My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 145

Episode Date: October 21, 2019

This week’s hometowns include a childhood adventure gone wrong and serial killer connections.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 and welcome to my favorite murder, the mini soap. That's right, that's Karen Coguera. This is my Halloween voice. And that's Georgia Hearts Park. This is my Halloween voice. Trick or treat. Did you call me Georgia Hearts Park? I think you did. That's Georgia Hearts Breakers, right there. I love it. This is when we re-jay your stuff. We're getting into a lot of good Halloween territory right now. Oh my god,

people are getting it. Yeah, they're getting it. And we're actually gonna have a full hometown Halloween Scary Spooky episode on Halloween, so look out for that. Stephen, do you think you could find us boiling cauldron sound effects? Like in just like the bubble, bubble, toil and trouble kind of thing? Yeah, or you could just say that, I guess. Oh, quietly in the back room. Okay, cancel that idea. Okay, ready? Go. Okay, this first one, I'm not gonna read you. It's the entire story in the subject line, so I'm just gonna save. Do it. Hi, MFM crew and animals. I started listening to this show this past summer and just got caught up enough to finally send in the story. I love you guys, but I'll save the pandering for the end and get right into it.

My parents were both thriving young adults in the 70s and 80s, aka prime serial killer time. One night after dinner, I decided to ask them if they had any crazy stories to tell me, but really I wasn't expecting much. But then my dad said, oh yeah, I parked the Galegos as van. Hmm. From 1978 to 1980, Gerald and Charlene Galego terrorized Sacramento, kidnapping young girls and young women, holding them hostage before killing and disposing of their bodies. All of the victims had been raped and beaten before they were murdered and out of the 10 victims, nine bodies were found, including 21-year-old Linda Aguilar, who was four months pregnant. Aw. The two were arrested in late 1980, early 1981, and in 1983, Gerald was sentenced to death.

However, that was overturned and he died in prison in 2002. Charlene received 16 years and eight months after promising to fully cooperate and confess everything. She was released in 1997. No, no deals for killers, please. She was released as a team, serial killer team. Yeah. You know what? That's fine. Go rent an apartment somewhere and get a job at the drug store. You know what? You're going to have less years than some of your victims had on earth in jail for your crimes. Good point. Fuck you. During their spree, my dad was working as a parking attendant at Harrow's Casino in Lake Tahoe. Oh my God. I love it. That casino is legendary. Every couple of months, Gerald and Charlene would drive up to the valet in a large beat-up van, of course.

My dad said that whenever they pulled up, he and his co-workers would argue over who had to go park it and get the car because of the terrible smell inside. I don't even want to imagine what he was surrounded by every time he got into that man. That's like making my skin crawl. I expected that to be the end of it. I had never heard of the Galego since before, so I was ready to go up to my room and do all the research to craft this hometown. Then my mom turned to him and said, who was that old woman that came into the hotel in Sacramento, the one with all the bodies in her backyard? I immediately stood up and screamed, you served drinks to Dorothea one day? This is like my hometown. After the casino, my dad worked as a bartender at the Holiday Inn in

Sacramento. I guess Dorothea thought he mixed a good drink because my dad remembers her coming in a lot. Every time she did, my dad could tell there was something off about her. She creeped him out beyond belief. Oh my God. A little old lady. Yeah, creepy. Especially the fact that she tipped in jewelry instead of cash. That's pretty baller. Each time she came in, she'd have a brand new ring or necklace to give out. Oh, wait, no. See what that means? I see. My dad would always turn them down, but one of the waitresses he worked with had developed a collection of all the pieces that Dorothea would give her. Holy shit. Thank God dad never took them because after her arrest, the police came in and interviewed everyone. When the waitress mentioned the jewelry,

the police immediately had her turn everything over, informing her that they had most definitely belonged to the victims that had been found in her backyard. Oh, it's so creepy. She's like, you can have this whole jewelry box and my dresser and my ear lobes. Love the podcast and thank you for making my college experience a little bit easier. Stay sexy and don't get in a van that smells weird or accept jewelry from creepy old ladies, Jess. Nice one, Jess. Oh, that was a twofer. Right? That was a Sacramento powerhouse. It's weird that we've never done the Galeguses. Yeah, I've never heard of it. That was an early one for me. I was like 12 when that happened. Oh, you got to do it. But I don't know why. Maybe that one was kept from me somehow.

Yeah, I've never heard of that one. I might go ahead and do that. Go ahead and make a note of that. Go ahead and just write this down. I'm not going to read you the title. There is the suicide trigger warning on this. Good idea. Thank you. Okay. Hello to everyone and their pets. Great. One of my favorite things to do with my kids is going on little adventures. This could range from playing, you want to get lost or I let my kids pick and choose where we're going by having them give me directions while I'm driving. Turn left here. That's adorable. Okay, hold on. Okay. That's fucking high grade parenting right there. How fun would it feel to control where the car went as a child? I want to go left here. And that's also your learning left from right.

