My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 159

Episode Date: January 27, 2020

This week’s hometowns include a badass great-grandma and a very close call.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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To my favorite murder. The Minya soap. Where we read you back your shit. Do you love it? You do. Then say it. Scream it to your car. Okay.

Are you ready for the first one? I'm ready. The subject line is the ghost of Route 26, the Merry Night Murder. Hi, I'm a family. I'm a little late to the murder party. But I mean, it's not a party. But since I've started listening, I have been binging like crazy. My hometown murder is a pretty crazy one, mostly because of the ghost of the victim has been

seen many times over the years. Anyways, I live in a sleepy little town called Poland, Maine. I wonder if that's where Poland Springs is from. Delicious water. Could be. We'll look into it. With just a few thousand living souls and possibly a few other spectators. So it's a tiny town in Maine.

I love it. Every year, when October rolls around, the stories come back to life about the murder of Mary Knight, also known as the ghost of Route 26. Mary Knight was gruesomely murdered on October 6, 1856 by her husband George, who was 20 years younger than her. Holla. Mary had been ill for quite some time before her murder. Many people, including her doctor, believed that her husband was poisoning her.

That night on the 6th, Mary was murdered in cold blood while she was lying in bed with George's 83-year-old mother. It's said that for some reason she had gone to bed with his mother that night, maybe because she felt the evil that was soon to occur. When Mary's body was discovered, people at first thought it might be a suicide, but it was soon clear that she had been murdered. A few days later, George was arrested for that murder of his wife. It's said the word murder 15 times.

While the scene of the murder is just down the road from my house, the home is no longer there. The homestead changed hands many times over the years, but the house is no longer. This leads us to the ghost of Route 26, who is believed to be Mary. A woman in a white dress, sometimes resembling a wedding dress, has been seen walking or hitchhiking along Route 26 many, many times. Once my mom was driving by a cemetery on Route 26, and she saw a bride in the cemetery getting her photo taken, maybe it was a real bride in a cemetery with that.

That doesn't sound like a ghost action. Nope. She's got one foot up on the tombstone. It was a goth, you guys, the 90s goth. Goth high school students need to go somewhere, and it's not going to be the fucking mall. It's going to be the cemetery. Although I've never personally seen her, many locals have. Some people believe that she's searching for her house that is no longer there.

Whether the ghost is real or not, Mary Knight was still gruesomely murdered in my small town of Poland, and her memory will never be forgotten. Stay sexy and don't get murdered. Love, Nicole. Aw, that's so like a thoughtful tribute. A thoughtful ghost-based classic hometown. Yes, bring them on. True crime and archaeology, the idea behind missing children on milk cartons.

Okay. This one's good. Okay. I've been wanting to write in forever, but since you guys covered my hometown, Carrie Stainer, in like episode one and nothing much goes on in that small town, I've been waiting for something else to cross my path, and luckily that happened today. I work for an archaeology firm in the Bay Area. Today, while doing lab analysis, both my passions collided, archaeology and true crime, and I

was so excited with what I uncovered, and I knew I had a write-in. We've begun recently to analyze the artifacts that were recovered from the 19th century American period features. I don't know what that means. One artifact in particular caught my eye because it was a clear glass bottle with the words Charlie Ross written across the image of a little boy underneath. My job was to figure out a date range for this bottle. Sometimes this can take a great deal of time and a ton of research, but with this particular

bottle, it was as simply as typing in the name, and this is what I discovered. On July 1st, 1874, Charlie and Walter Ross, who were four and five years old at the time, were kidnapped in front of their family's mansion in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This kidnapping marked the first for ransom in the United States. The boys were approached by two men who offered them candy to take a ride with them. They did so and proceeded to a store in Philadelphia where Walter was instructed to go by fireworks inside the store. Walter went inside, but as he did, the men left with his brother, Charlie, leaving Walter

behind. Charlie was never seen again. The boy's father began receiving ransom demands from the kidnappers, not being able to pay the ransom, the boy's father went to the police, which led to the kidnapping making national news. Flyers were printed and posted, but Charlie was never found. Cologne or perfume bottles were made with Charlie's name and photo embossed on them. This was to help spread the word of Charlie's disappearance.

