My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 174

Episode Date: May 11, 2020

This week’s hometowns include a message in a bottle and a vigilante mom. 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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Welcome. And welcome to the mini-soad. Of my favorite murder. That's right. We did it backwards. Tricked ya. It's Tricked Ya Day. There's a very good chance I've forgotten how to do mini-soads.

A very good chance. It's been like a week and a half, two weeks or so. Yeah. Yeah. It just slips your mind. These things that if you don't really keep up and really practice on the daily, you can lose it all. That's right.

Speaking of birthdays, when this comes out, it's going to be a birthday today, Monday, that's right. May 11th. Happy birthday. Thank you. I wish you a good year and health, wealth and happiness. Thank you so much. Yeah.

You want to go first because it's your birthday? Yeah. Is that my big present? Perfect. Is that what you got me? I actually did get you something, but you're going to get it later. I'm going to get it in 2022, summer of 2022. I think I'm going off the mic stand.

Do it. I can't. It's trying to figure out how to make this more comfortable. Freestyle, that thing. You can do it. It's your birthday. Hmm. I'm not going to read you this other line.

Hi Karen, Georgia, Steven and a potpourri of animals. When my older sister was about 10, she came down the stairs in the middle of the night to my mom's room crying that she saw a strange man at the foot of her bed. She describes him as a tall, dark-haired man with a handlebar mustache, whispering beans in a deep soft water. Whispering beans? The word beans? The word beans.

I'm going to be fried. You can imagine when I started reading this email, I was like, well, here's my favorite one of all. My mom brushed it off as a nightmare and sent her back to bed. The next night she came down around the same time saying the man had come back. This happened over and over for about two weeks until finally the visit stopped. About a year or so later, my mom got a big box of old family photos from her great aunt that had recently passed away.

She began to hang them up chronologically one by one down the main staircase in our foyer. My sister came to see her progress when she gasped at the sight of one of the photos. This is beans! No! No! My mom and I examined the photo and the man was exactly as my sister described, tall, slim, dark-haired, and with that iconic handlebar mustache.

My mom got the strangest look on her face and began to tell us the story of how this was the only member of our family ever to be murdered. He was a pharmacist in his small town in Ohio, a few towns over from us, back in the 1800s. There was a feud happening between two families in the town and supposedly one side broke into the pharmacy and switched around a few of the medicines to try to mess with the other side. My great, great, great, truly not going to keep going because this is already long as fuck, uncle.

So what he thought was his medication and wound up being poisoned and killed. Holy shit! He ended up finding the death certificates on Ancestry.com and everything. There was no way my sister could have seen that picture before, but also she was 10 and known to, as my dad says, storytell. So who's to say? Anyways, love y'all, peace, love beans, Anna. Oh man, I was really hoping like he was a bean farmer or there was going to be some

connection to beans, but that's okay, it's still good. I mean, I think maybe that was the thing he was craving, like that's what he was supposed to have for dinner right before he took his medicine. And then he's like, he's left in eternal, you know, whatever. Maybe the guy who killed him was, his nickname was beans. Yes. That's gotta be it. Let's think of four more variables that could be happening in this story.

Perfect. Okay. Good one. What if he thought the little girl's name was beans because she looked like a bean while she was asleep? The star was named beans and he's mad that the dog didn't protect him. What if he is vegan? Okay.

Hey Karen and Georgia, love you, love what you do, love mental health visibility. All right. Enough with the flattery. Let's get to it. I'm currently- I'll rush through the flattery all the time. They rush and rush. Like we don't like it.

Yeah. I'm currently sheltering in place with my aunt and uncle in Aurora, Oregon. I had to get out of my 500 square foot apartment all by myself in Seattle where things are pretty rough. I've tried for years to get family members to talk to me about murder, but they all look at me cross-eyed and tell me I should get into something a little less heavy like gardening. Anyway, I was going for a walk with my aunt Lynn through the beautiful Oregon countryside

next to the river and we walked by a house and my aunt says to me, you know, a man who used to live here was recently found dead in his home and he'd been dead for 18 months before anyone found him. And then all caps. I'm sorry. What? I said, say more right now. Apparently she's been holding out on me for over two decades.

One of the original members of the Mickey Mouse Club, Dennis Day, used to live down the street from my family and he moved to Phoenix with his long-term partner, Henry Caswell. Dennis appeared during the original first episodes of the Mickey Mouse Club in the 1950s. I looked up some videos and he was a damn cute tap dancer. Dennis and Henry moved to Phoenix and in their old age hired some dude to stay in the house with them and help with chores, cooking, all that jazz. The dude they hired, Daniel Burda, is a dick. He was knocked down with the chores and slacked off constantly.

So obviously Dennis and Henry wanted him to get the fuck out. But guess what? Daniel wouldn't leave. Eventually, Henry had to be admitted to an assisted living facility because of dementia. So when he told caretakers that he thinks his husband is missing, he was dismissed. They didn't believe him. That bastard, Daniel Burda, murdered Dennis, shoved him under a giant heap of clothes and left him there for 18 months.

Burda continued to live in the house with the dead body for months. And he used cleaning supplies to cover up the leaking fluids because, quote, it smelled like death. And then says, what a dick. They caught the fucker. He's been arrested on charges of secondary manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, criminal mistreatment, and abuse of a corpse. And he confessed, thankfully.

Anyway, I hope the story rocks your world at least a little bit because my jaw was on the floor for days. Thank you for everything you all do to normalize the love of the macabre and normalize mental health conversations. Stay sexy and please check in on your neighbors, Kalen. I remember reading that story because, well, we used to watch the Mickey Mouse Club every day after school because it was in reruns. And so it's kind of stuck out to me.

But also, I don't understand those people. I mean, obviously, there's a lot of issues going on. How you could live in the house with a person that you killed. It's just such a sign of how cut off you are from. Definitely. It's hideous. Yeah. I think that it smelled like dead bodies because so you've tried to cover it up.

To fucking complain about anything. Shut up. Yeah. Just shut up and go to jail. Yeah. Okay. The subject line of this one is, my mom tried her hand at vigilantism. Lighthearted.

Okay. Hello. To lighten up these quarantine times, I've got a story for you that's got all your favorite things. 80s moms, hot robbers, and people staying sexy and not getting murdered. Back in the 80s, my mom was 20 or 21 working as a bank teller for a summer job. She'd only been working at the bank for a few months, but had already been robbed three times.

Since the bank wanted to keep everyone safe during the robbery protocol was to just sit quietly and give the robbers what they wanted and not to alert anyone of the robbery until the robbers had left. This meant that three times a man had just walked up to my mom, slit a note that said something along the lines of this is a robbery, give me all your cash, and then casually walked out with the money. This didn't sit well with my mom who has a strong sense of right and wrong and doesn't like seeing people get away with bullshit.

One day as my mom was at the teller desk, a very handsome man walked into the bank. My mom was hoping he'd stop at her desk and she was elated when he did. She was over the moon when he slid his phone number to her across the desk. Imagine her dismay when she unfolds the paper to see that it wasn't his phone number, but another this is a robbery note. My mom gave him the cash and watched him walk out of the bank, but for whatever reason, she decided she wasn't going to let this robber get away with it. She ran out the door screaming, someone call the police, this man just robbed a bank, no.

She followed him for a few blocks screaming behind him until he turned around waving a gun at her and said, lady, you got to stop or I have to shoot you. Needless to say, she headed back to the bank and shortly thereafter, the police arrived. She gave them a statement and description of the man. And while they laughed at her brazenness, they told her under no certain uncertain circumstances that it was very dumb and she should never chase a bank robber again. Anyways, I think she quit that job shortly after, but I'd like to think that word got out about the crazy screaming bank teller and that robberies dropped significantly at that

branch after the incident. Stay sexy and don't risk your life for minimum wage page. Oh my God. Yes. Shout out to my friend Karina. We work together, but I haven't seen her since lockdown and I miss her terribly. Aww. That's nice.

That's sweet. Sneak in a shout out at the end. You did the work. You get the shout out. That's right. Okay. A message in a motherfucking bottle. Sweet salutations and well wishes.

Let's jump right in. Shall we? Recently, while talking with my dad, Bob, such a dad name about interesting things we found on our local beaches, he reminded me of this gem. While out metal detecting one day, my dad came across a small white pill bottle sticking out from the sand. He's always been against picking up strange pieces of garbage in public places. That's a good rule.

Yeah. For some odd reason, scooped this baby up. Since the cap was still on, he shook it to see if anything was inside. He heard what he said sounded like rice rattling and decided to open it. Not only was there rice in there, along with some green herbs, but there was also a piece of paper with a handwritten message. That's right, y'all. A motherfucking message in a bottle.

After freaking out about it with my stepmom, he took the message to work the next day to see if anyone could decipher it. You see, the message was written in Spanish and my dad is a middle-aged white man who doesn't know a lick of Spanish outside of, you are, shithead, and other meaningless phrases he learned back in high school. One co-worker tried to read it, but couldn't understand the specific dialect that it was written in. That's when his co-worker, Jorge, tried to take a stab at it.

While reading it, Jorge started crying. He looked up at my dad and said, the man who wrote this is from my hometown in Cuba. No. So not only did my dad find a fucking message in a bottle, but the man reading it to my dad is from the same town as its origins. In today's odds, I would say that's one in a million. The message was written by a man who had been diagnosed with cancer. He was wishing for good health and prosperity for his family, especially his wife and children,

after he could no longer be with them. Unfortunately, that's all we know of him. There's no way for us to be able to reach out and find any more information. We're not sure if this man is alive or what happened to him, but I hope he is at peace wherever he is and that his family is far and well. In times like these, it's struck a chord with my heart. So much shit is happening and affecting so many people all around the world. I want to do exactly what this guy did and send out wishes for good health and prosperity

to anyone who may need it and physically help those around me when I can. Look out for your neighbors and do what you got to do so we can all get through this safely. Sorry, this email was so long, but I just had to share it. Thank you for continuing this podcast and bringing light and laughter during this crisis. Stay sexy and always pick up the garbage on the beach. You never know what you might find, Emily in Florida. Oh, that's so good. Oh, I love that Jorge is all touched and like that.

What are the odds of that coincidence? That's crazy. I mean, that's unbelievable. Totally. Love it. Looking for a better cooking routine? With meal planning, shopping and prepping handled, HelloFresh has you covered. HelloFresh makes home cooking easy and affordable so you can stay on track and on budget in the new year.

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As the air supply for the trapped children dwindles, a pair of unlikely heroes emerges. Follow against the odds wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad free on the Amazon music or Wondery app. Okay, this last one is like an update one. So remember when we talked about the light bulb burglar that was going to people's and that was like in Sacramento going to people's porches and stealing their light bulbs. Yes. So we got an update. Okay.

I was doing the dishes and listening to the latest many. So when you read the story of the light bulb burglar in Sacramento, I grew up in Sacramento and most of my family still lives there. When I heard the email about the light bulb burglar, I had to sit down and write immediately. My cousin is one of those very smart, very clueless people who can make two plus two equal five with some mash it, but doesn't have a common sense to not open the door to a stranger at 1230 at night. My cousin lives in South Sacramento in a house with two other single women in their twenties and two giant chocolate labs. Thank God. One night last year, she heard some rustling on the front porch and the dogs began the low growl that big dogs make. So my sweet clueless cousin goes to the door and looks out the people to see a mid twenties man unscrewing her porch light.

This is where a normal person would call the cops, but not her. What does she do? She opens the door. No, no, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Luckily, this screen was still shut and locked with the two dogs growling behind her. She asked him what he was doing. He froze and then stammered that he was out of light bulb.

So my genius cousin told him she needed, she needed that one on her porch, but she had more. She went and got him one opened the screen door and gave him a light bulb. He said, thank you and left. It wasn't until he had gone that she realized how badly things could have gone. The rest of the family is just glad that she has those big scary sounding dogs, Michelle. P.S. I was born in Sacramento in the late eighties and my parents grew up here in the sixties and seventies. It wasn't until I began listening to her podcast that I truly began to understand the paranoias and quirks that my parents have regarding dead bolts and sticks and windows. Turns out that they must have some very justified PTSD from growing up in the heyday of Sacramento serial killers.

Yeah. So the light bulb thing, I was going to say to a bunch of people commented and said that that's actually some people who are burglars will, a couple days ahead of time, take the light bulb out then come back in the dark and burglarize the place. So that's another reason they do it. You know, people that like to slit your throat. I mean, there's all kinds of reasons to get rid of the light. I can't believe what you want. She gave him light bulbs. Hold on one second. You're stealing from me. Let me help you steal.

Do you like a soft white or do you like a brighter bulb? Look, I've got 60. I've got 70 watt, but we can go down. I have a beautiful pink 20 watt bulb. Is it for outdoors? Is it for the bedroom? Is it for your murder room? This one's called Spooky Halloween in May. Hey there. A few months ago, my grandpa passed away and while thinking about him, I remembered this ghost story that he told us about a few years ago and I thought I would share. My grandpa was a 99 year old World War II veteran who survived to see an entire century, 1920 to 2020.

He could make friends with anyone and was also the most flirtatious man I've ever met. A few years before he died, my parents and I took an excursion to his hometown so he could show us the house he grew up in, where he went to school and visit his parents' gravestones. A few nights before we left on this trip, he had a strange dream. Apparently when he was in high school, a girl at a school was killed in a car accident. He knew her the way everyone knows everyone in a small town high school. This girl appeared to him in his dream and asked him to visit her grave site. Her parents were long gone and she told him that no one had visited her graving years and that she was lonely.

The next morning he told my mom that this girl had said and asked if he could go see her grave when he visited the cemetery. My mom agreed and proceeded to contact the cemetery to see if they had a map of sorts with the plot names. My grandpa told her that it wasn't necessary because he knew where she was buried. My mom asked him to clarify since he barely knew her and he told her that the girl in the dream had given instructions to her burial site. She had described her headstone and given him landmarks in the cemetery to be able to find her. Long story short, after we arrived at the cemetery and went to his parents' headstone, my grandpa proceeded to walk almost directly over to where this girl's headstone was located. He stood there for a minute and said a prayer for her and then we left.

To think that poor girl contacted my grandpa to ask him to visit her because there wasn't really anyone else alive who could remember her, wild. Before I close this out, I want to give a special shout out to all morgue and funeral home employees. They're essential employees who are being directly exposed to COVID-19 every single day. When COVID patients die, they are sent to morgues or directly to funeral homes and those employees have to either cremate or embalm the deceased while potentially being exposed. They also have to figure out how to arrange funeral services with the family members to let them properly grieve their loved ones without endangering themselves or anyone attending. Many funeral homes are refusing COVID cases because of the risks, so small family funeral homes like the one my mom has worked at for almost 15 years are being overwhelmed. My mom is a super badass and is being so cautious to protect herself and others while doing her absolute best to make sure that families are being able to say proper goodbyes to their loved ones. She's truly the best and makes me so proud to be her daughter.

Happy Brothers Day! Thanks for all you guys do, SSDGM, Claire. I love that. That's awesome. That's the kind of job that people aren't talking about. That's just as definitely essential. Yeah. But again, it's death, so no one wants to talk about it. People act like there's the stigma. But yeah, thank you to all funeral home workers, people. And what an overwhelming situation of position to be in to work in that. Must be so scary. You have to be so brave even if you don't want to be. Yeah. Can't imagine.

I just found out my cousin, Annie Galindo, is that she intubates people for a living. She's an anesthesiologist, but she also lives in intubation. So she is completely, lately on the front lines and she's always been a badass. She used to be. She's amazing. I love my cousin, Annie. So shout out to her too. Wow. Incredible. Everyone is doing everything and fighting out there for us. Yeah. We're so grateful. Send us your stories, whatever they may be, to my favorite murder at Gmail or on our website or wherever. Yay. And happy birthday, Karen.

Thanks, Georgia. It's going to be another great 50. I can't believe I'm fucking 50. We're going to have the biggest party this summer. Oh my God, we're going to have the best party. It's going to be so good. You know what we should do is go to the island where they tried to have the fire fest and we're going to make it like what they tried to make it. Yes. Ham sandwiches. Cheetahs. Of course, Instagram models of all various sorts. We'll get all those for local. Did you say sponsor it?

Oh my God. Yeah, everybody, let's do it. We're all invited. But it's going to be, we're going to have to put a pin in sending the invitation until, you know, until people can stop going out and not wearing masks and pretending that that's their choice. It's so crazy. It's so crazy. Someone tweeted today that they saw, they reopened the trails and like the hiking things around Los Angeles because you can socially distance. And there was two joggers not wearing masks. And there was a, like a forestry, like a ranger standing there going, hey, you need to, and they both flipped them off as the dogs by.

Fuck those guys. Fuck those guys and, you know. That's the kind of people who aren't wearing masks is the people who will flip off a fucking park ranger. Well, because they believe that they don't have, like if they feel like they're fine, then they don't have to. Which is in the point, you guys, the point is not to spread it in case you have it to other people. And you don't know if you're a symptomatic carrier. It's very simple. Can I just have this one thing?

Do it for Karen's birthday. Stephen's freaking out because we keep talking over each other. Oh, really? He's like, I can't do this. No, no, I'm, I'm, I was, I went to Target today and it's just like lines around the block. Like today, right now is the worst time to go anywhere if you can stay home right now. Because people who now think things are open and normal again are wearing, not wearing masks and just acting like it's normal. Walk into Target or walk into a place and then just pull their mask off.

All of a sudden it's, yeah. What we need to do is keep the parking lot safe. Thank you. Yeah, good job. The air. Feel free inside the store. Well, you know what it is though? This is like such high level denial because there's some people that are so scared of this, that what they're saying is it's not really happening.

Yeah. And they need, they need to go out and scream at people and use their anger to defend when actually they're just going, they're just going, I'm so scared. I don't know what to do with myself. That's a good point. Yeah. So it definitely attacks us. For your birthday. Totally.

For Karen's birthday. For my birthday. Oh my God. It's like, I start the purge. I start the purge against non-masked people. Oh no. It's not your choice. That's my only point.

Don't hurt anybody. Yeah. Don't even say anything to them because that's what they want. A lot of those people, they do that. It's like, they go out. It's like, yeah, say something to me. And it's like, you know. You're saying it to yourself.

You're saying it without saying a word. You're lonely and scared is the one thing I would say. But don't even say that. Now, right. Anyway. Yeah. It's crazy. It's all on the mini-sode.

But thank you for all your stories and supports, systems. And we love you. Yes. Stay strong and stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Yeah. Elvis, you want a cookie?