My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 158

Episode Date: January 20, 2020

This week’s hometowns include an Alaskan mystery and an Edmund Kemper-related possession. 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. Your mini-soad. We're bringing it at you. Your letters, your stories, your urban myths pass down to us and read back to you. In your face. Into your face for the year 2020. That's right.

Go. First one. Okay. No subject line because apparently the website doesn't take it anymore. That's right. Hi, furry friends and also the host of the show. When I was in 10th grade, we had a sex ed class once a week during our gym period and during our discussions.

Sorry, I just lost my place immediately. And during our discussions, we got into the topic of consent and rape. This is when our gym teacher shared the following story with us that still gives me chills to this day. She had a close friend during university who worked at a local bar. She had big red curly hair and a personality to match. So she made friends with the patrons really easily. She had one guy that came in somewhat regularly who she would talk to often and tell him how

her classes were going and just other small talk. He was handsome and charming and always tipped well. So of course, she never turned down a chat. Just by chance in all their talks, she never happened to mention to this man that she was planning on quitting her bar job and moving into her boyfriend's place across the city. And this is what saved her life. Because it turns out that man was Paul Bernardo. Shut your mouth face.

He had found out where her parents' house was that she was living in at the time and would watch her for weeks from the window and videotape her in her room. He wrote in his journals about her, referring to her as quote, big red. And this is eventually how she found out she was one of his potential victims because this is how he would often greet her when he would come in. Oh, my God. We're talking the Scarborough rapists, we're talking the Ken and Barbie killer, Paul Bernardo, the worst thing to come out of Canada, since some band that could be a funny reference

right here that's Canadian. The night he planned to attack her happened to be the day after she moved out. So she never came home to her parents that night, therefore saving her life. Bernardo was caught pretty soon after, I believe, and that's when she went to the police after recognizing him on the news and they put the pieces together. She even had to watch some of the videos he took of her just to confirm it was in fact her. Oh, my God.

How unnerving would that be? Oh, yeah. You'll never feel safe again. I learned about your podcast from a popular influencer and fan, shout out Dr. Pepper Princess. Who's that? I'm going to follow them right now. Oh, wait, someone's calling me.

Why is someone calling me? Is it the Dr. Pepper Princess? Oh, my God. What if it's the Dr. Princess? Let's wrap her Dr. Pepper around the holidays and makes hot toddies out of Dr. Pepper. Let me see. Dr. Pepper. Princess.

All right. There she is. Oh, yeah. She's a murderer. And an influencer? Probably, too. Sure. Yeah.

Thanks, Dr. Pepper Princess. And I have been hooked ever since. Thanks for helping me get through my work day and make my boyfriend occasionally think I'm plotting his murder. So yeah, stay sexy and don't make friends with serial killers just because they tip you well, amethyst. That was excellent. That was incredible.

Excellent, amethyst. Good job. Good job. This is what we like. This is the stuff. All of my stories today are written really well. Beautiful. And I love, I mean, the one, every single one I've written, not even the ones I'm doing.

So good job, you guys. Keep it up. Everybody's, everybody's on doing their, it's peak performance time. Everyone's writing like in their actual voice, which I like. Yes. Totally. We love that. Okay.

Ready? Yes. Okay. We love that, but it creeped out Alex Trebek. Yo, in episode 204, you mentioned working in Alaska canneries as a way to get quick dollars and or get away from the messes you have made. My brother and I and many of our friends paid for college by working at a cannery on the Alaska Peninsula in the late 80s and early 90s.

There are no towns, just 120 people on the edge of the Bering Sea. And so many stories, but this is the murderous one. One of the years I was up there, there was a storm and a fishing boats couldn't go out to fish. So they were in port doing drugs, being horny and starting fights. Sure. Cannery workers and fishermen did not socialize. We preferred crown royal to meth and not being assaulted to being assaulted.

Sure. Yeah. But one of the methed up fishermen somehow got into one of our parties and proceeded to aggressively hit on all the women and used a modified lighter to try to light up the walls on fire. Okay. That's not how you party. Nope.

The scariest of the cannery dudes. He was rumored to be an actual Crip from LA hiding out in the wilds of Alaska. And I can totally believe that. Started to escort this ass hat back to his boat. It would be awesome. I'm sorry. Just really quick. Yeah.

Whoever is going to write the movie about the Crip that goes up to the Alaska cannery and I guess that's me. That's what I'm volunteering for right now. You just found your life's goal, your life's vision. God. Damn it. I'm going to have to pull some other people in so somebody can write accurately to the Crips lifestyle.

Sure. Sure. It's like a fucking movie of all time. And then he turns into this hero because people are just like, uh. Well, wait. Oh. Oh no. There's more.

No, no, no, no. Well. Okay. The would be arson. His body was found at low tide. No. He had been squished between two boats that were rafted up to each other. Was he pushed?

