My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 176

Episode Date: May 25, 2020

This week’s hometowns include a body in a canal and a bank robber’s jacket.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 soad. That's Karen. That's Georgia. Oh, I wanted to tell you guys that we're now putting, we're now videoing, is the word, the hometown stories on Zoom that we're recording. We put a couple of them are free on the website, myfavorimurder.com and then a bunch of them are on the fan cult. So make sure to check those out. You can see what we see while we're recording these mini soads. Can you imagine?

And I've just rearranged my background. It's now my closet. So it's, you might have a seizure. Yeah. If you look. I'll be the, I'll be the litmus test. If I don't have a seizure, it's going to be epilepsy safe. So I'll take that hit. Colors and patterns. You want to go first? Apple, apple up arenas. Yes. Absolutely. Yeah, I have to get, I have to join that group. This is a hometown baby Jessica story. Hi, MFM. Every time my mom tells my birth story, it's actually largely the baby Jessica story. My mom went into labor shortly after she heard the news that baby Jessica got stuck in the well. Nearly her entire labor consisted of my mom making a deal with God that she would sustain the pain of childbirth if he would keep baby Jessica alive.

Lady, you're going to sustain the pain of childbirth anyway. I hate to tell you, you're having a baby. An hour after baby Jessica was free, I was born. So on top of all the people that actually saved baby Jessica, my mom also likes to give herself a little thanks. I love it. I remember getting a really bad ear infection when I was probably like six or seven and begging God that if he made it go away, I'd be a really good Catholic. And it works. So you still have that ear infection then? It hurts so bad to podcast. I wrote in another actually heroic story of my mother a couple years ago and since I'm talking about her and it's almost Mother's Day, here it is again.

See, that's the kind of persistence we're looking for. Okay. One night in 1992, my mom was half asleep and heard a noise. From her bed, she could see into the dining room and a man climbing through the window. Before she could pick up the phone and call for help, the stranger was on top of her addressing her by name and telling her if she wasn't quiet, he would kill her three children too. Oh my God. My mom being five, three and almost 110 pounds didn't have a lot of options. So she started talking. She convinced him to murder her in the woods away from the house where her children wouldn't find her. He agreed. In the slow transition off of the bed, the phone fell off the hook. The loud noise off the hook sound surprised him.

And when he looked towards the noise, she pushed in his eyeball with her long 90s acrylic nails. Holy fuck. Yes. Yes. Push in his eyeball. She buck and took that. I like to imagine because it was long and acrylic that it had a tiny painting of a sunset on it. She just jammed it into his eye. Then now one eyed intruder fled back out the door and into the woods leaving zip ties, duct tape and a knife. Soon after she moved us to Southern California, aka as far away as she could. I slept through the whole thing and was only told years later when my mom was wine drunk on a school night. Yeah. Way to be. They never caught the man. But at the time, my mom had just broken up with an abusive med school graduate who had almost broken her arm and had threatened multiple times that

he would kill her. Maybe he didn't hire anyone to kill my mom, but it sure as hell seems like he did. Stay sexy. And if you're in think twice before going into a radiologist. Oh my God. Go moms. Go women. X O Annie. Wow. Shit girl. That's horrifying. That's great. I can't believe they couldn't find someone whose eye was fucking punctured. Yeah. Okay. That was fucked up. This one's called Pinnacle Lake murder. Hi Karen and Georgia. I was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, just north of Seattle. My dad was a carpenter and built us a little weekend cabin on a lake in the foothills of Mount Pilchuk. It's best described as Sasquatch country. That's right. It rains a ton. There are massive cedar trees and everything is covered in thick moss. It's

totally gorgeous. In 2006, I just graduated college and was spending a good amount of time that summer at our cabin. We used to stay up late around the campfire on the edge of the lake telling ghost stories surrounded by the moss covered trees and the black forest beyond. That same summer, just on the other side of a small mountain, a terrible violent crime occurred. An elementary school librarian and her daughter, who had graduated from the same university I had just a few years before I did, decided to hike up to Pinnacle Lake. A day hike at the base of the mountain, our cabin was near. When they arrived at the trailhead, there were a few cars in the parking lot not uncommon for that time of year. They started up the trail and that was the last time

anyone saw them alive. Several hours later, another hiker found their bodies on the side of the trail. Reports were slim on details, but rumors travel fast in the northwest logging towns of the Cascades. The story we heard came from a hiker who had witnessed the scene. Around 2 p.m. there was loud noises that some hikers thought was thunder. They were shotgun blasts. A couple hundred yards up the trail in the bushes, the mother and daughters bodies were found. Someone had shot both the women in the head at close range and the scene was so gruesome, they had to find their teeth among the carnage and send them to the forensics before they could be positively identified. There were no leads, there was no motive, there was no charges ever filed.