Let's go. Let's get lost. Let's get lost. And that reminds me of just being my parents being single parents and having no money and just making up shit for us to do. Let's go hit golf balls at the high school football field. Like we used to do that. That sounds so good. It's so free. Or by simply following things in the sky. So you get to pick stuff or they just follow things in the sky. Follow that helicopter. Holy shit. Psychic. We play these games often and sometimes we find some really cool places that we never would have known about otherwise. One day last spring, my kids and I were at the local ice cream parlor eating our treats outside. After about 10 minutes or so, my little kid says, do you hear that? I took a second to listen and

it turns out we could hear but not see a helicopter. Non-plus we finished eating and took back off into the car and drove home. About an hour after coming home, the kids and I were talking on the porch when we could see the helicopter. This is a really a bizarre thing to see out here as we are too far from any airport or military base to have a chopper flying for such a long time. And it seemed to be a news one to boot. So being that mom, I asked, you want to go on an adventure? My kids squealed, yes. And we piled into the car and followed the damn thing. The helicopter took us to the lake that is five minutes from the house where they were, where there were more choppers flying around. Getting out of the car, we watched as they

circled when one of the city officials that I know sauntered up to us. Regret each other as my kids watched fascinated. Like I said, we don't get to see that much around here. And my friend bent low and whispered in my ear, you might want to get them out of here soon. They'll be taking the body out in a few minutes. Children down my spine. And I turned a look at him and said, what the fuck? It turns out that one of the local men that had a history of mental illness had rode himself out into the lake tied a cinder block to his feet and then thrown himself over the side of the boat. What my children and I were now witnessing was the body recovery. Needless to say, I thanked him for the information and later the fuck out of there with my kids. I still go on

adventures with my kids. I just make sure that I don't follow any sort of news helicopters anymore. Good plan. Actually, perfect plan or ambulances. Right. Stay sexy and try not to expose your kids to dead bodies, Natasha. Good plan. I mean, that's, there's a fine line between adventure and trauma. Yeah. And so yes, it's good to really, really pay attention to that. Right. News, helicopter circling, never a good, it's never for a parade. It's no rarely, very rarely. They usually get that footage on the ground. That's right. When you're going overhead for the footage, it's a seven car crash. Yeah. Usually. That's right. Take it from us. We live in Los Angeles. That's right. Okay. The subject of this is visit another country, briefly become a suspect in a

grizzly murder suicide. Suicide warning. Yeah. That's a very good idea. Have we ever even thought of that before? Okay. Hey ladies, my hometown murder is from Lake Orion, Michigan. And it's pretty crazy for me to recount because I had to get these details straight from the person who found the bodies. I am a counselor and occasionally contract out to a foreign exchange company to talk with students who are having trouble with their stay in America. So in April of 2016, I get a call seeing if I can meet with a high school student from Japan. Sure, of course. Then the contractor tells me it's to evaluate the young lady's state of mind since her host parents were found dead earlier in the week. I'm sorry. What? Oh, shit. The story as this sweet young girl

recounted to me later was that her host parents were a pretty normal couple that they argued a bit, but nothing out of the ordinary. She told me that the day of the murder she'd come home had dinner with the host mom and dad and then gone up to her room to do homework and listen to music. In the course of the night, she heard some loud noises and thumping, but with her headphones in, she didn't pay too much attention to it. The next morning she woke up, called goodbye to her host mom and caught a ride to school. She got a ride back home from school called hello to her host mom and went back up to her bedroom. Oh my God. Shortly after arriving home, there's a knock on the door. She ignores it thinking her host parents will answer the door, but the knocking persists and

nobody answers. So she finally goes down to get the door and it's the police asking to talk to her host parents. Are they home? The girl says, I think so, but I haven't seen or heard them. Let me go check. The police officer bless his instincts tells the young girl, do you mind if I check? Amazing. He comes upon the bodies of the host mom and dad shot to death in the living room. The girl was showing the officer through the house and thankfully he stopped her from seeing much of the scene. Thank God. Yeah. The reasons were unclear, but the husband shot the wife multiple times while she sat in a recliner, then sat down and shot himself in the head while the exchange student was doing homework upstairs. Holy shit. Turns out the mom was a postal worker with a

stellar attendance record. And when she no call, no showed the next day at the post office, her coworkers were convinced something bad had happened and called the police. If that hadn't happened, that poor girl would have eventually stumbled upon the grisly scene of her host parents' bodies. Oh, and she was briefly a suspect, but was quickly cleared based on the evidence. Jesus. That's so intense. Poor girl. I always thought about the parents back home in Japan and how they must have reacted to their daughter's wonderful exchange experience of murder in America. Stay sexy and don't almost get murdered overseas. Ryan in Michigan. That's so sad that she was there having had dinner with them that night. Yes. And also she's in a, she's a teenager in a foreign country.

