My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 146

Episode Date: October 28, 2019

This week’s hometowns include a sibling break-in and a family 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 and welcome to my favorite murder. The mini-soad. That's Karen. That's Georgia. We're minis and we're just gonna see some weird soda joke. I feel like I feel like I've gotten comedy lazy lately. I feel like I'm letting a bad thing slip in. Sounded like ideas and stuff that need to tighten it up a little bit. Should we change this format completely? Yeah, what should we do? Introduce ourselves first. Oh, like pre-write it? No. Hi, I'm Georgia and that's Karen and this is

my favorite murder the mini-soad. I can hate that show. I would never listen to that show. But it's tight and concise and you know exactly what's happening. And that's what we need. Hey, this is where we read your shit to you. Are you ready? You know it. You're the one that downloaded this. You pressed play. It was your idea to come here. Listen, we appreciate it. No, actually, I'm so stoked to see you because guess what I have? What? An email that starts with the subject line, childhood friends churned murder case. Okay. Are you ready to slide right in? Let's do it. Okay. This says, hi, Karen and Georgia. Love your show. I'm from the UK and thought I would tell a story of my childhood friends. It's a little bit dark, but also completely crazy.

Perfect. Yeah. That's what we ask for. I grew up with my mom. Get used to that because we're about to be inundated in people calling their moms, moms, as all children with a single parent will know play dates and days out would be fellow single mothers and their kids. My mom started to get along well with a lady. She met through work and we would all hang out on the weekends for a few years or so. I'm going to change the name because they go on to say that they want to make sure it's all anonymous. Yeah. But this is one of the most individual names I've ever heard where so I'm just going to say my mom's friend, Joan had two girls, one of the being only a year or two older than me. What if you change the name to the correct name from the wrong name to the correct

name? If this was the fake name that they wrote, they're the most creative person on the planet and I respect them. Joan. Anyway, we suddenly stopped seeing them and because I was only young, I didn't make any presumption. And as I got older, just thought of those times as a fond memory of friendships that had fizzled out. Maybe they moved away. Nope. Only last year, about 15 years since I last saw them, me and my mom had gotten onto a weird conversation of what it must be like inside a real courtroom when suddenly she let drop that she had been to court for Joan's trial. I said, Joan, when did Joan go to court? And then she suddenly looked at me as if she had accidentally told a five year old that Santa doesn't exist and I knew something was going on.

After a lot of pressing and convincing my mother that I was no longer eight and could handle whatever she was about to say, she told me we stopped seeing Joan and the girls because Joan had stabbed them to death in their sleep. Turns out my mom was the last person to speak with Joan and noticed that she was being overly sensitive and paranoid, but obviously could never have predicted what was about to go down. Joan got life in prison and evidence was released proving the attack was premeditated rather than a horrible outcome of a mental health episode. Anyway, that's my hometown story. Stay safe and holy crap. I mean, that's worst case scenario. Trauma. Children? Okay. That's crazy. It's so awful. I mean, also, it's so kind of lovely that mother kept that secret

from her daughter because that's such a terrible, no child should ever have to know that things like that happen in the world. And even as an adult, didn't want to tell her because it's just not memories and shit. Yeah. It's horrible. Okay. This one's a little more positive. Well, okay. Save my friends on Halloween. Hello, Karen, Georgia, Steven and Fur Babies, your favorite. They're doing it on purpose. I have a few murder stories, but this is my Halloween home down. It was October, my freshman year of college and my new best friend slash sorority sisters, and I had decided to go to a fraternity Halloween party. Naturally, the night started with us slipping into our slutty Halloween costumes and a secret pregame in our dorm room. Yes. Then,

in a pre-Uber era, six hot drunk bitches proceeded to walk and laugh in the dark at night across campus. Yeah. They must have had made a wrong turn being new to the college campus scene and ended up walking down a dimly lit street on the very edge of campus. Why is there any dimly lit anything on campus? Never. Yeah. Incorrect. Light the whole city up. How about fucking gas lamps every 50 steps? Everywhere. Please. Light everything on fire. Lanterns, Christmas lights, whatever you can find a nightlight or two, plug it in and some in an outdoor outlet. Colleges, you guys act like you're so smart. Please be smart about lights at night. Come on. My dad, a father of three girls, always insists on walking behind us so he can keep an eye on us. A trait I subconsciously picked up

