom and my grandmother. Debbie also had an older brother named Richard who was around 13. Little Richard and little Debbie? I mean, what a fun family. Treats and music and piano playing.

Love it. My mom says Richard was always nice to her. He showed her how to keep homing pigeons on the roof. And he used to do that thing where you hold hands with a little kid and spin them around really fast. So the kid lifts up in the air. That's all it takes from your kid to think someone's great. I love though that that's such an, it's probably international I would guess, but it's so across

all experiences and yet there is no name for it other than that thing where you, that thing where you spin a little kid. So he would only spin my mom, not Debbie. And once Debbie asked why and he turned on her and snarled, because you're a brat. My mom said they didn't play much with Richard after that. Eventually Debbie and her family moved away and she and my mom lost touch, but my grandmother and Debbie's mom stayed good friends. My grandmother was even invited to Richard's wedding years later.

Decades passed and then one day my mom heard that Richard had been arrested. Turns out Debbie's family was the Coddinghams and Richard's full name was Richard Francis Coddingham, aka the Torso Killer, mentioned briefly by Georgia in episode 172. And also done by me at a live show, the first live beacon show we did in New York City. I remember. But we never posted it. Yes. Holy, you know a fucking straight up, this isn't like he killed his wife, not that that's

fucking good or bad. Like a serial, like you have a name killer. He had three names. Okay, wait, hold on. Brief rundown. Feel free to skip this part if you've covered him by now. Do it. But in the late 1960s and throughout the 70s, Richard Coddingham raped, tortured and killed

at least six women, though he claims the number is much higher in New York and New Jersey. He often dismembered his victims and left nothing but a torso behind, which earned him the imaginative nickname, the Torso Killer, as well as the New York Ripper and the Butcher of Times Square. Remember that horrible story? I am so glad that you're reading this because I almost did this for an episode recently. Really? Forgetting that you did it at the beacon.

But does it count if we do it live and it never airs? Absolutely. Not if we don't remember and we did a bunch of work on it and that's all our story is that week. You can't. We're so zen, it's the moment is now and the moment is now. That's right. The time is not fucking linear.

No. It's a circle. I forgot the part of the circle. That's right. We're caring to that story already. Which means that circle doesn't exist anymore. It doesn't exist. That piece of the circle is gone.

Prove it. It's eaten pizza. Okay, so. I love it. It's eaten pizza. I love that. Okay, so, okay, sorry. This is horrible.

No, no, no, no. That was a sidebar. Okay, he was caught in 1980 when he brought in an attended victim back to the same hotel he had left another victim's body in a few weeks earlier, lazy. My grandmother, that's what they wrote. Oh, they wrote that. My grandmother died before I was born and there are so many things I wish I could ask her.

But now one of them is definitely, what was that wedding like? Oh, my God. Family lore says the save the date photo of the engaged couple was bizarrely off-putting. No. But unfortunately, it's lost to history. Oh. Thank you, ladies, for all you do. Stay sexy and don't hang out with your friend's creepy pigeon-raising older brother.

A. I bet they didn't have Jordan Almonds in pretty little lace bags at that wedding. Nope. I bet the vibe was off and people were like, is it already 8.30? We have to go home. Yeah. We'll take a piece of cake to go, actually. Yes, that's right.

Wrap it up for me. Wow. That's a heavy hitter. Yeah. That was a big one. Oh, my God. Yeah. So we've done Richard Cottingham, but only for whatever it is, two thousand people in

New York City. The beacon live show, which we don't record those ones for some reason. I'm glad to hear that because I have that whole one written out and almost did it recently. I mean, you know, at some point, we're going to have to go back through and just do all the ones the other person did. Yeah. Yeah. But you can't use their notes at all.

No. You can't mention anything they mentioned, so you have to go really a deep dive. That's right. Okay. This one's called SSDGM'd and maybe broke up a marriage. Uh-oh. Greetings. I went to college at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville from 2002 to 2006, years

before the town was known only for white nationalism and having, quote, very good people on both sides. Oh, no. When I was there, we weren't that worried about white nationalism, but we were very worried about a serial rapist who had been assaulting young women in Charlottesville since 1997. Oh, shit. Wow. Every female student at UVA was very aware of the serial rapist.