But they, I mean, they handled that really well. I feel like immediately getting a counselor and like immediately, but oh my God, what a whole, that's heartbreaking. It's horrible. Wow. That was a serious one. Here's a kind of funny one. Okay. That's what drugs. So that's fun. That's drugs. Oh, I thought you said threads or something. What? I'm like, what, 70s clothes? Why are you talking like that? The opening of this is sup fuckers. And then it says, my favorite gender, gender neutral greeting. Amen. Hey, way to go. When I was a freshman in high school, I signed up for Driver's Ed as many 15 year olds do. It was pretty basic. I had to waste the last week of my summer in a hot room with kids I fucking hated while they showed us crash videos and told us not to text and

drive. Yeah. Yeah. Then we spent the next few weeks driving around with instructors to get our hours. The instructors had very nice cars, chargers, mustangs, et cetera, that we would drive around in, which we thought was cool. My instructor who referred to himself as road ready Ron, the driving school was called road ready. How clever. Look like your average hometown creep. Five eight, 70s porn stash, rounded glasses with a red polo tucked into his jeans. This is dead on. His favorite thing to do was spout off inspirational quotes that made no sense in context. Like, you don't have to be the best. You just have to try. Like what? I went through the course, graduated, got my license, all that good stuff. Then a few years later, when my mom was looking

to register my younger brother for driving school, she Googled road ready. My mom, despite being the biggest murderer I know, and getting me into true crime avoids the news. So it came as a surprise to her when, when her Google search yielded several articles that road ready Ron was selling cocaine out of a student driver's cars. Yes. What? As a side business, hence the nice cars. He was truly road ready. He really was. Needless to say, my brother had to attend a different driving school as road ready Ron's operation was shut down. But honestly, how smart of him, right? Who would suspect a student driver's car to have cocaine in it? For real? It's totally ridiculous, but kind of ingenious. Anyway, thank you for all you do.

It means a lot to us murderinos everywhere that we have a place to feel understood in our weird obsession and inappropriately timed humor as a Kobe mechanism. Stay sexy and don't drive around with cocaine in your student driver car, Catherine. I wonder if you got like extra time for endangering children or something. Yeah, that's interesting. Or was it just like in those weird drug suitcases in the back of the car? And it was like he did that at night. Exactly. And then taught the children during the day. You got to teach the children. You don't have to be the best. You just have to sell cocaine. But let's put that on some a little embroidery or one of you.

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in the Amazon Music app. Download the app today. Okay, I'm not going to read you the subject line of this. Okay. There was a way I could do it where like leave some words out and then I'm like, no, I just leave it out. Okay, just starts hello gang. Great. Scooby-Doo. A few weeks ago we had some friends over for dinner and games. Our friend is a state trooper, so naturally the murderer in me could not stay chill. I would so not be able to read it and went right in first. So what's the most scared you've ever been on the job? Perfect question. That's a great question. Perfect. He took a deep breath and said, well, this one time I was responding to a call about a noise complaint in the deep woods.

Uh-huh. Evidently the area he was going to is known for having people perform satanic rituals and ear muffs Elvis cat sacrifices. No. And it's been a big problem for years. That's a huge problem. That's yeah, it's not okay. So they're not ear muffs Elvis. Ear muffs Elvis. That's adorable. They're not sure exactly who's behind it, but the local police. Dogs. It's dogs. It's those dogs that play poker. Right. They're too smart and they're too rich. So they're not exactly sure who's behind it, but local police will get a call every so often about this satanic cult. He said it was pitch black out and the only way to access the area was to go down this makeshift dirt road that had zero lighting and was bumpy AF. As he chugged along writing solo

in his cruiser, he informed us that troopers drive solo to most calls. He started to see the blaze of a really large bonfire and about a dozen or so parked cars. Later days. I quit. As he approached, he saw figures standing by the fire with what he described as having animal shaped heads, wearing long capes and carrying large weapons. Okay. No. Right. Yeah. Um, he's just like reaching over for a partner is where I put my partner. He's shown his flashlight on them and told them to drop their weapons. Very brave. They continued walking eerily slow towards him, capes blowing in the breeze. He yelled again, drop your weapons slowly one by one. They started throwing their weapons down and their hands went up as he passed the flashlight over each person. He noticed most