because I found myself at the back of my slutty friend squad. At this point, and still on the barely lit street, a group of boys walked past us in the other direction. A group of boys is always a bad fucking thing. I'm getting a little agitated just from the suggestion of it. A murder of boys. Yeah. One for sorrow, two for joy. My drunk crew continued to walk but my spidey senses kicked in. I immediately became sober as I felt someone was following us. I quickly turned around and that group of boys had changed directions and began to walk behind us. I was told, I was once told if you're creeped out by someone following you to ask them a question. Hey, do you like candy? Hey, what direction are you going and why? Hi, are you following me? Are you following me because

get the fuck away from me? Why are you walking down a dimly lit street? Hey, drunk asshole, don't be a creep. Yeah. I don't know. Why don't you get some lights for this area instead of following us around? I don't know. It tells, okay, ask them a question. I don't know. It tells them you're paying attention or something. Sure. Being the forward person that I am, I look right at the psycho in the Freddy Krueger mask and his dumb friends and I say, can we help you? Nice. Totally thrown off by me speaking, the dumb friends grabbed Freddy and ran away together. We made it to the frat party and found out the next day. More dangerous than being on the darkened street. Run. We turned out Freddy and his friend had followed some drunk girls home off that dark

street and tried to rape them. No. Luckily, they weren't successful. Needless to say, my friends were grateful for my quick drunk wit and 13 years later, those bitches are still my best friends and have had to save their lives on several other occasions. I bet. Thanks for all you do to empower women to be badass bitches, Jay. Oh my God. Yeah. See, that's the, we were just talking about, I was talking, oh, I did Margaret Cho's podcast yesterday and I was talking to her about, she was talking about this exact thing, discussing this thing even at all, telling young women that they get to be assertive in these situations. And then also just this, just the awareness, just we encourage the awareness of if it's almost like being a designated driver,

if you're going to get shitfaced, please have one to two friends who are not or just have the sense of big picturing things. Totally. Because things can go out of control so quickly. Yeah. And it's just, just for your own. And drinking turns off your spidey senses too, which was such a bomber, but it does. Well, that's the whole idea, but that's why if we're going to do it, you know, don't, don't get lost on a dark campus, please. Yeah. Also, guys, don't rape women, please. Well, that's really actually should be the message. And we always, we always tell girls things, but the point is, if you need to wear a Freddy Krueger mask and try to rape young women, you need to go to a hospital called jail. You need to go to St. Elsewhere prison system.

Okay. You ready for this? Treasure or murder? What's in that wall? Hello to lovable animals and those who love them. Sorry. I thought it said those who love to love them. And it reminded me of Donna Summer. Here we go. When our kids got old enough to wrestle and generally destroy shit. Sorry, I'll say that again. When our kids got old enough to wrestle and generally destroy shit, we had to finish our basement. We own a hundred year old house. So the basement was like a serial killer's dream. Bare light bulbs, cement floors with random stains, doors boarded up with rotting wood, a sink hanging off a pipe. That sounds like my dream basement. Just go stand in there with a candle. Silence, silence of the lambs, only not as nice.

The last contractors used it as a workroom for DIY projects. Sorry. The last owners used it as a workroom for DIY projects or torture. Could be both. The general contractor told us we had to remediate. Sorry. I just learned a word. The general contractor told us we had to remediate asbestos before he started. And thankfully, the asbestos guy we hired was young and overcaffeinated. He finished the work really fast. I don't want asbestos workers working fast. You don't? No. You mean you want to throw? Take your time, bro. Maybe for their own safety, I want them working fast. Just get a big vacuum cleaner in there. Get it out. Okay. When I came home from work, he yelled for me to come downstairs. Now let's set the scene. Like they

haven't already. For asbestos removal, they spray everything down with water. Oh, that means they shut off the electricity. So I feel my way down open wood stairs into a dripping hole that smells like sewage, wet cement, and certain death. Standing mostly in the dark with water still dripping from the ceiling, he asks if we ever find stuff in the walls. My feet say run. My heart says treasure. He then very ceremoniously unwraps a rag. It's a gun. A 22 sportsman's handgun. Yep, I have photos. He found it wrapped in a rag and stuffed into the wall behind old cabinets. The trusty lad had already brought it in and got an appraisal. It wasn't worth very much, said no murderino ever. We still have no idea how it got there or when or who got killed with it,

because you know, someone did. When our contractor came back to start construction, hell yeah, we told him all about our firearm. Without skipping a beat, he said, the room that used to be the fruit cellar is two inches higher than the rest of the basement. There's a thin layer of cement over the dirt floor, probably newer. You have to break it up and dig it out. If you see a skull or little skeleton fingers sticking out, I'm not coming back ever. Happy to say sorry to say no bones or nipple belts were ever found. Stay sexy and dear lord, get that cement poured faster. Barb in Minneapolis. What a beautifully written hometown email. That was great. That was perfect. Isn't that insane? I wonder how old the gun was.

And what was it connected to? Yeah. Turn it in. Don't can't the cops at least look at the serial number? I love the asbestos guy was like, I'm gonna go see how much this is worth before I tell them. You know, you wouldn't have told them if he's like, look, I'm down here risking my lungs to pull this asbestos out. If I find a gun and it's worth five grand, that's my gun. Listen, contractors and people who are asbestos people, write in shit you found in walls, please, we're dying to know about it. If you work for like a, what's that called? Exterminators? Yes. Like if you're a termite person, I want to know all about the crazy bugs you found in walls. Yes. Yes. That's now we're getting into tell us about the recall sacks that you find in basements. Okay,

maybe that's just me. Family racoon. That's all I want. Okay. We want if you've ever shown your flashlight up into an attic and there's a raccoon family wearing little hats eating breakfast, please write in and tell us about that. Pictures would be great or just a drawing is fine. Yeah, I think an animation would be the best. Nick carry. Nick. 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.

While I 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 murder 20 with code murder 20. That's up to 20 free meals plus free shipping

on your first box when you go to HelloFresh.ca slash murder 20 and use code murder 20. Goodbye. Hi. What makes a person a murderer? 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. That time my brother accidentally did a B and E. I feel like this is something that happens to a lot of people but here we go. Karen, Georgia, Stephen and Pets. I've been listening to your hometown many so it's pissed that I didn't have any cool stories to share when I finally remembered one. My siblings and I were in high school. We spent a weekend at my aunt and uncle's house in a Chicago suburb for a family event. Shortly after we arrived, my youngest brother who was

probably about 15 at the time had left the house to go get something from the car. No one thought much of it when he was gone for several minutes and when he came back in, he nonchalantly sat back down in the living room without saying a word. About 15 minutes later, two police officers knock on my aunt and uncle's door asking if we had seen a man breaking into the neighbor's house and that they were on the lookout for a suspect. My brother just calmly chimed in from the living room. Oh, that was me. Turns out that my brother had gotten the houses mixed up when he returned from the car, entered into the neighbor's house and was chilling in their living room for several minutes thinking to himself, hey, I didn't know Uncle Jim had a PlayStation and wait, where did

everybody go before realizing, oh shit, I'm in the wrong house. Since my brother didn't see anyone while in the house, he just assumed no one was home and he quickly left thinking he could get away without mentioning the incident to us. Turns out there was someone in the house, a 13-year-old girl who was home alone for the first time. Oh, no. She heard my brother come in the house and her murdering instincts kicked in and she quickly hid in a bedroom closet and called her mom, who then called the police. Yes, good. But she'd like con out the knife and shit. The police told us that there had been a recent murder in the surrounding area and the suspect had yet to be caught. So the young girl was especially afraid to be home alone to begin with.