The idea behind these is that they would be on someone's dresser for an extended period of time, not tossed in the trash like ordinary items. That way to leave an impression of the poor missing boy. Although Charlie was never found, it is said that his kidnappers were caught. According to sources online, these bottles are very difficult to find and I feel extremely lucky to have come across one while wasting away at work. Wow. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this interesting story about Charlie Ross.

I want you to know it took everything in me not to begin this letter with fur babies, just because I know how much you hate it. Also, if you do read this out loud on an episode, a quick PSA that archaeology is nothing like Indiana Jones and no, we do not dig up dinosaurs. That's paleontology. Much love, Jules. Thanks for clearing that up, Jules. We've all been talking about the confusion and how much it's ruining our lives.

Okay, I'm not going to read the subject line of this because I think it's just a good read. Hi, y'all. Are we still doing grandparent stories? Is that a thing? If so, I wanted to tell you one of the many awesome stories about my badass great-grandmother. To set the scene, it's 2006 in a small steel town in Pennsylvania, is it airy? And my then 83-year-old great-grandmother is behind the bar of the bar and restaurant she's owned for more than 30 years.

It's a quiet night and my great-grandmother is alone when a man she recognizes from earlier in that evening strolls into the bar. This time, however, he's wielding a shotgun and demanding that she give him all the money in the cash register. My great-grandmother calmly reaches behind the bar to grab her tip jar and throws some ones in the robber's direction. Still demanding more money, the man threatens her with the shotgun and tells her to open the cash register.

Obliging, she turns around to face the register, but instead of pulling out any money, she grabs the pistol she kept behind the bar and turns back to confront the robber. Full of spite, she tells him, if you don't get out of here, I'll shoot you right now. I'm not about to put up with any shit right off the street. She'll deal with somebody like in her family. Family, if you've been coming in for a while and you slowly start the shit, but not fresh off the street with no reservation. Absolutely not.

Terrified of a woman nearly six decades older than him, he was 23, the dude runs out of the bar and is later arrested that night. The story was covered by local newspapers and news channels, but I think the one detail that never made it to the public is that the pistol my great-grandmother pulled on that robber was actually a toy gun. Oh my God. That's right. It was made of plastic and completely harmless, but that woman could put the fear of Jesus

into anyone, so I guess it didn't really matter. My great-grandmother owned and worked in that bar until she was 90 years old. She put her heart and soul into that place and I'll never forget literally growing up in that bar. She very recently passed away at 96 and was full of life and spunk and swear words until the very end. She has hands down the most badass woman I've ever known. Thanks for all that you do.

Stay sexy and always keep a toy gun behind the bar, Dee. That's good. I always wanted to, I thought it would be cool to be part of a family restaurant. Yes. You know? Yeah. It's like a hang every night. Yeah.

There'd always be kind of people in the mix. Right. And generations work there. I know. I love that. Hey, if you're going to write in everybody else, if you're going to write in about your badass great-grandmother that does some awesome things, give us a name. Oh yeah.

Let us promote your grandmother because... What's her Twitter handle? Shit. I can't say it. But I mean, that was such a cool story. Yeah. I love her. I'm going to say Edna.

It's Edna is a very good guess. Yeah. From a small steel town in Pennsylvania. Athena. I mean, a classic Doris. Doris is a good one. Classic Doris. All right.

This is short question mark and lighthearted. Okay. All right. That's a nice combination. And it starts, I love you guys, but I'm just going to skip the intro. I'm sending this from my work computer, nosy coworkers. You get it. Sure.

My mom was working at a college at the time and she had to attend her classes graduation that night. Get right into it. Yeah. You do have to do that. My regular babysitter canceled last minute and my mom couldn't find a replacement. So she proceeded to tell me I was finally ready to stay at home. That's usually how it happens.

It's like, aren't I old enough yet? No, no, no. And then it's like when there's some kind of plan falls through, it's like, oh, you're ready. She says it in the subject line that she's 11 right now. So that's when mom was like, all right. Fine. Okay.