The husband slash father was cleared and still to this day, they're searching for the murderer. Oh my god. This person is still out there. We tell a lot of spooky stories around the campfire beside the lake, but this one is too real and way too close to home to be told after dark. Love the podcast, Charlie. Yeah, that's so intense, like that's the one of the rarest kind of murders, right? Just a totally random stranger murder. Stranger murder in the middle of the day, with person who's not alone. Yeah, people around, you're there with somebody else. Yeah, the illusion of safety. That's the person you want to catch the most because that person is clearly deranged. I mean, yeah, who would do such a thing? Horrible. Yeah. The subject line of this one is my ex-girlfriend

witnessed someone disposing of a body. Hello all. Let's jump right in. During my freshman year of college, my girlfriend at the time and I were sharing stories about our mutual love of true crime. Obviously, I asked her if she had any hometown murders and boy did she deliver. Georgie grew up in America, but she lived in Dublin, Ireland from ages five to 12. She and her mom lived in an apartment facing right across from Dublin's Royal Canal. One day, this is going to start sounding familiar to you. One day while taking a walk alongside the canal, she saw two young women throwing a suitcase into the murky water and thought nothing of it because people threw trash into the canal all the time. They went on with their day. A couple

weeks later, however, the sounds of blaring sirens and police activity late at night woke them up. Quickly running to the window to see what was going on, Georgie and her mom saw the police pull a very damp and heavy suitcase out of the water. The very next day, they found out that inside of the suitcase was part of the body of a brutally murdered man. Two sisters called the Scissor Sisters by the media decided to kill their mother's boyfriend by smashing his head in with a hammer and then stabbing him 27 times. The sisters then dismembered his body and disposed of it in the Royal Canal over several trips. Once Georgie and her mom heard the news break on the radio, they put together that it was the sisters that they had seen throwing the suitcase into the canal.

Since the sisters had already been caught by the authorities, they kept him to themselves and eventually moved back to America a couple years later. Stay sexy and don't dispose of a body in broad daylight with love, Emily. Wow. Yeah, I remember you doing that story. It was crazy. Yeah, and it was like there were, it's such a busy area. That whole story is so disturbing because didn't they bury the head in the park somewhere? Yes. And then they kept going and digging it up because they were paranoid and it's, it's really, it's people gone over the edge. Just horrifying. Yeah. Yeah. This one's called Brussels Sprouts. And it just starts, hey, a couple of days ago, I was walking past my next door neighbor's door in my apartment and I got mildly annoyed

because I smelled cooking Brussels Sprouts. My murder brain briefly thought dead body when I first smelled the bad odor, but I convinced myself that I was being crazy, mostly because my fiance always tells me I listened to too much murder stuff. Whatever, he doesn't get it. I get you. Fast forward to today. I walked past my neighbor's door towards the laundry room and what do you know, more Brussels Sprouts, a lot more rotten Brussels Sprouts, dead body. No, don't be crazy, but also welfare check. So I did what any of us murder people would do and submitted an emergency maintenance request to do a welfare check on the resident in apartment 214. I chuckled as I submitted it because I couldn't tell if I was a concerned neighbor or a sociopath.

Fast forward an hour and I head into the hall to go switch my laundry. I'd already forgotten about the Brussels Sprouts. My jaw physically dropped as I was met with four police officers, two coroners, a gurney and a body bag hanging outside of room 214. I must have audibly gassed because they all turned and met eyes with me. I pretended to scurry back into my apartment, but I poked my head out and eavesdropped, obviously, until one cop noticed my whole head hanging out of the door. I apologized and told them I was interested in the process. At this point, I'm pretty sure... I just love your process. I just want to... At this point, I'm pretty sure they think the chick next door with the eye bags and hot pink

cat pajama shorts is an actual murderer. Turns out it wasn't a cruciferous vegetable. My middle-aged neighbor had passed away of natural causes and had been decomposing next door for approximately five days. I can only think of the PTSD I second-handedly instilled in my maintenance guy. Sorry, Brad. Stay sexy and trust your sniffer, Amy. Oh, you brussel sprouts. Also, I liked that she was like, I'm either a concerned neighbor or a sociopath, but your sociopath is never in it because you're afraid for someone. If that's something... You can judge yourself for being nosy or something like that, but you're still concerned. You're a concerned neighbor or you have an active imagination. But I mean...

But you still did something, which is... It's not like you weren't smelling anything and you're like, let's get into this apartment. There's good reason. 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. HelloFresh meals are convenient, seasonal, and delicious. Stay cozy all winter long with classic comfort foods available weekly. While I stop with just dinner, now you can enjoy HelloFresh's expanded menu of quick lunch solutions, weekend brunch, simple side dishes, and amazing desserts. Karen, January is going to be my month for HelloFresh. I am so sick of takeout.

I miss cooking so much. I haven't lifted a knife or a pan since early fall. So I can't wait to get back in the kitchen and HelloFresh makes 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 Mike Corey, the host of Wondery's podcast against the odds. In our next season, three masked men hijack a school bus full of children in the sleepy farm town of Chowchilla,

California. They bury the children and their bus driver deep underground, planning to hold them for ransom. Local police and the FBI marshal a search effort, but the trail quickly runs dry. As the air supply for the trapped children dwindles, a pair of unlikely heroes emerges. Follow against the odds wherever you get your podcast. You can listen ad free on the Amazon music or Wondery app. Here's my last one. My hometown, aka swordfish dinner and a death on the dance floor. Hi gang, this story is one of my all time favorites recounted to me so many times in my childhood, so I thought I'd share it with an audience who would appreciate it almost as much as I do.