Did he fall? The Alaska State Police sent an officer out to investigate, but the weather delayed his arrival for several days. The plant managers didn't want to put the dead guy in the blast freezer because that might contaminate any eventual autopsy. So they put him in our general cold storage warehouse that was not quite as cold. It was also where our basketball hoop and ping pong tables were. Oh no.

So there was this body bag. We kept them on for eventualities. Sure. Amazing. Yeah. What if your job just kept body bags for just in case? It's just part of it. For eventual things that eventually happen.

That should go into the initial want ad. One of those body bag jobs. It was against a wall and the ping pong balls kept ending up between him and the wall and no one wanted to go get them. Oh no. So after a day or so we had to switch to basketball when we ran out of ping pong balls. The basketball would bounce off the guy and roll back to us. I will never forget the sound a basketball makes when it bounces off a partially frozen

person. Oh no. Eventually the state police officer arrived and interviewed lots of us and basically came to the conclusion that whatever had happened the guy probably had it coming. Huh. Wow. It says. Huh.

I was on Jeopardy in 2005 and this was the quote, cute story I told Alex Trebek when they do the introductions. He was appalled. Also during the game the prompt was a nickname for a private detective and I got a buzz in and proudly say, what is a dick, Alex? I've had a great. But isn't that the answer? Yeah.

They weren't wrong. Yeah. Okay. I've got to say those words. I've had a great and interesting life but that's probably the high point. Stay sexy and don't let death interfere with your basketball and if you get a chance to say dick on national TV you should definitely do it. You should definitely do it.

Stephanie. Stephanie. Wow. That is a rich story. A menagerie. But I really could see that person falling between boats and like being a... That's such a weird way to die. That's a weird way to kill someone else.

With that person and I bet you if they thought he was a crib that they're putting that on him because they're like, oh, he's a gangster. It's also like would the guy have walked him back to his boat or just out of the party? Right. He just wouldn't get out of here. This isn't... He's not a total gentleman. He's not about...

He's not making sure he gets home safe. He's not trying to court him. He's just like, get the fuck out of here all the way out. And then the guy fell into the water. That's what I'm going with. Because I don't want the crypts to be mad at us. Who does? In this day and age.

In this day and age. You got to not piss off the crypts. It's important to... Okay. How about this one? Oh, this is a subject line. My landlord from college was a convicted murderer. Fun.

Hi, Karen. Georgia Stephen and furry friends. Okay. My hometown is from San Francisco at Karen. However, the actual murder takes place in Rattlesnake Canyon, New Mexico. But let me backtrack a bit. I went to school at the University of San Francisco and for three of my four years I lived in a second story apartment with two, sorry, three other girls a few blocks from campus.

We had two landlords, one of whom constantly raised our rent, got a love Bay Area real estate. This story's about him. Eventually, we all graduated, moved out, went our separate ways, flash forward to a couple years later, and I'm working my boring desk job listening to another true crime podcast when they suddenly mentioned a case of a, quote, mercy killing and mentioned the name of my mean college apartment landlord. This dude has a very specific name.

Humperdin Cowlnacky Bob Jones is a very specific name and it took half a second and one Google search to find out that my ex landlord killed his best friend while they were stranded in the desert. Oh, I almost did the story. For real? Yes. This is not so, I mean, you should still do it. Should I?

Well, I'm about to tell you something. I know. Fuck. Apparently. You gotta get on it. I fucking know. Oh, this one's bananas. You were road-tripping from Boston to California in 1999 when they decided to camp out.

The problem, they only brought three pints of water, one pint of Gatorade, and a topographical map that they both didn't know how to read. They used one pint of water to boil hot dogs and immediately got lost hiking in the desert for a few days. Both were dehydrated and went to great measures. I'm talking drinking your own pee, folks. Where's you are, people? In parentheses, folks, pull it a tie, wipe your brow.

They also made a terrible mistake of eating cactus fruit, which is extremely dehydrating, when unripe and can make you violently ill. So by day three, after both puking their guts out and seeing no light at the end of the tunnel, my landlord's best friend asks him to stab him through the chest. My landlord does it, stabbing him twice through a sleeping bag, only there were no sleeping bag fibers found on the knife. Interesting. This is where it gets fishy.

It's already fishy. Landlord then covers his friend's body with a 70-plus pounds of rocks, then tries to slit his wrist but is, quote, too physically weak to do so. He's eventually found to be only moderately dehydrated by a park ranger, goes on trial, and pleads guilty to second-degree murder. The judge sentenced him to 15 years of prison with all but two years suspended, followed by five years of probation. After serving a mere two years in prison, he eventually moved to San Francisco to be

a landlord and had keys to my apartment for three years, which is a bit unsettling considering we unknowingly were throwing way too many house parties in a convicted murderer's apartment building. But honestly, the most malicious thing he ever did was keep part of our security deposit. That's not malicious, that's actually the rule. You can easily find the case online by searching out the details, but for anonymity and safety reasons, I felt best to leave out his full name. That's why I didn't do it now, you're reminding me.

