My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 181

Episode Date: June 29, 2020

This week’s hometowns include an unsolved murder and an underwater ghost town.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. Welcome to my favorite murder. The mini-soad. Short, sweet, filled with horror. Just the way you like it. Just the way real quick like on a Monday. Mm-hmm. You love Monday. What's your pandemic Monday look like? Staying in? Better be. Better be. And if not, wearing a mask. Wearing a mask every week. It's not political. It's not up to you, dad. Sorry. You go first. No, no, after you. No, please, scientist. Okay, the subject line of this is

drugs, murder, pagans, my mom's endocrinologist. Whoa. Hello, ladies and Stephen. Allow me to start with the traditional thank you so much for making this podcast. You guys have kept me company through finishing pharmacy school and moving to Connecticut to start my residency. Yada yada, let's get to it. I was raised in a town called Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey, not known for anything as far as I know. In 2012, April Kaufman, local radio host and veteran affairs advocate was found shot dead in her home. Her husband was suspected, but there was insufficient evidence to pin anyone to pin on anyone and the case went cold. It was an endocrinologist, parentheses, my mom's actually, who operated out of EHT, Egg Harbor Township, and also worked as a veteran's

advocate since he was an armed forces veteran himself. He filed a lawsuit to obtain a payout from April's life insurance, but they refused to pay him until they received verification that he was not involved with the murder. April's daughter publicly claimed that he was responsible for the death and filed a suit to prevent him from claiming the life insurance. Wow. Fast forward to June 2017 when police go to endocrinology office with a search warrant due to quote, suspected criminal activity unrelated to the murder case. This is where shit gets crazy. Is he growing weed or something? He's growing blood. Isn't that what endocrinologists are about? I was going to ask, but then I thought that sounds stupid. No, hematologists are blood.

Endocrinology is like hormones and thyroid. It's all, it's pretty gallbladder specific, I would say. I go to one and yet I don't fucking know. What part of you is it for? She's giving me pills. That's all I know. Pill doctor. So when the police arrived, pulls a nine millimeter handgun points it at himself and claims he's going to kill himself. He's caught on a police body cam saying quote, I'm not going to jail for this. After a brief standoff, no one got hurt. He's arrested and they search his office. First, they find that he never served in the military and had lied to everyone, including his wife about being a veteran. Holy shit. Wow. Then they find evidence that he had been supplying narcotics to a drug ring

run by a pagan motorcycle gang since 2011. A motorcycle gang that worships the earth, Mother Gaia. Here in Egg Township. Oh, it's, they're all about Easter. Okay. Back in 2012, he was having marital issues and his wife wanted to divorce. She also threatened to expose drug operation. The leader of the gang hired to take her out. Entered April's home, shot her twice and left without detection. He was found dead from a heroin overdose 18 months later. The drug ring continued until it was arrested for weapons and obstruction charges in 2017. I was actually working at a local CVS at the time and we were amused by the arrest story until multiple patients came in requesting medications with zero refills left and guess

who the prescriber was. Not sure if you can call the county jail to verify a new prescription. Anyways, after that arrest was also brought in on charges related to the drug ring. He was also accused of making plans to have killed for fear that he would flip on him. Both men were charged with first degree murder of April Kaufman in 2018. One week after the murder charge was found dead in his jail cell due to an apparent suicide, although some including me 100% believed this was a hit job by the gang. Either way, there's one less devious asshole alive on earth. Wow. Wow. Thank you again and sorry for the lengthy ass email. Stay sexy and vet your doctor's Cassidy. Wow. That would have been a good full episode. That's crazy. That story is insane.

Should we cut it and so one of us can cover it? What is it with doctors? I think of that one date line I watched where the doctor, whoever the host was, I bet it was Keith Morrison, was basically asking him all these questions and he was just very flatly answering and you just knew he did it. The way he was answering like absolutely was not there and you're like, oh my god. You were there. You're making yourself seem guiltier. Doctors, don't let your husbands grow up to be a drug ring mule for the motorcycle gangs. God, please. That's intense. Yeah. Okay. This is called a girl, a murder and a pizza place. Hello spooky murder friends. This is a bit long, so I'll just get right to it. I'm from a small town in Northern California called Rodeo.