I grew up in an Italian Australian house and as a child, my parents would often feel obliged to attend a whole lot of community events. And what usually got them there was the food. One such event was the Peche Peche. Yeah. Well, it's spelled like Joe Peche. And I assume that's fish. Is that a fish? Yeah. P E S C E. One such event was the Peche Spada night, aka swordfish night, an occasion mainly celebrated by fishing communities praising their bountiful hall. I wasn't at this particular event, but I've heard about the night so many times I can recount it in my sleep. This celebration started with the traditional carrying of the whole swordfish around the event hall while everyone clapped for a solid 20 minutes. Oh my God, I want to be there so

bad. I want to go so bad. I would clap for a big old swordfish for more than 20 minutes. It reminds me when you go to temple and they at one point they carry the Torah around and everyone like kisses it or like touches it. It's like that. It's saying that swordfish is the Torah of the Italian community. Okay. Well, they waited for their swordfish dinner. They did other Italian things such as doing the Tarantella, a very energetic and celebratory dance full of jumping and shouting. A really big older man sitting at the next table joined in with the dancing and revelry while my parents watched an amazement that a man of that description could exert himself like that without having a heart attack. Unfortunately, my parents spoke too soon. Oh my God. He collapsed and died on the dance floor.

Paramedics made their way through the hull to take the man in. You guessed it, a body bag. After he was gone, my parents told their friends that they understandably had lost their appetite and were leaving to their friends' shock before the pest they spot. Oh my God. The next day, the other couple told my parents that after they also left, but before dessert, di rispetto out of respect, of course. Anyway, that's my hometown story. Thank you for the community of weirdos you've created and your open dialogue around mental health. Stay sexy and don't stay for the swordfish, Emily. They didn't stay for the dessert, though. I mean, honestly, like, if and when I go, dancing in an Italian swordfish dinner party is the way to go. Your final moments are clapping for a

swordfish and then dancing the tarantella. Goodbye. Let me, let us go this way. And I want you all to stay for dessert because that's what I would do. No, I wouldn't. Yes, I would. Maybe I would. Probably. Stay for dessert and use my death as an excuse to drink a ton. Oh, I'm so sad. Oh, I'm so, you know, traumatized, whatever. Karen would have wanted it this way. Karen wants me to get chip paste. Okay, this is my last one. My mom kept a bank robber's jacket lighthearted. Dear Karen and Georgia, Stephen and furry companions, my sister Wendy and I have been saying for almost a year now that we need to sit down and write this out for you. And finally, I did. So here goes. When my mom was a young teenager, she says she was probably about 15,

making this around 1972 in San Pedro, California. Her dad, my grandfather, Papa and me, won a brand new Ford Mustang convertible in a contest at the local shopping center. Hell yeah. Yeah. Having two daughters still in school, a sports car didn't exactly make sense for their family. So he accepted the prize in the form of a station wagon instead. Such a dad thing to do. I love it. One day, sometime after, Papa went out to where he had parked, to where he had parked at a store in Torrance, California, only to find that the car was missing. It turns out it had been stolen. He reported stolen and the police told him he'd probably never to see it again. But after a few days, the police actually found it because the car thieves were caught

after robbing a bank. There was a shootout exclamation mark. When the police called Papa to come get his stuff out of the car and file a loss with his insurance, he found there were actual bullet holes in the car. Oh my God. The police and Papa went through the car and among his things found a jacket, which they returned to my teenage mom. But it wasn't my mom's jacket. It wasn't her sister's jacket either. They quickly deduced that this jacket had been left behind by one of the bank robbers. The police didn't want it as evidence or anything. So my mom, being the OG murderer that she was, kept the jacket, wore it to school and everywhere, showing it off to all her friends for the next few years. How rad do you think it was? It was 1972. So it was probably

brown, corduroy. Yeah. Corduroy blazer. She called it her bank robber jacket. Even though it was made for a larger person, a men's jacket, and used, she thought it was very cool, which it is. And to this day, it's still very psyched about having gotten to keep it and wear a piece of an actual crime. We don't know what happened to the jacket, but it was likely lost in the fairly tragic to our mom and aunt incident where my grandma told someone to clear the junk out of their garage and hundreds of precious memories were either taken or hauled to the dump. Still, the story makes for a fun little anecdote. SSDGM, Nicolette plus Wendy and mom, Michelle. Wow. That's so good. Oh, I want a picture of her mom in 1972 in high school wearing that fucking men's oversized jacket.

You know what it made me think of too is in the 80s, we would get blazers at the thrift store and roll up the sleeves. It'd be like a men's dark polyester blazer. Yes. But you'd wear it as your own jacket, but it would come down to like right above your knees. And you'd have a little like baby doll dress on. So it was like, I'm a little baby, but also I'm a badass. But I stole someone's jacket. Love it. Love it. Send us your stories at my favorite murder at Gmail or on our website. Keep sending these. Keep washing your hands. Keep staying home. Keep staying sexy. And keep don't getting murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie?