My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 147

Episode Date: November 4, 2019

This week’s hometowns include a seeing a dead body with mom and a child suspected of 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 Soat. This is where we read you back your stuff. Don't you love it? We do too. That's Georgia. And that's Karen. That was tight as a drum. Oh my god. We've never done an intro so beautifully professional. Truly. And effervescent. Oh, really? That's my compliment to you. Are you ready? I'm ready. A body in a weird place, you asked. That's the subject. Nice. Hi, Karen, Georgia, Stephen and Fauna. Oh, love it. In

Minnesota, 63, you asked for emails, read bodies in weird places. Well, I'll tell you where I found a guy he shouldn't have been. When I lived in Santa Barbara in the mid 1990s, I worked at a fancy resort in the room service department taking phone orders. If you want to know, but I can't say it on the pod. Believe it. The hotel property is super old and there are rumors that it's haunted. I usually worked the late shift as so I got off work at 1am. We were required to wear uniforms at work and to change in and out of our uniforms on the premises in a locker room. The locker room was in the basement near the accounting office, uniform checkout room and the pastry kitchen, neither of which were occupied by staff late at night. There was a weird door in the locker room

into a closet that had a window in it with those old Spanish style bars on it. One night I was changing from my uniform into my own clothes in the locker room. There wasn't another soul in the basement. Already such a big problem for me. Or so I thought. Oh, no, more problems. As I was standing in my underwear in front of the mirror, there was this ledge to put your clothes on purse, etc. While you changed, I heard a loud sigh that sounded like a man in him aroused state. I looked up at the mirror to see if there was someone or a ghost behind me and saw a reflection in the mirror of a man's face looking at me from the closet through the barred window. I screamed. He came out of the closet. I thought he was going to attack me and being cornered in

the basement. I ran toward him ready to beat the shit out of him. Yes. Yes. parentheses. Mind you, I'm still just in my underwear. Yeah. He ran away from me and exited the locker room. I quickly got dressed and went out to call security. I recognized the man as a housekeeper who frequently came to say hello to me when I was working. Security called the police and searched the property to find him while I waited in a secure location. I didn't want this creep to follow me home. They eventually found him hiding on the property and arrested him. He was cited for a misdemeanor and released. I never heard from the DA or the police after that, but he was fired from his job. As you well know, at that time, peeping wasn't seen as a first step in escalating sex

crimes. I never saw him again, but I hope that asshole didn't go on to commit more or worse sexual assaults. I don't live in Santa Barbara anymore, but I will be coming up for my favorite weekend and I can't wait. By the way, I will not be staying in that hotel. SSTGM and don't go into a basement locker room alone late at night, Christine. Wow. Can you imagine you look at it's 1am? Yeah. You look in the mirror and behind you, you realize that you're not seeing just darkness inside a closet. No. There's a face staring back at you. No. And you're at your most vulnerable. You have no clothes on. Oh, God. That's horrifying. Just the worst. There's my first one. Okay. This one's called Don't Die Over Minimum Wage. I feel really... Hello, all. Let's move on to

the reason we're here. When I was 19, I worked at a small frozen yogurt shop where I had to close the store by myself because our district manager was trash. For real. Total garbage. The Froyo shop was in a medium-sized, middle-class town, meaning you could find meth by going floor blocks in any direction. The store was set up with a lobby immediately inside, yogurt machines on one side with a door leading to the back and the registers straight across from the front doors. I'm closing alone one night and in the back area washing the dishes when I hear the bell ring signaling a customer had just walked in. This is weird because I could have sworn I locked the door when I had started my closing tasks. I peek my head out from the back to see a large

man right inside the front door staring directly through my eyes into my soul. I call out in my customer service voice, oh, I'm sorry, sir. We're closed for the evening. This did nothing to stop him and I realize he's most likely on drugs when he continues to stare and walk towards me, only saying yogurt. I apologize again and my brain goes into survival mode. I pretend to call out to my non-existent co-worker saying, no, it's okay. I'll let him know we're closed. Large and burly, maybe meth man starts to walk towards the door that leads to the back area where I'm at saying, no, I'm already here. No, that's not how it works. It doesn't work that way, motherfucker. I decide I'm not willing to die over minimum wage and pick up two large butcher knives and wave them around like