were in medieval style clothing and their weapons also look like they were from that same time period, but looked off time travelers. The time travelers. Oh, no. Cats can't survive time travel. That's why they're on. They weren't sacrificed. They actually just didn't make it through the machine. Oh, no. Oh, fuzzy socks. One of them. One of the men started apologizing emphatically. He explained that they were just a group of larkers and live action role players who were meeting up for a game in case you don't know live action role play is a role playing game where the participants portray their fictional characters represented in the real world by interacting with each other. There are a whole set of rules and a point system think costumes homemade weaponry

constructed from duct tape face paint. You get it. Nice. Once my friend realized that he was not dealing with an animal sacrificing cult but rather a bunch of adult nerds. He said he felt a sense of relief. Yeah, you join. He doesn't know the danger of nerds. They're smarter than everybody. He said the larkers were incredibly cooperative. Of course they don't want shit from you. They're law biting. They're not like, fuck the police. Right. Yeah. And they even showed off some of their homemade weapons and explained the point system to him. Oh my God. I made a friend. That's sweet. The kicker to all of this was that the woman who called in the complaint was aware that this wasn't the Satanic cult but was really sick of the noise. So she embellished

a bit to get the cops to go out there sooner. What a dick. What a total dick. What if they had shot one of the people that had a fucking weapon? Well, too bad because it was interrupting blue bloods for her. So shoot them all. It's on you lady. Lady, stay sexy and drop your padded sword, Jay. Oh, larking. Larkers. Gotta try it. I'll be you and you be me. We'll talk to each other. And then we'll just have big swords. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I really love this one. Okay. This is called Ouija board story. Ask and you shall receive. Here's the, it just starts, here's the thing about Ouija boards. You never really know if the people playing it are telling the truth or just spinning shit to make you scared. My mother hates scary things and is the most honest person I know.

So when she told me this story and it was verified by my Catholic 90-year-old grandmother, I became a true believer. When my mother was a kid in the early 70s, she and her two sisters had a cat named Smoochie. Smoochie. Wait, do you remember that Robin Williams Edward Norton movie, Death to Smoochie? Yeah. From like the early 2000s. Yeah. But not Death to Smoochie. That's here. Well, they adored this cat and when Smoochie disappeared one day, they were devastated. My grandparents helped them look for her for note to no avail. They resolved that she must have gotten out by accident and run away. After dinner months later, my mother and her sisters asked the spirits of the Ouija board if they knew where Smoochie was. They were 7, 11 and 12 years old. The location

of their beloved cat was Paramount to who killed JFK apparently. Oh, yeah. The Ouija board spelled out G-E-R-R-I, Jerry. My mom, the eldest thought that this was a strangely spelled version of the name Jerry. They discussed this together, but none of them knew a person named Jerry with that spelling. When my grandmother called them to help dry the dishes and put them away, they continued their conversation. When my grandmother heard them mention the name Jerry, she dropped the pan she was holding on the floor. She asked my mom with a horrified look on her face how they knew Jerry. My mom replied that the Ouija board told them the name, though she said that she wasn't sure if it was Jerry with a J or Gary based on the spelling. My grandmother started to cry.

She told the girls that Smoochie hadn't run away after all. My grandmother had apparently generated an allergy to cats and she tried for months with allergy medication that made her feel terrible. My grandfather found a friend of the friend that owned a farm that could take Smoochie off their hands and have a nice, happy life. You guessed it, the woman's name who owned the farm, her name was Jerry spelled G-E-R-R-I. Holy shit. My grandma couldn't break it to the girls and worried that they would blame her for having to get rid of Smoochie, so she and my grandpa decided to tell the kids that Smoochie had run away. I'm a total skeptic, so when my mom told me the story, I immediately needed to check with my aunts and grandma. They all told the exact same

story. Wow. Anyway, stay sexy and don't lie to your kids or the Ouija board will rat you out. D. And then she said, PS, based on the porn star name game, first pet with first street address growing up, my mom has the most epic porn star name ever, Smoochie Robinson. Oh, I love it. Oh, wait, is that better than my porn name though? What's hers again? Pepsi Night. I've never heard that. What's mine, Whisker Sage? Is that sexy? Yeah, kind of new agey. Like I don't shave. It's like, yeah, you're my hippie. You're bringing that 70s porn back. Yeah. What's Stevens? Mine is Pebbles Westridge.

That's great. Stevens is the porn star that actually went to an Ivy League college, but then got into it because they were really into sex. That's right. And he likes pebbles. Send us your stories, all of them. Amazing set, everybody. Great job. Great job. My favorite murder at Gmail or you can do it on the website as well. My favorite murder. Please do. Calm. Spooky Halloween. Spooky Halloween. And stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. All this. Do you want a cookie?