My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 163

Episode Date: February 24, 2020

This week’s hometowns include a fishing trip with Al Capone and an aunt who thought she was dead.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is exactly right. 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. Hello.

And welcome. To my favorite murder. The mini-soad. Here we go, everyone. Let's do it now. You wanna go first? Sure. Okay.

The title of this email is going to give it away, so I'm just gonna get right into it. Hello, friends, both human and animal. Thank you for making my weird true crime obsession normal and hilarious. No problem. Ditto. Okay, we all know you're awesome. Let's get into it.

Hey, spit through that part. When I was 23, my living boyfriend and I broke up and for the first time, I was living alone with just my amazing pup, Joey, in parentheses. It was the fucking best. My house was a dream and within walking distance to all my favorite things, yoga studio, coffee shop, and all my favorite bars. I'd been there for about a month when one night after running home from a bar drunk, and then this is in parentheses, yes, I used to literally sprint home after drinking too

much, oh, you're early 20s. And that is so true. And I couldn't afford, usually I'd be too late for any public transit and could, of course, could not afford a cab. Yeah. And that was back when cabs were impossible. Right. I would run home.

I did that a lot. And also, I'm scared of walking home in the dark, so somehow running felt faster. Yeah. I mean, it felt safer. Yeah. I remember one time walking up over the most insane, Telegraph Hill was just the most insane, like straight up and down San Francisco Street to get from the Castro, basically over the hill to the upper hate where I lived.

I had to walk straight up hill for like an hour, you know what I'm talking about? I do. Then you come around the side of that weird part. Did both part? Yeah. And I was so drunk that by the time I got up and was walking on flat surface, I realized I was still holding a drink from the bar. And I hadn't spilled that much of it.

I finished it and then ran up to a apartment building and swept my hand down all of the buzzers and ran home. Oh my God. So it's like 2.30 in the morning and I woke up everybody in a building and ran. It's the thing when you're in your 20s and you think you're a manic pixie dream girl, but really you're just a fucking asshole. You're just a drunk fucking asshole. You're just a bane of everyone's existence, but in my mind, I was just like, can you believe

me? I am so quirky. I'll just do things. I just do wild, quirky things. Inside that building were people who could afford to live at the top of Telegraph Hill. They were at 2.30 in the morning on a Thursday night. They were getting ready for Friday morning work and I was like, bzzzt to everybody. Oh my God.

Okay. Sorry. I'll be in the middle of reading an email. I woke up around three, okay. This got me. I woke up around 3.30 a.m. to my pup sitting up alert and not making a sound. That's fucking scary. When the dogs go into pointer mode and they just stare out the window, they just stare

and I'm like, what? Oh my God. Tell me now. I have a beagle who howls at air. So seeing him sitting at the end of the bed stiff, not making a sound was alarming. When you're beagle scared, it's time to run. Yep. That's right.

I was hanging against the frame and thought, fuck, I didn't get the door shut all the way. I laid there for a moment, still kind of drunk, contemplating if I wanted to get out of my comfy bed or allow the gods to determine my fate, but finally got up. When I got to the edge of the stairway leading to my front door, I saw him, a complete stranger standing outside trying to get into my house. I very quickly noped that shit and called 911. Luckily for me, my apartment was only half a mile to the police station.

Thank you, small towns. Uh-huh. I was going to say, thank you, small miracles. It was a perfect line break. Thank you, small towns. And the cops got there in no time. After getting him into the police car, the cop knocked on the door to take my statement. When I told him my name, he goes, are you sure you don't know this man?

Puzzled, I assured him I've never seen the guy before in my life and asked why. He then goes, this guy claims you're married and knew your name. What? You read that right, all caps. The guy knew my whole fucking name. Obviously, I moved out of that apartment within the month and never heard from my late night visitor ever again. Oh my God.

Joey has been with me now for eight years and this is only one of the many gifts he's given me. Good boy. Stay sexy and get yourself a loyal pup, Amanda. Aw. The guy fucking knew her and was like, that's my wife in there to the cops. He's been stalking her. Yeah, he has.

And then trying to trick the cops that it was his wife and she's just being drunk. Can you imagine there was a time and maybe we might still be in it where just because that guy was the man he would have been believed and the woman would be like, guys, guys. She's crazy. She's drunk. Look at her with her dog. Yeah, sorry. She gets like this.

She loves to drink. She's mad at me. Down the street at the bar, I've stalked her at. No. No. Okay, I'm not going to tell you the name of this one. Hey gang. My parents grew up in Alberta, Canada, but moved to the San Francisco area to start our family.

One night when I was in second grade and my older brother Timo was in fourth grade, somebody rang our doorbell. We both went to the door and greeted a man in his 40s who told us that he was an old friend of our dad. Yes, I know, red flag, strange man at the door, but our parents were home and dad confirmed that this was his childhood friend whom he hadn't seen in over 15 years. We'll call this sketchy friend Curtis. Curtis chats with my parents for a bit and asks if he can stay for dinner.

Super chill. My baby and friend show up out of the blue at your Californian home and invite himself over to dinner. My mom says, of course, and we pass a relatively normal evening with dad's weird friend. He left later in the evening. A couple days later, I get pulled out of second grade class and escorted to the principal's office. Young me is thinking, holy shit, what did I do?

Because nobody will tell me what's going on. When I get to the office- Did you write fucking very small letters in the bathroom while the police are here? Everyone. But when I get to the office, my brother's already sitting there, so then I shift to, holy shit, what did he do? The principal tells us that he is going to drive us home because my parents need to see us.

And then it says in parentheses, again, kind of a red flag. Do kids get into cars with the principal anymore? I don't think so. It turns out dad's bud Curtis was on the run. Back in Alberta, he had killed his wife, then burned his house to the ground before fleeing the country. Uh-oh. The investigation was a few days behind him and the police were talking to anyone they

thought could be affiliated with Curtis, who lived in California, since they knew that's where his credit card had last been used. Ding, ding, ding, we fed that motherfucker dinner. Ooh. Upon learning this, my mother was seized with panic and decided for some reason that he was, quote, after the children and called the school to have us brought home. The investigation moved on and eventually the trail went cold. We never heard from Curtis again, but my dad thinks he was probably on his way to Cabo

or something and wanted to eat dinner without pinging his credit card. Ooh, smart. So smart. Thanks for reading and thanks for everything you guys do. I've had your guys' voices in my head the last few years telling me to fuck politeness when the occasion calls for it. You guys inspire me to be stronger and more of a badass every day. Stay sexy and don't invite murderers in for your family dinner, Maddie.

I think that was smart. I mean, we don't have a true sense of what year this was, right? But I think that was smart of the mom because you don't, why not pull everybody in and just double check? Totally. Because it puts me in the mind of every crime, procedural, whatever, where it's like, now cut to the child walking home and doing some bullshit. You had this psycho murderer in your home who knows your children's names.

He knows where their bedroom is. He knows things about your family and he was totally fine killing his own wife and bringing us down. Right. Who the fuck knows? Maybe he's trying to get rid of evidence and that's your kids. That's scary. Oh, yeah.

That's a real, that's a very upsetting gray area for that family to be in. Yeah, because the difference is you're either going to overreact or you're going to make the worst mistake of all time. Right. You choose. Overreact. Think of the children. Always overreact.

You are supported by two lunatics. Again, the title ruins it. Hi, ladies, mustache and pets. Love the show. Let's rock. The current small town I live in typically never has anything exciting, well, at least true crime-wise, happen. One day, I thought I'd ask my grandmother who has lived in this town for over 75 years

if anything interesting had happened and she said, I haven't seen anything interesting in this town for seven to five years. Sorry, that's not true. It says, instead of telling me about a murder or a kidnapping, my grandma decides to tell me about someone she went fishing with. My first thought, why? As a kid, my grandma lived in Chicago and when she was around five to eight years old, that's a grandma memory.

She's somewhere below 10 and above five. Her family moved up north along the Illinois-Wisconsin border where her family bought and ran a hotel on a lake. She continued on and mentioned how one time she went out fishing with her father and brother. They were fishing for about an hour or so when a boat pulled up alongside theirs and she heard a man ask her, her father, and her brother if they had caught anything. She looks up and who does she see? None other than Chicago mobster fucking Al Capone.

Yes. Oh, I'm sorry. I read that wrong. Al fucking Capone. She said he was all dressed up and had several men on the boat with him, most likely bodyguards. She added that he was very nice. I'm sure. He kept asking questions about the day's catch and he finished the conversation by inviting

my grandma and her family over for dinner at the hotel he was staying at. What? How do you nicely say no to Al Capone? My great-grandfather made basic chit chat and then high-tailed it the fuck out of there. They obviously didn't end up going to dinner with Al. My brain is still boggled by this tiny little tidbit of info. Graham just told the story so casually like it was nothing. If that were me, I'd scream it from the rooftops.