a crazy lady saying, you have to leave. We're closed. He puts his hand up, apologizes and leaves. Good. I run and shove a chair into the front door, call my stepdad to come pick me up and get the hell out of there. Yeah. I quit the next day because fuck that shit. Maybe he really wanted yogurt and was just hungry, but I'm glad I went with my gut instinct in that moment. Yes. I'd rather be alive and crazy than trusting and dead or assaulted. Hello. Hi. PS, I think I listened to this podcast too much because sometimes I hear things or drive by creepy looking houses and think to tell you guys about it and then remember, you don't know me and we aren't friends. Yes, we are. Stay sexy and don't die over minimum wage and always make sure you're willing to look like

the craziest motherfucker in the room. Your friend in another lifetime, Sasha. Sasha, it's so true. Sasha, great job. Really good job. Also, fuck people who don't let teenagers who work for minimum wage in those retail spaces that they don't schedule to people and that making anyone close by themselves that's in high school, boy or girl, that's bullshit. No, it's all, it's all so frightening. It's not cool at all. Yeah. Yogurt. Yogurt shop murders. Yeah, that's right. That's right because it's, yeah, people are vulnerable. Trapped in a spot. Yeah. There's so many of the stories that we've told that start with a person who's just doing their job, they're doing the thing they're supposed to do,

they're following the rules, they're trying to make their money. Some piece of shit comes around and takes advantage of that. Bullshit. Assholes. God, I love frozen yogurt. Okay. Yeah. This, I'm not going to read this subject line because it gives everything away. Okay. Hi, MFM crew. In honor of a, oh, this is after Halloween, but in honor of Spooky Halloween, I wanted to write in about the time my mom and I saw a dead body. I live in Florida and usually go home to Pennsylvania once a year in October to visit my family and go to the annual Apple Harvest Festival in Gettysburg. Yay. I love the apple bread enough to get past the fact that it's the women's Republican party that makes and sells it as their fundraise. Oh honey,

you're giving money to the Republican party. Just make your own apple bread. Get the fucking recipe from an old lady in your family. That's right. Come on. I bet you could find one online. There was a time where that was okay and both sides and partisanship not anymore. It's fucking 2019. There are babies in cages. It's not a joke. How do you like them apples? Please right now, give some money to races, which is the charity that's down in Texas that's trying to help immigrants and people that whose children have been taken away from them because they're trying to immigrate to a better country and get away from the war in their country. Son of a bitch. Anyhoo. And that's on the page. Last year when I was home, I was in the car with

my mom about a mile from my grandparents house when we see a man laying on the ground in his driveway not moving. I saved something to my mom and asked if we should go back and see if he's all right. And my mom says, no, hopefully he's dead. That man that lives there is a pedophile. Mom. I love mom. Suddenly she's redeemed. She went on to tell me that he had been in and out of jail for raping multiple young girls around the time that my mom was a kid in the 70s. My mom was right. He was dead. He was shot on his porch and had crawled down his driveway for help. A few days later, a man turned himself in for murder. Apparently the dead guy was sleeping with a married woman and her husband decided to kill him. I can't get past the fact that a woman was sleeping with

a convicted child rapist. That should be an automatic deal breaker. Keep up the great work. This podcast keeps me sane on my 90-minute commute, SSDGM Alyssa. Alyssa, I love that the mom's like, who cares? Keep going. Seriously, I'm sorry, but that's not, it's, you get to withhold help for people that have only harmed others their whole lives. I'm disappointed that he got killed for sleeping with a grown woman and not for a child. It would have been more satisfying in the story, but either way, what's important is that when he crawled down his porch to go get help, the people in his community said, guess what, motherfucker? You're a bad person, you're the enemy, and you're gonna have, you're,

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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 murder20 with code murder20. That's up to 20 free meals plus free shipping on your first box when you go to hellofresh.ca slash murder20 and use code murder20. Goodbye. Hey, I'm Arisha. And I'm Brooke. And 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 hit 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. Um, I was a four year old murder suspect. Oh, hello ladies. Thanks for helping me get into the mental health headspace before I give ghost tours in Washington DC. Had to really dig deep into my memories and my parents for this one. But I hope you enjoy it. I'm from a small shore town in New Jersey, quiet, your typical suburban suburbia outside New York City. It's

January of 1998. I had just turned for the October before and had come down with I think with scarlet fever, whatever that is. So my mom takes me and my then 14 year old aunt to our local pharmacy to pick up my prescription. My mom goes in to pick this up, leaving me and my aunt in the car. She passes a guy at a pay phone. It was 1998. Don't forget. And who then went into the pharmacy. My mom gets my medicine and we leave in her strawberry colored deep dodge neon again, 1998. Yes. The next day there was a message from the Middletown Police Department looking for me by name. I repeat I was four with some disease we thought had been eradicated in the 19th century. Yeah. My mom called them back and they wanted to speak with me and my mom laughed and said that I

it would be difficult since I can barely form full sentences. Turns out they were calling because I all caps was the last name on record at the pharmacy that night and their number one suspect. I'll explain my age and they dropped that angle. It turns out the guy called from the pay phone in front of the pharmacy and called for a cab to be picked up. When the cab arrived to pick him up, the guy robbed the driver in his cab behind the pharmacy and stabbed him to death. Oh my god. My family recall it was like for $27 or so. So apparently he killed the cabby while mom was in the store and me and my preteen aunt were parked right around the building in the same parking lot. It ended up that the guy lived across the street in some sketchy apartments that have

since hosted local sex rings and a drug dealing love trial gone wrong, which coincidentally involved my high school crush. Guests things don't always go well for the hot quarterback. Oh no. Supposedly he ditched the knife in a pond. I did some digging that couldn't find much, but my parents are pretty sure he was caught. I hope so. My supposedly quaint hometown also claims a man who beat his wife to death with a frying pan and a murdered school teacher. Between that and all the Trump 2020 signs, you can imagine why I moved to DC. So anyways, don't just stay sexy and don't get murdered, but don't get suspected of one either, M. Oh my god. I love the idea that they bring a four-year-old into the lineup. But the guy in the pay phone was the

murderer calling the cab company. Horrifying. Also, those kind of random murders are so awful where it's like, I'm going to murder a cab driver and get like basically almost no money. There's some innocent dude who's just fucking trying to make a living. That's drugs. Every time it's somebody that's terribly strung out on drugs and everyone's lives are ruined. Totally. That's so fucked up. Okay. On a slightly lighter note, all of mine are like perv based this week for some reason. I have pervs in every single one. Mine's a little more lighthearted the last one, so. Okay, good. Great. We can go up, up, up. Yeah, yeah. The subject line of this one is the Swiss cheese perverts got nothing on this guy. Okay. I'm here. Dear MFM Queens, the most

powerful of which is Steven's mustache. How dare you? Parentheses, insert whatever compliment would be most flattering to you here. I love everything about you, so I'm sure it's true. Thank you. It's our teeth. Well done. Yes. So, I bet you receive stories about creepy rideshare experiences all the time, but I truly hope for their sakes that other listeners haven't had this totally insane experience. In early September of this year, I had to catch a 7 a.m. flight cross-country for work. I was cranky because A, this Sunday flight for work ruined my weekend and B, it was simply too early to be socializing with other humans. Nonetheless, I called a lift and got into the assigned red Nissan Cube, red flag number one.

A normal person would never pay money for that much stress. A cube. That's editorializing. Some people, some DJ hamsters love it. It was immediately clear that this driver was socially awkward and nervous as he never looked at me either directly or in the rearview mirror. Absolutely no eye contact at all, red flag number two. Very true. Also, his small talk was abysmal. Instead of asking me innocuous icebreaker questions, he volunteered arbitrary information about himself at random intervals. Red flag number three. That's so fucking true. It's like people who don't know how to interact with other people. They're just like, I talk now. I talk about this, my thing. Now, I only live about 20 minutes from the airport and

though I was annoyed with his fledgling conversational skills, we made it to the 15 minute mark before I started getting scared. This driver started telling me a story about a few days before when he'd been sitting on a park bench and saw a baby squirrel fall out of a tree. He said he searched for its mother, realized it was alone and found it food to try to keep it alive. This seems like it'd be a nice thing to do. So I said, that was nice of you. It is now clear to me that that was the wrong thing to say. His response was to abruptly lock eyes with me in the rearview mirror without breaking eye contact. He took one of his hands off the steering wheel and very slowly unzipped a cargo pocket on his pants. Then he placed his hand back on the wheel and broke eye

contact. Seconds later, a baby squirrel crawled out of the cargo pocket. A baby squirrel crawled out of his pants. This is my dream ride. What are you talking about? Someone who doesn't talk, doesn't make you talk. I don't want to fucking talk in a new word. You're just talking at me great. And then you present me with a baby squirrel. It's like my birthday. It was in his pants. That's, I think, it was in a pants pocket. Well, true. I mean, there are many pockets on cargo pants. How close was this pocket to the crotch? We're not sure. Well, it's warm there. A baby squirrel needs warmth. Okay, sorry. Go on. So I, back to the letter, I froze in terror. The squirrel crawled over the front passenger seat. As soon as he knew that I'd seen the squirrel,