The police visited our dorms and told us to be vigilant, and there was a, quote, safe ride program set up to help students avoid walking alone. I, of course, ignored all this advice. So one night after a football game, I decided to walk to a party alone. I nearly jumped out at my skin when the carefully manicured shrubs lighting the street I was walking on began shaking. I quickened my pace, but the shaking continued, and then I heard a low, loud moan. This moan was followed by another, more angry groan, and then a large man lurched out of

the bushes directly in my path. I was prepared to defend myself and even began to assume some type of karate style stance that felt natural but probably looked ridiculous. But instead of attacking me, the man simply collapsed onto the sidewalk at my feet. His cell phone and wallet spilled out of his coat, and that's when I had the chance to analyze his attire, wrinkled Oxford shirt, dirty khakis, UVA baseball cap. This was not the serial rapist but a very drunk UVA alum. It was pretty common for former students to come back, attend football games, and try

to party like they used to. He was very, very hammered, had scrapes all over his face, a huge gash on his forearm. He stood up and I was about to offer him help when he began to hit on me, to the extent that he possibly could in his condition. It didn't take long for my fear to transition to anger, especially when I saw his wedding ring. I reached down and picked up his wallet, planning on taking whatever cash I found to pay for a cab to the party.

This was years before Uber. There was no cash, but I did find a hotel key card. I looked at the name on the driver's license, let's say it was Tom Smith, called the hotel phone number on the back of the key card and asked to be connected with the room registered to Tom Smith. When a woman, presumably his wife, answered, I asked, hi, are you missing your husband? And she emphatically responded, yes. I told her where he was, well, he seriously began to cry and say, please don't call my

wife, please. And then vomited on the sidewalk. It's amazing. It's so great. I assumed she came to pick him up. Little did I know. There was no reason to be scared of random dudes in the bushes because the following year, the serial rapist was arrested and I had already encountered him many, many times.

He worked at the deli at a local grocery store, a Harris teeter. Yep, I had frequently asked him to cut my smoked turkey super thin, thinner. I had made him redo it lots of times. Maybe weekly. What? I like sandwiches. That's what she said. Defend yourself.

I married father of four and his MO was stalking women for weeks, learning their travel patterns and then breaking into their homes when they were gone and hiding for hours until they came home. He would then surprise them, usually bludgeon them unconscious, assault them and flee. He was finally caught when one badass lady who had been assaulted noticed the guy behind the deli counter, looked familiar and was acting super weird towards her. Do I still eat cold cuts? Yes, I do, but I never walk alone at night.

Stay sexy and never trust a man with a cleaver, Ricky. I feel like that's why we all are interested in these stories in the first place, because it isn't a man hiding in the bushes. In that way of what you decide to fear versus what is to be feared. Watch out for guys hiding in bushes, but also watch out for... But it's that thing where it's those people hide in plain sight in that real vague, bland way where you're like, oh, that's the guy was bossing around at the grocery store. Yeah, I didn't think twice about him.

That's a crazy story. It's an amazing story. It goes this way, it goes that way, it goes all the way. The drunk guy though really had like a full cycle life experience just in standing with that girl. You know what I mean? Hitting on her, throwing up, crying, his wife being called. And also...

Almost being robbed, but he didn't carry cash. Sorry, I'm assuming that it's a woman. It is. Ricky with Kate. Ricky with Kate. Because Ricky, the idea of looking into his wallet to get the information and taking care of business was a very generous thing for her to do. It was very kind to a very drunk person and also smart.

So smart. And also then you just have that person's name, so they try to come at you in any way. It's like, back the fuck up, Tom Smith. Right? That seems like one of those things where like later you're like, I wish I had done this. I should have done that. She fucking did it. I did it.

All real time. Good job. Ricky. Ricky. And the flash. Okay. The subject line of this one is my mother-in-law escapes murder twice. Olive.

All inclusive hello. So good. Perfection. My fiance is from Oregon, aka the Pacific Northwest, aka murder corner of the U.S., growing up his mom, Cindy, C-Y-N-D-I-E. What about the girl at the meet and greet this past weekend who I said, what's her name? And she goes, Cindy, and I, I couldn't hear her the first time. And I asked again, then she goes, Cindy from the seventies.