I'd be screaming from the rooftops who I met. Stay sexy and don't go fishing with syphilis-bearing mobsters and syphilis-bearing like the three wise men. Yeah, that's just- But syphilis. Yes. Oh my God. Wow.

That's interesting. Also- Tidbit. History. It's a wonderful tidbit, but it also makes me think. I wonder if he was lonely for normal people interaction. It makes me think of how much we love Boardwalk Empire and that whole slice of life that we saw that was probably very dramatized.

But still, we know he did a bunch of coke, right? I mean, he was a bit of a hop head. He filled tons of people constantly. Like I bet he was out on that lake and just like, hey, family with kids and like, I want to be a part of that normal human life again. Maybe, or maybe I want to stash some illegal liquor in the basement of your hotel. Maybe he wanted to- they would get there to eat dinner and he would have the mule drugs out of the dinner.

Shit. Eat it. Eat the heroin. Sorry, I called Al Capone a hop head. That might not be right. I don't know. A legend. Well, this says, hi, let's skip the niceties and get right down to it.

Hell yeah. So that's what we're doing. Hello. A few years ago, I was working for an optometrist as his medical biller but would occasionally work the front desk to check patients in. One day a long time patient who I hadn't met yet came in to get a new pair of glasses. Super rude lady, smelled like mothballs, would always ask to use our bathroom. Like, you couldn't have just gone before you left the house?

I think that's a little- Yeah. That's a little intense. That's a young person's bladder speak, exactly. Yeah. You can shut it down right now, 22-year-olds, because you don't know what you're in for. Anyways, anytime after that, she would come in, she was just plain rude and awful, figured it was just her being old, but boy, it was I fucking wrong.

Apparently, this woman murdered her 81-year-old husband and hid his body in the basement of her home for six months. Yep, you read that right. This woman claimed she killed her husband out of, quote, self-defense with a hammer, hid the murder weapon, and wrapped his body up in plastic bags and kept him in the basement. She was still working at the time at a nearby hospital doing a medical research report when a colleague of his noticed he wasn't meeting deadlines, but his key card was still being used to get into the building.

Ooh. Creepy. Yeah. Seeming suspicious. They send the state police to do a welfare check on him, and when they arrived, she refused to let them in the house. Later on, they get a search warrant and found the body, the weapon, and a diary. She had kept documenting everything.

She stated in her diary that they were having an argument about housework while he was working on their kitchen and grabbed said hammer and killed him. That's not self-defense. No. That's a crime of passion. Right. Granted, it's probably not too hard to kill an 81-year-old, but still, she was able to post her bail, which was set at about $1.5 million, so clearly she didn't kill him for

the money since all their houses across the country and overseas were in her name and her name only. All their houses. Yeah. What a phrase. That right there tells you that she didn't need the money. That's right. She also was still writing alimony checks to his ex-wife, so it looked like he was still

alive. Unfortunately, it's still an ongoing case, so I don't have an end to this, but she was only on house arrest and could only go out to the grocery store to get the mail and doctor's appointments. Needless to say, the next time she came in, she was very pleasant as if nobody in our office watched the news and knew she was a murderer. Stay sexy and always be nice to old people. Chelsea.

Holy shit. I love that idea that she's a big bitch, and then she sees the news report come out and she's like, oh, I better tighten up my game. Yeah. Do you feel like half shit on me now? It's too late. It's too late. You've already been a bitch that smells like mothball.

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Okay, this one's just so near and dear to my heart. And I won't you read you the subject line again. Hey, everybody, after hearing Georgia tell stories about people buried alive, it reminded me of my aunt's story and I thought I would share. I've heard it so many times, but it makes me laugh every time when my aunt Patty was in our early 20s, she went out drinking one night and had a little bit too much fun. The next thing she knew, she woke up in pitch darkness. She didn't know where she was and couldn't see a thing.

She decided to feel around and her hands touched a wall on both sides. Her first thought was, Oh God, I'm dead. She was trying not to freak out, but couldn't help thinking that she must have been buried alive. Luckily, my mom, her twin sister opened the door to the bathroom, flipped on the light, finding my aunt in the bathtub with puke all over her, my mom said, you fucking disgust me and slam the door. My aunt says she wasn't even mad.

She was so relieved that she wasn't dead or buried alive. Stay sexy and don't pass out in the bathtub. Oh my God. Okay. So the reason I love this so much is because this exact same thing happened to my sister Laura and when she and Adrienne were in Ireland together, they went out one night in, I think it's the city of Dulin, which is the tiny coastal west coast, Irish town, I mean village. And super fun.