he started turning around to look at me, making as much eye contact as possible as he was. Rapidly asked me personal questions. Is that building where I picked you up the place where you live? How old are you? Do you ride to the airport every Sunday? Do you think I could give you a ride again sometime? Oh my God. That just gave me weird baby squirrel chills. I lied in response to every single question. Great job. Quickly realizing that he was not a socially awkward nerdy guy, but instead he was getting off on trapping me in a car with a squirrel. He was fidgeting in his seat and moving his hand across his pants in a very specific way. No, no, no, no. All while stealing glances at me every few seconds to make sure I was still

freaked out by the live animal in the car with us. Needless to say, I got out of the lift at the very first possible door to the airport, grabbing my bag while inside the car so he wouldn't help me. He wouldn't get out to help me with it. I can confidently say that this was the first time I actually wanted to be in a TSA line. After my flight, I complained to lift and they refunded me the cost of the ride, but I was disappointed that they wouldn't confirm to me whether or not he was fired. Forced kink participation and possible animal abuse is quite a lot to go through in one car ride. Stay sexy and be on the lookout for a red niece on cube, Meredith. Oh my God. Oh shit girl. That's intense. That really is. This is, I'm just going to say humorous

and infuriating. Oh. Hello MFM Fam and pets. In 2007, when I was 21, I was living in Northwestern Mississippi with my parents after having moved home from my first attempt at college. Oh, I'm with you. One evening I got pulled over in a small town called Batesville for having no tail light. I got a ticket, fixed the light, and went on about my business. A few months later, my mom checked the mail and handed me a letter. The return address was from the Mississippi State Penitentiary and there was a big red stamp on the envelope that said, inspected. Immediately, a little freaked out, I opened the letter of the sink hoping any anthrax or poison or prison dirt would fall into the sink and I could immediately wash my hands. In hindsight, that was probably a

bad idea because it would have then gone into the water system. But who's thinking about that when you have prison mail to open? Luckily, the letter inside wasn't poison, but it was definitely weird as fuck. The letter was two pages long, front and back and written in pencil. I forget the man's name, but we will call him Bob for now. The letter started with, hello Ms. Watson, my name is Bob and yes, I'm a prisoner. No shit Bob. It went on for two pages, first explaining that he was incarcerated for grand larceny and the murder of someone he robbed. He said he had no problem writing out his sentence, but that didn't mean that we couldn't still take opportunities to make money. He offered for me to go in with him on a totally fucked up plan where I would take

out ads and newspapers for homosexual men to send money for gay porn. They would send the money to a P.O. box he already had set up and we could split the money. No idea if this porn existed or not, but or if he was going to rip them off. What the fuck? Yeah. He then answered the most important question. How did he get my address? Well, apparently the town of Batesville, Mississippi, where I got that tick, that taillight ticket, prints the name, offense and fucking address of anyone who gets a ticket in the fucking newspaper. No. The next day I called the Batesville newspaper and the police station to inquire slash complain about this and was pretty much told that that was policy. And if I don't want my address ran in the newspaper, then I shouldn't get tickets

in their town. I explained that a criminal had gotten ahold of my address from the newspaper and was soliciting illegal business ventures. And now he knows where I live and they just laughed and said, yep, that happens sometimes. Mother fuckers. No one. Then let's put their address is exactly how they feel. No one cared that I was a 21 year old female who commutes alone an hour each way. And now the entire world has my private info. I don't know if they still do that, but I sure hope not. Well, all of that was fucked up. It did result in the funny saying my mom and I still say to this day when talking about finances, Bob closed the letter by saying, quote, people can be gay, straight, black or white, but money is always green. Stay saved and do

God's missions, Jess. Oh my God. Here's the problem. They're using that getting a ticket as some sort of like don't do it again next time. Yeah. If your tail light goes out, you didn't there. You can't prepare for that. No. It's not like she was speeding. It's not like she was drunk driving. Right. That's a that the punishment does not fit the crime in that situation. It's still also like, well, you got the ticket. So that's that's the crime. I mean, that's the punishment and she paid for that ticket. Right. Like fuck you for then personal address. Yeah, that's not that's probably not legal. I can't imagine it is. Let's take on an entire city. Yeah. Here we come for you, Batesville, home of the fighting. Sprankers. Send us your story that my favorite murder at

Gmail. It's lunchtime for us. Stay psyched and don't get murdered. Goodbye. Oh, do you want a cookie?