After the whole, if anything happens, call me chat. She patted me on my back and went on her way. After an uneventful few hours, I was watching TV in my parents' bedroom when I heard a whistle come from outside the bedroom door. Not just a flat whistle, but like the Yoo-Hoo type of whistle. Kind of like the one in the Twitter notification. Oh, right? Amazing.

I'm perfect pitch. That was incredible. I don't really. At first I thought it was something on the TV, so I turned it off, but then about five seconds later, I heard it again. My first instinct was to call my mom, but the landline was in the kitchen, which meant I would have had to go through the hallway to get there. There was no way in hell I was doing that.

So using my 11-year-old brain, I grabbed the old shotgun that was probably about as tall as me from my mom's closet. Oh, the 80s and 90s. Oh, just shotguns lying hither and vither. I had cocked it and pointed it at the door. Then I heard a door open and shut somewhere in the front of the house. Then I heard footsteps coming towards the bedroom door. I jumped up on the bed.

A little 11-year-old girl was fucking. Who's ready to lay waste to whoever comes around that door. Right. You fucking evil whistler you. And I stood up on the bed and I stood there pointing the shotgun at the door. The moment the door swung open, I closed my eyes and pulled the trigger. No, I'm sorry. That's a basic gun safety thing.

If you're going to pull that trigger, eyes must be open. I also don't put fucking guns where your 11-year-old can find them. Don't make the 11-year-old make the choice of if I have to do something, a shotgun should be involved. Look, we all know now, and gun safety is such a huge issue and all of that stuff, but we all know we're laughing at this, but keep your, you don't need lock your, and children don't. Stop it.

No, it's non-negotiable. And then throw away the key. Stop it. Okay. I heard the gun click. I opened my eyes expecting to see some creepy guy bleeding out on the ground. To my surprise, I see my short southern mom standing there shouting at me, what the hell? Then it says pronounced hail.

What the hell? Do you think you're doing? After I calmed down, she explained that the noise came from the new clock she had hung in the hallway that makes different bird noises each hour. Luckily, I still have a mom because the gun wasn't loaded. Needless to say, I didn't. That's good. I mean, now we don't have to be so upset about those people because they're not keeping

loaded guns around the house. That's a good thing. For the 11-year-olds. That's great. Needless to say, I didn't stay home alone again for a long time, and she relocated the gun. Anyways, SSDGM, and don't buy fucking bird clocks, marry. I mean, that is bone-enriching.

That's menacing. It's menacing. Yes, and also, if you're going to buy a bird clock, send out an email to the fan, let people know. That's right. Kids, can you come in here for a second? This is the new clock. Family talk.

We're having a family talk. Family meeting about the bird clock. Oh, my God. She almost shot her own mother. I mean, that's the thing is, even if you grow up around guns, even if it's a big part, it kills people. They kill people. You know, because flawed humans are the people who are wielding those guns.

Sometimes they're 11. Yes, as we all are. And they shouldn't be. I mean... Let's... Janet, goddammit, mom. Janet! We got in a big loud fight at a pizza restaurant once, over gun control laws.

It was really great. It was great. What pizza restaurant? It was a nice, like, wood-fired pizza place in, like, La Brea or something. Oh, shit. That was nice. And it was during the day. Yep.

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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. What makes a person a murderer? Are they born to kill or are they made to kill? 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. Hey, my favorite people. So here's a quick hidden quote-unquote treasure story. This past Thanksgiving, my family and I were playing Cornhole and just hanging around outside. We'll have a Cornhole. It's the best game. Vince hates the name.

Yeah, it's not a good name. It's kind of a dirty name, but it's a fun game. So they're just hanging around outside after having lunch at my aunt's house. I have a two-year-old niece named Zoe who can walk now and who can walk and run now and is constantly getting into things slash trouble. While we were playing, my sister was keeping an eye on Zoe as she explored and ran around the paved driveway. My sister went chasing after Zoe as she made a run for it and scooped her up just before

she stepped off of the pavement into the yard. When my sister looked down at the spot where my niece almost fell, she noticed a gaping hole in the grass that seemed to go down forever. We grabbed a flashlight and shined it down the hole, but saw no end in sight, just a forever widening tunnel. We put a cone on top of the hole and continued on with our game, not thinking much of it, except the fact that Zoe almost fell. So the next day, my aunt had a friend who was a handyman come and check it out what

she suspected was a sinkhole. Her friend took one look and knew exactly what it was. It was not a sinkhole, but a burial site. No, not the kind for bodies, but the kind that people used to use to get rid of old things they no longer wanted. The handyman swung at the grass surrounding the hole with a shovel and immediately fell about 10 feet into the grass. When we looked down at him, we saw that he was standing on a mountain of old school

desks and chairs. Oh my God! Most likely from the 40s or 50s. Oh, I'm just so jealous. So jealous. To witness that, he went on to tell us that back in the day, people would bury things that they wanted to get rid of but didn't want to pay to take to the door. You're not going to pay 30 bucks to get rid of those old chairs.

Only this was and is pretty common, at least where I'm from, but it completely blew my mind. Anyway, it was a crazy sight to see. So many old school desks and chairs piled up 20 feet high underground, preserved almost completely. The friend ended up just pouring cement down the hole, filling it up to the top and sealing it forever. No!

Yeah, they just fucking cemented it. You could have sold those fuckers on Etsy for $2.50 a pop. Easily. Yeah. Like a shitty old school chair that gets refurbed. Oh my God. That would sell like down on La Brea that would sell for like $1,000 a set. Totally.

Or more each. Who knows? What shipping! I hope this was at least a little bit interesting to you guys, yes it was. Stay sexy and don't bury your old shit in the ground because one day someone's niece might fall into the hole, Caitlin. Remember that we did a story once where someone had an old school desk chair on the wall? Yes.

And something happened with it? It was ghosty. It was a child ghost that was there because of the chair. Right. Right? And it was two guys that owned like a bed and breakfast or something. Yes, maybe it was the chair from that story. What?

I mean, it's all connected. Here's the last one. Hello MFM fam, pets included. When I was about three or four years old in order to speed up the process of me getting ready and out the door for preschool, my dad would pretend to race me to get ready. That's such a good idea. Of course, he would always leave a sock off or his tie so I could win each day. One morning he had to rush to get out to work and he was ready before me.

Of course, my four-year-old pride couldn't take it and I was delivered to preschool bawling by my mother. You lost. Yeah. When my teacher asked what's wrong, I sobbed to her, my daddy beat me. As my mom is petrified and scrambling to explain that I was beaten in a race and not physically abused, I am still crying in the background. While my preschool looked into my serious allegations, they did determine that indeed

my dad does not physically beat me because he's an incredible human, he just happened to win the race that day. That is comforting that they would look into this allegation as it was the 90s and this was the same preschool that had an entire class of four-year-olds alone in the back of a school van with no seats to make a quick trip with the teacher for an errand. No. Only my dad had to drop something off and caught this situation before it got dangerous. He volunteered to watch my entire class as the teacher had to go on an emergency errand

solidifying his incredible human status. And also solidifying that teacher's very bad decision-making skills. Oh, my God. They would be put in jail today, I feel like. Are you insane? Just throw them all in the back of a van. Let's see, I have 24-year-olds. Let's just pile them in the back of this school van.

I really need to go get them. I have to go get a new nail polish. That's right. I can't look at this anymore. This is not a hometown murder. This is a hilarious antidote about how kids say the darndest thing. Stay sexy and don't get your dad arrested, Katie. Cute.

Guys, send us any kind of story at my favorite murder at GML. If you think it's entertaining, if you think we'll like it, if it's horrifying. We just need it to be the truth. That's all anyone needs these days. Even slightly well-written. Yeah. It doesn't have to be. No, no.

Certainly not. This is not an essay contest. It's not. It's a storytelling contest. You won't be graded. It's an are you an okay human contest. Good luck. No pressure.

Stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie? That's how it works.