I fucking told you about this, he had a really specific name and he's out and he served his time and I don't really think he maliciously murdered his friend. It's better to err on the side if he paid his debt to society because us all talking about this all so much and naming people's names and stuff, it's like... Especially when I don't think it was like a cold-blooded murder. No, well, there's... the possibility it wasn't. Who knows. I mean, if I got that a snack for two hours, I'm fucking delirious.

Jesus. Okay. Oh, stay sexy and always Google your landlord before signing the lease. Sarah. Sarah. Sarah, thank you. Good one. God, that's intense.

But yeah, there's so many questionable details. Yeah. But sleeping bag. Yeah. I think he eventually kept... it ended up they were like two miles from... or really close to... Yeah. The ranger station.

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I'm Candice 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. This one says, Dear Vince Plus. Well, that is a first. Bold. Wow.

Loving it. I have two siblings, and we were all grade school age at the same time. My uncle worked the night shift at UPS, so he would watch us during the day after school. One day, he picked us up like normal and took us back to our house. The weather was nice, so he left the front door open for a draft, I guess, IDK. He was making us grilled cheeses, and when he makes them, he uses a knife to flip the sandwich. This is important, I swear.

In the middle of flipping the sandwiches, there's a knock at the door. When he goes to answer, it's a cop. My uncle answers the door with a knife in his hand. The cop came into the house because he thought it was suspicious for the front door to be left open during the day, so he inspected and found a six-foot-tall Husky former Marine at the door with a knife in his hand and three children in the family room fighting over the TV. My uncle tried really hard to explain that he was allowed to be there, but the cop was

obviously skeptical still, so my uncle called my sister out to help. I kind of love this highly proactive policing, just like, I'm not getting a good vibe from this family situation. Right, I will refuse to walk away. She walks out and sees a cop standing in her door with a gun and handcuffs, and she just stares out of fear. My uncle tried to get her to defend him, but she just stood there silently, and now he's beginning to look like he was feeding her lines.

The cop got more agitated, and my uncle made me come out and try it again. I skipped out all nonchalant and told the cop everything was cool. He didn't believe it all, until we held my mom and had her give the okay. Stay sexy and just use a spatula to flip your grilled cheese. No name. That is so hilarious. Like, this sister, was it his sister that flipped out or the oldest kid? Who's the person that froze?

I don't know. It's someone's sister. Wait. Call it out. My sister. Okay. So the older kid. The oldest girl, like, hate coming to, and she's just...

Oh, and she's a little girl. Yeah, okay. I was thinking first. And staring like, ugh. Help me. What did I... I bet she had just been doing something bad. She, like, punched her brother and was like, nothing.

And immediately the cops come. Yeah. Oh, that's so good. Okay. Get a little of this one. Okay. Edmund Kemper's bullshit causes child possession. Okay.

Question mark. Oh. Hi, everybody. I was born and raised in Santa Cruz, California, and while I was doing some murderino sleuthing on Reddit last year, ignoring schoolwork, I discovered that I had been living one street down from Edmund Kemper's mother's house for the better part of five months. Whoa. That's why this happened.

Well, to his mother. Didn't he bury some of the bodies on that property? I believe just the mother's head looking at her house. I think the other women were, it was out in the forest. From what I remember. God, there's so many stories like this. We can't remember all of them. I've been low key obsessed with Kemper since watching Mindhunter.

Yes. Our friend Cameron. Our friend Cameron Britton. That's right. Who is now on... He was the therapist. Did you remember that? No.

Cameo on the outsider. Okay, let's hear it. He's the therapist that the cop goes to. Oh, let's hear it. Yeah. And he's... Oh, I have to. You wouldn't recognize.

He's so low key. It doesn't look like him at all. You know, because he doesn't look so tall, they have him kind of tipped back, and he's so low key. I mean, it doesn't look like... Yeah. And he's not doing the voice. It's a totally different character.

Wow. He's such a good actor. I didn't even know. Cameron Britton from Sebastopol. You make us proud in Sonoma County. Oh my God. I've had a lot of coffee. Okay, good.

Here we go. When I found out that his mom's house was so close, I immediately drove over to stare at the house and probably creep out the current tenants. Like a true 20-something, I posted a video of me freaking out about it on my Instagram for all my friends to enjoy or find tasteless and macabre, respectively. After seeing the video, my friend Alina messaged me with a simple, my uncle used to live in that house. It was so deeply haunted.