Remember that? Here's a group. That means I'm still laughing about that, Cindy. Okay. So this is a, this is the mother-in-law Cindy C-Y-N-D-I growing up, his mom, Cindy narrowly escaped being murdered twice. So I'm lucky he's even here. During Cindy used to hitchhike around town during the seventies, despite being warned

by friends and family that this was a terrible idea. Not in the Pacific Northwest. No, God, no. One day a VW bug stopped to pick her up. She glanced at the driver, skinny white guy, and thought he looks harmless. And hopped in. As soon as she was in the car with the door closed, the driver lunged at her. Cindy reached for the door handle to get the fuck out of there, but she was shocked to

find there was no passenger side door handle. Dude had removed it to create his own little murder mobile. She was fighting him off when she felt the door open and someone grab her from behind. She thought, oh shit, there's two of them. But it turned out to be a friend of hers. He'd been driving by, seen her hitchhiking, and circled around to pick her up. But when he saw the VW bug parked in the same spot, he stopped to check it out after the friend dragged Cindy out of the car the driver sped off.

Oh my God. Hero. But this goes into a second story, because it's escaping twice. But nowhere in that is mentioned that this was 1,000% the Ted Bundy MO. Or more frequently, that was just a regular thing guys did back then. Oh no. That was Ted Bundy's MO for sure. That sounds like such a Ted Bundy experience.

Right. Okay. Also up in those mountains, he would hide those women's bodies. Oh, that's right. Okay. Cindy was also there the night of the Oregon Museum Tavern shooting. If you're not familiar, on May 7th, 1981, a 25-year-old man named Lawrence William Moore walked into the Oregon Museum Tavern in Salem, Oregon, and started shooting into the crowd.

Didn't you do this one too? No, this is the one that happened to me. Cindy was there with friends, one of whom has served in Vietnam. So as soon as he heard the first shots, Cindy's friend turned their table over, and he, Cindy, and the others hid behind it. That's amazing. People eventually tackled the gunman, and he's currently serving life in prison. Sad but interesting twist, one of the victims, Dennis Sharf, was wounded during this shooting

and paralyzed. He lived until January 2013, but died from complications from his injury, bringing Moore's murder tally up to from four to five people over 30 years after the fact. Luckily, Cindy lived through it all, and she'll be there to dance at our wedding this October. I bought the fuck you, I married sweatpants as soon as they came out, and I can't wait to change into them the minute the reception is over. Yay! Oh, that's awesome.

Some brides buy lingerie. I buy murder pants. Stay sexy and always check for door handles, Val. Amazing. So good. Oh, Cindy with a Y. Cindy with a Y-I-E. Cindy with a Y-I-Otta.

Okay. This is called, I went on a date with a sickle-wielding maniac. Oh. Sickle. Sickle. You don't hear that a lot. Hello, all. I used to go to Pilates classes with my mother, with an instructor.

I like to stop right there. Which part? Pilates classes with my mother. Pilates with your mom. Oh, Yves. Okay. Okay. With her, my mother.

With an instructor whom she really liked. Oh, mom's always like, jeeps. Oh, she, are you, you're assuming it's a man? Yes, I know it is because I read this. Oh, oh, got it. He seemed like an okay guy at first. A little nerdy. I really thought I had you there.

Meanwhile, we, we pre-read these for like a half an hour before you do this. Yeah. Yeah. We'll see about that. We'll see. We'll see. Yeah. It's really sexist that you assume that because he seemed like an okay guy at first.

This is a little nerdy, but not overtly creepy. I do not ever want a fucking nerdy instructor for working out. Do you? I want you to be so fucking creepy and like a, like this is your life way. Yes. Nerdy doesn't seem to come into the picture. It seems like they just picked up maybe Pilates last minute. Whereas yes, I want, I want someone who's, I want a manorexic.

He's all Keto. Yeah. You know what I mean? He fears bread. His fucking, the volume of his voice is just like almost unacceptable. And he's always got those hands on the hips. That's right. That's right.

Okay. Nerdy, but not overly creepy. I then had a private session with him in which he did some sort of a sacral massage. Uh-oh. Wait, where's the sacrum again? Well, is your like butt, what's it called? Lower back? Tailbone.

Okay. Oh. I think he did some sort of sacral, quote, sacral massage thing, which kind of creeped me out, but he stayed on the right side of not groping me. So he let it slide. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Sacrum is like your butt, low butt thing. Okay. So don't touch me there, please. Ever. So get out of there. Yeah. Um, I did, however, stop going to Pilates mainly because of scheduling issues. My mother has a habit of befriending people she hires for various tasks and this guy was

no exception. Apparently, he and I, he thought he and I had a connection and he asked her for my number to go on a date, which she then gave to him and it says rant for another day. We went on one date in which we made awkward small talk and he showed off some of his culturally appropriate of jewelry, which he had recently bought. There was zero chemistry. So the next time he asked me on a date, I begged doc with some trivial excuse and he didn't pursue it further.

Recently my mom posted an article on social media about some maniac who would attack a 70 year old man with a sickle injuring him in the arms and hands and then engaged in a five hour standoff with police after which they finally took him into custody. Guess who her Pilates instructor turns out he had a history of mental issues and violent tendencies and was a martial arts expert. He has since been arrested, but my mother is officially never allowed to set me up on a date again. Stay sexy and don't let your mother set you up with unstable sickle experts TB.

Well, yeah, like that. Then I just start thinking about how many like muscles he's intentionally engaging as he's holding that sickle at the police. That's right. He's like engages his sacrum. Yeah. All the way up through the core. Through the jaw.

His jaw is locked. His scalp is tight. That's right. Don't let your mom set you up ever. No, I don't know if they know if they have good taste. No, I don't think so. They married your dad. Boom, Janet.

Boom. Sorry, Janet. Sorry. Oh, damn. Sorry, girl. Okay. Looking for a better cooking routine with meal planning, shopping and prepping handled Hello Fresh has you covered.

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Goodbye. Hey, I'm Aresha. And I'm Brooke. We're the hosts of Wondery's podcast, Even the Rich, where we bring you absolutely true and absolutely shocking stories about the most famous families and biggest celebrities the world has ever seen. Our newest series is all about the incomparable diva, Whitney Houston. Whitney's voice defined a generation, and even after her death, her talent remains unmatched.

But her incredible success hit a deeply private pain. In our series, Whitney Houston, Destiny of a Diva, we'll tell you how she hid her true self to make everyone around her happy, and how the pressure to be all things to all people led her down a dark path. Follow Even the Rich wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. This is a lighthearted one that really veers from the standard norm. If you have children in the car and you're listening to this, this is definitely rated

NC17. Fun. Ex-husband. Steven, plug your ears. Steven. Steven, get out of the room, but keep it recording. The subject line of this is ex-husband's grandpa's porn. Oh, dear.

Okay. Hey, Karen, Georgia Steven and assorted animals. Before I got married, in parentheses, never again, my now ex and I moved into his parents' in-law apartment in their house, also a bad idea. His paternal grandparents lived there previously and had passed away, and some of their items were left in the apartment. My ex was unpacking the linen closet and suddenly started yelling for me to come upstairs. When I came up, he was pissing his pants laughing and holding an old VHS tape in his

hands. Apparently, he found a box of tapes at the bottom of the closet. He remembered that his grandpa took tons of photos and had a camcorder running all the time. My ex said he was wondering what nostalgic footage he would find, and he was planning on hooking up an old VCR to watch it when he flipped the first tape over to read the handwritten label. Instead of seeing baby's first Christmas or Uncle Fred and Aunt Jane's wedding, he

saw printed neatly in his grandfather's handwriting, big tits and pink clits. We both fucking died laughing and I was tempted to include the anecdote in my speech at the upcoming wedding, but his parents would have spontaneously combusted, so I was sworn to secrecy. Uh, but I'm divorced now, so fuck it. Stay sexy and get rid of your porn before your grandchildren find it, Laura. Oh, or don't. And like, what if it was just really was just like a baby's birthday, but he was like,

I'm gonna fuck with my grandkids when they go through my shit. Oh my god, that would be fucking hilarious. Right. He's maybe, he's a little older, maybe he's going a little organic in the brain. He's like, this is funny, I don't care. There's what they get for looking through my things. That is, uh, most, uh, That's her new t-shirt.

I mean, for real, it's so, it's so disturbing. I won't repeat it, but you'll see it in our merch store. The t-shirt we're going to get made is going to be an old, the drawing of a very old man's hand holding a VHS and the writing can be really small so you can't see unless you're close. Yeah. Okay, I love it. God damn, that made me laugh.

Here's my last one. Okay. Um, I lived in that murder house. Shit. Dearest Karen, Georgia and Co, I had the absolute pleasure of meeting you two in Louisville. You two are lovely, Vince is a pro, and it went so fast. I felt like such an idiot after I left from looking through all the things I wanted to tell you, but suffice it to say you two are amazing.

Thanks for talking openly about anxiety and normalizing my secrets, I felt, and keeping me company for literally everything that I do. I know you hear this a lot, but I feel like you're some of my best friends. Nice. Uh, let's jump in. Yeah. She wrote that. Oh, oh.

I've been dying, pun intended, to tell you my hometown murder from when I was a child in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, but I was waiting until I was fully caught up with the show. Well, imagine my surprise and sense of urgency to write in when I hear my hometown murder on one of your minisodes. What the fuck? Huh. As a quick and sloppy refresher in minisode 26, Lana detailed the story of the accountant named Steven Allen or Steve Allen, who was having an affair and one day claimed he saw

an intruder fleeing his house. So he left his children in the car to check on his wife who he found, quote, bludgeoned in the house. Cut to the end. My husband was guilty. I was blown away that a fellow murderer had a connection to my tiny hometown murder. Bartlesville is a tiny town north of Tulsa. Anyway, after going through the five stages of grief that my hometown murder had already

been told, I realized that you all might really enjoy hearing my follow up to Lana's hometown murder. Ready for this, all caps? My family was the first to live in the house where Steve Allen murdered his wife after it happened. Whoa. Bartlesville hometown, as told through the eyes of a five-year-old. I was the youngest of four daughters.

My mom was a stay-at-home mom and my dad was an up-and-coming computer programmer. Read lots of mouths to feed with not lots of money. We had just moved to Bartlesville in 1992 when I was five years old and we were in the market for a cheap house. I remember going to see the house two different occasions before my parents purchased it. I also remember that the house was yellow, at least in my childhood memory it is, because both times we went to visit, I wet my pants. On hindsight, I attribute those accidents to my little five-year-old soul knowing there

was something not quite right in that house. After having remained vacant since the murder in June 1990, we ended up buying the house in April 1992 and living there for just over a year. Sidebar, when I was texting my mom for confirmation that we were the first to live in the house after the murder, she responded in true murdering fashion, yes ma'am, no one else would touch it. My mom has since told me that when we moved in, she had to scrub blood spatter from under the kitchen floorboards where the cleaners had not thoroughly cleaned up.

There were also still blood drops on the stairs leading up to the attic. It was one of those pull-down ladders in the garage where Steve had hid the murder weapon, a ball-peen hammer, after the attack. It was wrapped in toilet paper, as I understand. The story told by neighborhood kids was that the man was angry that his wife would not let him buy a big-screen TV, so he killed her. It wasn't reasonable enough at the time. These same neighborhood kids told me that you could cook spaghetti on the grill, so

my sources were questionable at best. Needless to say, Lana's hometown filled in a lot of the missing pieces for me. I didn't even know their names, or that poor Sandra was only 30 years old at the time, sad face. Honestly, I don't remember a lot from living in that house, but I do remember the mailman who called me staplehead. And it says, playing baseball with my sister, and I was standing too close. Oh, shit.

It says the sister. Stepping my toes every damn time I walked outside without shoes, an orange tabby named Riley, who forever cemented my love of cats, and eating robin or mac and cheese with my mom before a half-day kindergarten. If living in the Bartlesville murder house wasn't the thing that made me a mergarino, then a steady marathon of forensic files every Friday night during my adolescence sure did the trick. I hope my follow-up hometown is giving you as much joy as it gave me to hear my own

tiny hometown murder on your podcast on a chilly Wednesday in October, ssdgm, Emily. Nice. Oh, that's fun. Those are real slice of life email. Thank you, Emily. Yeah. Thanks everybody for sending in your hometowns. That's right.

All the people that got them on this week, congratulations. Yeah, good job. A hearty congratulations. You think you can beat them? Send it to my favorite murder at gmail.com. Get some taut storytelling going in our Gmail account. That's right. Or you can just go to our website and submit them there too.

And you should also stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie? No.