They went, they got super drunk. They went back to their, what is essentially like a, no, not an Airbnb, a bed and breakfast. And in the middle of the night, my sister got up, went to the bathroom, went too far in. I was just stopping where the toilet was, but the shower, which was a stand up shower, was the next room in. So she went in and the door closed behind her and then she said, she was, and it's pitch black, right?

Yeah. And she's like, and now I'm in a box and then I don't know how long I've been in the box. Oh my God. And I'm thinking, have I always been in this box or will I forever be in this box? And she started having a full on like meltdown and she started crying going, I'll never get out of the box. Oh my God. And finally, Adrienne came in and it was like, you fucking idiot, like you just went one

section of the bathroom too far. It was the, and when my sister tells it, cause she's such, my sister's the one that's always telling everybody else to shut up and stop being dramatic. So the fact that she was the one, like literally crying, going, how long have I been in this box? Oh my God. It's my favorite story. It's not.

You're not alone. This is Aunt Patty did the exact same thing. That's good. Beautiful. This one's called, my sister tried to kill me. Nice. Oh. Hi.

So when I was six years old, my family moved into a bigger home. It was an old kind of historical house, the lead based kind. Do you think that's funny? Yes. So we moved in the summertime and my mom wanted to open the windows. I was like, did I say that wrong? No, I thought it was funny. I was watching you have like a little giggle reaction.

Like I was watching TV where I was like, Oh, I don't have to do anything. She's doing it. So we moved in the summertime and my mom wanted to open the windows for some reason, the people who painted the walls also decided to paint the window shut, aka every apartment you've ever rented in your life. A hundred percent where you're just like, if I could just crack it a tiny bit. Yeah. Nope.

We painted a chat. Yeah. My mom, being a handy woman she is, decided to use a flat head screwdriver to pry open the windows. Well, this was about 1999 when all moms wanted to do was sit on the phone and gossip. So when my aunt called to talk to my mom, she left the screwdriver sitting on the window sill and went into the kitchen to chat away. Now here I am laying on the floor in front of the TV, minding my six year old business,

going out of nowhere, my three year old sister, all caps, stabbed me in the face with the screwdriver. Holy shit. She got me about two inches under my right eye, just barely missing my cheekbone. I grabbed my face and immediately ran to my mom who did not want to be interrupted. I know this story. Yeah, this is you. I was standing in front of her screaming, mommy.

And when she turned and looked at me after, well, it felt like an eternity and yelled, what do you want? I put my hands down from my newly pierced face to show what had happened. She promptly took me to the hospital after making sure to say her goodbyes first. All right. I'll talk to you soon. I got to go to the hospital. Very good.

Goodbye. Where the doctor proceeded to glue my eyes shut. They didn't want to stitch my face and leave a nasty scar. So when I was laying down, they applied the glue, gravity did its thing and my eye was stuck. Jesus. They wouldn't let me leave until I opened my eye and they made sure no extra damage was done.

Good. I can't quite recall the repercussions my sister suffered, although I'm sure it was none because she's the favorite. Uh-oh. We still talk about this event to this day and I always promptly remind her how evil she has the ability to be. Anyways, stay sexy and don't let your three-year-old play with screwdrivers, Meg. Good God.

For a second, I thought that was, it was the older sister where I'm like, this is dark. This is dark ending, but it's like, oh, just a wild toddler. I feel like after, I feel like four years old and under is, no, three-year-old and under is like stabbing accidents. Yeah. It's okay. Well, also I remember being that age and wanting to, like, it was almost like you didn't think other people could get hurt.

Right. Like you would hurt them just to see what they would do. I would anyway. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just like, what's this do? But if somebody did it back to me, I would immediately start crying. Screaming.

But it'd just be like, well, you're not me. Yeah. So this must be fine. I'm going to put this in your face. Yeah, little. Let's see what happens. I'd love to know what TV show was on the screen that maybe that was the inspiration for the three-year-old.

1999. So it was like Rugrats or something. Yeah. Yeah. Or they were watching Murder She Wrote. Yeah. Something with more murder suggestion in it. This old house with spree drivers everywhere.

Evil this old house. Tell us your weird stories about your sister and about, you know, waking up in weird places. Yeah. Any kind of also, we've asked for this a million times, but like when grandma just dropped some crime on you and because she doesn't think it's a big deal that she hung out without Capone. Totally. Those stories are treasures.

And that's my favorite murder. Gmail. Treasure. Thanks guys. Stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie?

Yeah. I'm living my life. Yeah. Right now. That's so cool. The