To which I promptly replied, all caps, bitch, what? It turns out that Alina's uncle and his family had lived in the house for several years and that while they were living there, their three-year-old daughter started acting really straight. Oh no. When three-year-olds get creepy. Why is your nightgown all wet and your hair all wet? And why did you grow up from the sewer grate? I want to wear your skin, mommy.

Stephen, don't put that mommy at the end. Okay. I remember that. Yeah. Halloween prank. Yeah, Stephen. When you get up in the middle of the night, find a all-caps knife. How did she reach kitchen counters and stand silently in doorways staring at her family?

That's just a phase. She became super fascinated with the kitchen and would talk about cooking people up and one time tried to smother her mother with a pillow so she could, quote, have her around forever. Oh dear. On top of this creepy child shit, Alina always got uncomfortable feeling and uncomfortable feeling being in the house and wasn't told what Kemper had done to his mother there until she asked her uncle why the house always felt so strange.

The little girl did that shit for six years. The family had come to the decision that she was just a straight-up psychopath until they moved out of the house and the daughter immediately went back to normal. Never mentioning her desire to kill and cook her mother ever again. She's now 17 and is well-adjusted as a 17-year-old candy. Alina admits that it could have just been some creepy child shit. They do weird stuff, but her family is 300% sure that she was possessed by something attracted to the violence that took place in that house.

Anyway, love your podcast. My friend Kira got me hooked on it and I'll use y'all as an example. And I use y'all as an example for when I try to get her to consider therapy. It's useful, Kira. Kira. That's on the page. It's useful, Kira, in all caps. Thanks for all your hard work, Kenna.

That's so creepy. I feel unsettled by that. I trust the family, if they're saying she was normal before and then she was that way at the house a normal after. She's like an evil energy. He was so evil. And bad things happen. It's such a long accumulation of bad vibes in that house, bad stuff happening.

Yeah. Oh. All right, let's do it. Let's rough it down. This one's actually positive. What's it called? What do we call them? Uplifting.

Lighthearted. Lighthearted. Lighthearted. Another burger chef murder. This is not. But it is super weird. It's 1982. I'm 16 years old and working at the Burger Chef in New Hope, Minnesota.

And yes, I'm wearing a brown and orange polyester uniform. And yes, I smell like an unholy blend of fryvat, grease, sweat, and polo. It's past nine on a weekday night and it's been raining torrents for hours. We haven't had a customer in ages. Imagine being a 19-year-old named Norman. Oh, my God. He was young. A young Norman.

That has sent everyone but me home for the night. We're sitting reclining on the counter talking about ACDC and killing time until closing. When a car pulls up and parks next to the door, not in a parking space, but right by the door. For a while, nothing happens. But then someone gets out of the car, dashes across the sidewalk, and enters the store. It's a maybe five-year-old kid, gender unknown, dressed head to toe in a yellow rain suit and looking for all the world like the Morton Salt Girl.

More Norman and I can even hop off the counter and think about taking an order. This rain-slickered apparition walks full speed to the condiment and napkin counter, grabs the wooden straw dispenser, the cool old kind with a round glass window showing the straws, and the wooden knob you turn so that two arms would emerge, cradling a striped straw in their slots. Yeah. That's a good writing. Uh-huh.

Tucks the straw dispenser under his slash her arm like a football and runs full speed out the door, across the sidewalk, and into the car, which immediately hits the gas and peels out of the parking lot. Holy shit, it's a family straw dispenser hit. That's right. Norman and I watched him slash her leave the store, then turned to each other in stunned disbelief, then just start laughing. It was one of those things in life that is so bizarre and surreal that I would have thought

I dreamed or imagined it if Norman hadn't seen the whole thing. So weird. No big crime. No murder. Just weird. I have to say, I can only assume that in the course of time, that rain-slickered little shit probably grew up to be a mass murderer. Stay sexy and don't steal straw dispensers, Christian.

Can you imagine, though, if this family went into Burger Chef and the five-year-old uses this straw dispenser and goes berserk about how much they love it, just obsessed, can I have one? Can I get one? Whatever. Uh-huh. And then maybe it's- His big brother's like, well, you stopped talking.

Shut up. I'll drive you down there, but you have to get it yourself. Yeah. It's something that my cousin Stevie would involve us in. I was like, hey, here's the thing. Steal it. They won't care. But I'm not doing it.

Just go do it so you shut up. That's so right. Or just some young parents. Yeah. Yeah. Really young, cool parents. We're like, listen, it's a hard world. You better start learning how to get what you want.

Mommy and daddy's room smell like smoke sometimes. I just love it. It's a five-year-old. It's a five-year-old. That's out of control. Amazing. The best. Send us your weird stories like that, the weird things that have happened to you that

you can't explain. Love it. Sure. It's my favorite murder at Gmail. And say sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie?

No, I don't want a cookie.