Jesus. Poor baby. Needless to say, my brother had a lot of explaining to do to the cops, but once it was all over, the neighbor's family and ours were able to have a good laugh at the whole situation. We still make fun of him for 16 years later. Of course you do, because that's fucking siblings. Because that's it. Anyways, love the podcast. I'm so glad I found a network of true crime lovers like myself. It's thanks to you guys that my husband isn't so creeped out by my true crime obsession anymore. Nice. Love can build a bridge. Stay sexy and make sure you're always at the right house before going in. Rachel. Anytime your brother acts nonchalant. Oh, totally. Some shit is coming down the pipe for you. That is so true. Anytime a boy is pretending that he walks

into a room where everyone's watching TV is like, hey, nothing. I don't know. And their voice is kind of up and they only say short phrases and sentences. The shit, the tsunami is coming. Anytime my brother would walk in a room like, hey, Georgia, how are you? What did you steal from me? What the fuck did you take to your pockets right now? What did you pour in my bed? Like fuck with me. You really have to. That's so true. Between my cousin Stevie and our next-door neighbor, Andy Withington, I was on high alert at all times. You had to get so good at recognizing prank behavior. Because there's nothing a smug prankster loves more than the minutes that they first see you again before the prank starts. And then when you go, what did you do? You have to look and find it

and they're like, nothing. Yeah. Watch you try to find it. And then you're like, fuck it's a water on tops of the doors. What box is this shit wrapped up as a gift? Still traumatized from childhood. But it was fun though. We're very ready for all things. They kept me on my toes, that kid. Okay, this is my last one, right? Okay, yeah. The subject line of this is happy spooky Halloween. And that's, I'm just reflecting with the caps. You're telling me I'm reading that off the page. Sure. There's three O's. There's six O's. Three big, three small. Yeah. Okay, you're with me. I hear. I have, sorry. It just starts. I have an amazing Halloween story for you. It has it all. Ghosts, kids, holy water. But let's get to it. My folks own an amazing old home with verandas,

wrap around porches, all that adorable stuff. Bragg, bragg. Richie, rich. One night my son, who was two years old at the time, and I went down to Nana's for Friday night pizza, as you do when you're Catholic during Lent. Oh my God. Can't eat meat on Fridays during Lent. Okay. So pizza it is? Pizza's the only other, like, that's just, what do you? I think sometimes people have fish, which is a full on nightmare to me. We're just like, oh, it's going to smell like that now for three days in this house. Does anybody think this through? I left my son in the living room with his pizza and SpongeBob babysitter so I could sit for five minutes and eat pizza with the adults. After a while I noticed he was really quiet, so I went in to check on him. At first

I thought he was missing until I noticed he had tucked himself under the coffee table. When he begrudgingly came out from there, I asked what he was up to and he simply responded by saying, boy, I didn't understand what he was trying to say. So I asked again. This time he pointed to the dark, far corner of the room and said in his cute, now suddenly very ominous two-year-old baby voice, boy, I realized he was seeing something that I could not. So I did what all grown ass women do when your kid sees a ghost and yelled from my mother. She came in and we asked again, what was up? This time, this is in all caps. This time he walked to a chair in the corner, put his arm around the back of it like he was gently hugging a child, pointed to the empty seat and again said,

calmly, boy, that was it. We walked out of that room for the rest of the night. Luckily my mom called the next day to let me know she handled it. Having no idea what that could possibly mean, I asked her to explain. She said she went to church, got some holy water, doused the whole chair and moved it to another room, seven exclamation points. Our church doesn't give out holy water. My mother took a small vial, walked into where they have holy water for blessing yourself upon entering the church and just helped herself. I informed her that one, stolen holy water doesn't count. It's evil. I think it's the opposite of what you want. It's the devil's water. And two, she is not qualified to use it. I guess it worked though because the next time we were there,

my son walked into the living room ever so slowly. He was scared of the boy. Well, not too scared because he put his arm around him. He walked into the living room ever so slowly, peeked around the corner, gave it a good look-see and decided it was safe. Mom, holy water warrior, stay sexy and don't use stolen holy water to rid your house of ghosts, Kate. Or do. Or it works, so do it. When my nephew was about that age, we went to our favorite restaurant, family restaurant, El Coyote, which is this totally kitschy Mexican restaurant. That's super classic. It's basically forgetting drunk in your 20s. It is. It's where Sharon Tate had her last meal. So, we're there with my nephew. He's like, too. And the whole time he has a chip in

his hand and he's hiding behind it and looks really scared and we can't figure it out and then realize the Halloween decoration, which was scaring the shit out of him. Like, there was right behind me so he could see it the whole time. He was just hiding behind the chip. Yeah, we forget how children are affected by, like, all of a sudden in the beginning of October, we just start hanging skeletons and dead bodies and, like, bloody beheaded heads all around. Which is a shit. Yeah. Yeah. That's horrifying. So cute. Okay. My last one. Okay. This one is called eBay Coffin Not As Advertised. Hello from my union lunch break. God bless it. God bless you. As a scenic painter in the film industry, I've had to paint my fair share of

creepy props. Hello, jar of real bones and spend late nights at creepy locations. Hello, haunted jails. Oh, but recently I had a run in with a real coffin that tops all my crazy stories. This coffin was actually the kind of pressure sealed steel box that small coffins carrying fallen soldiers go inside of. Oh, a coffin for a coffin, if you will. It got wheeled into our paint shop and dropped off with instructions to make a replica of it. The task went to me right before the end of day. Bad enough if it's just like paperwork. Yeah. But then it's like, here, make this giant coffin. It says, so it's late. So it's nighttime. I'm alone in the shop working on my replica and I'm not feeling too hot with this real life steel body box next to me.

I'd heard a rumor from a co-worker that it came from eBay and was supposed to be unused, but that our boss had opened it and saw yellow juice inside of it and then closed it. Could have been pineapple juice. You know how that goes. Oh, God. I wasn't sure if that was true since we all joked around so much in the shop, but I legit did not like this thing and had to hum to myself while I worked. What song? There's nothing like humming that comforts you just a little bit. Just hum monster mash to yourself. You'll be fine. The next morning when I come into work to finish the replica, the prop master comes over and frantically yells to stop working because a crime scene cleanup team was on their way to clean this coffin. No, it wasn't pineapple

juice. They'd heard about my boss seeing the juices in the coffin. Juices. Stop using the word juice. It's so horrible. It's really awful. And called the crime scene people the night before while I was alone with it for over an hour. Barf. Anyway, the crime scene guys come out in their creepy van and put on their hazmat suits and swab the thing. It's not their fault that they have to drive a van. No, or wear creepy hazmat suits. Yeah. Over an hour later, they come back from the back of the van. I guess they had tested the swab and simply say, yep, those are human remains. Gotta have to rope it off. In their full crime scene cleanup regalia, they put caution tape around this thing and then squirt Clorox bleach a few times inside the coffin and wipe it with

paper towels. And that's it. Then they closed it. But the end. No. Apparently that's how you clean a coffin with human remains in it. Clorox. Paper towels. Even though you bought it off eBay under a listing that said it was unused. Anyway, stay sexy and don't buy coffins on eBay, Kelly. Yeah. No, you needed to like send the detectives to whoever you bought this thing from. Yeah, I know. How is that the final, I guess them having the swabs, then they just take the DNA and go? You're, I don't know. They don't know. I need to know how this is going to get handled. Yeah, I do too. That's creepy. Well, anything off of eBay is creepy. Yeah. Coffins. Did you see there was some museum did a creepiest doll contest? No. Yeah.

Can we see those pictures? Let's find them for next week's episode for the Halloween episode. Yes. Good idea. Yeah. Okay. There's nothing scarier than a doll. No, it's the creepiest thing. It's unless it's a two-year-old saying, boy. Boy. Teddy Rocksman. Send us your stories. We're doing a special Halloween episode and you still have time to send us your stories. My favorite murder at GML, fucking creepy shit, Ouija boards, ghosts, everything. You could be a Halloween themed event, something that happened to you because of Halloween. It could just be something that's scary and goes along. Ghost stories. Your worst costume. Somebody that stick their arm out from behind a curtain and put their finger down your spine.

Who was the creepy guy who would pass out candy in your neighborhood and pass out like sunflower seeds or whatever? And then your little child body would be sending alarm signals. Your the hair would be standing up on your arms and you'd be like, let's get away. And then later on, 10 years later, turns out they dig up the backyard. They find pumpkins. It's just loved to raise pumpkins. And you, it's you that is wrong this time. Also stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, you want a cookie?