Do you know it? Is it Rodeo? It's out. It's, I don't know what the pronunciation is, but I think it's East. It's Northeast. Okay. There's more, but I just want to make sure I'm saying it right. I don't know. Yeah. Okay. Rodeo. That's probably right. Our biggest import is meth and our biggest export is members of Green Day. Oh, maybe it's not too far. Yeah. The lead singer's mom still lives there. Oh, shit. Kind of a lot of fucked up shit happens there, but those are stories for another day. One of the neighboring towns is called Crockett and it is also tiny. You know it? Not heard of, no. I haven't heard of either of those towns. Okay. Crockett is most famous for the C&H sugar factory. All the kids from Rodeo and Crockett attend the same elementary, middle, and high

school. We all know each other and the vibe is a very typical small town suburban weirdo vibe. There is a single pizza parlor in Crockett called Four Corners. On September 24th, 1996, a sweet baby angel named Priscilla Lewis was working her usual shift at the pizza place when she was attacked and murdered in the creepy basement bathroom of the strip mall in which Four Corners is located. That's horrible. She was only 21 years old and was working hard to save to buy a home. There's some conflicting theories on how she died, but the most popular one is that someone snagged her from the top of the stairwell. The staff at the restaurant hardly used that bathroom because it was so creepy and dragged her downstairs where she was then strangled to death.

Her body was found by the cook when he went downstairs to look for her after she didn't return from her break before closing. The case is still cold and Priscilla's murderer has yet to be caught. I was six when this happened so my mom rightly so shielded me from Priscilla's horrifically sad death. When I got to middle school, one of my older sister's friends told me Priscilla's story while we were eating at the pizza place and I was hooked. I convinced myself that I would solve Priscilla's murder and asked my mom 3,000 questions about it every single day for at least a month. Alas, I never solved the case, but I also never went into that creepy fucking bathroom which I'm pretty sure is 100% haunted. This is just one of the many upsetting

stories from two tiny Northern California towns, a planned murder suicide between sisters that went awry, that asshole Lawrence Singleton being moved in and then promptly being run out of town by the locals. That's a, sorry, that's a rodeo? Yeah, or I eat Crockett or... She doesn't say. It doesn't say. I feel like that's the way I know the name, but... Could be. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's yeah. And then, but it's the main one that has had a lasting impression on me. Thank you for all you do and I can't wait to catch a live show when this shit head pandemic is over. I truly don't know what I do without the podcast, SSDGM Nikki. Wow. Oh, that's also small. I mean, a town so small that two tiny towns share a high school, those are tiny towns. And that to me,

it doesn't seem like a murderer just like swoops in real quick, kills the girl at the pizza place and swoops out. Like that's someone from town. So that's got to be terrifying for to just have it go unsolved. Yeah, entirely because they what is it 90% of murders are someone someone knows. Right. The likelihood that it's a stranger is very low. Right. Or a stranger to her, but it's he's still somebody that's like neighbor. I don't know. Yeah. Like known in town. Yeah. Yeah. Connected somehow. Connected. Okay. Okay. This just starts, hi Karen, Georgia and everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Just everybody. Hi. My hometown is from Alexandria, Egypt. In 1920, two sisters, Rea and Sakina ran several brothels in a poor area called El Laban, pretty close to my house.

We're talking to someone reading an email from someone who lives in Egypt right now. That's crazy. I am. First of all, hi. I love all the Nova specials about your town. Can we get an honorary degree? I'm sorry about Alexandria's library as a real disgrace. Okay. Welcome. We're so happy to have you. Okay. Let's get back to this email. Okay. The brothels were interesting because they didn't just house sex workers, but were quote, secret homes to anyone who wanted to get it on away from prying 1920s Egyptian eyes. Oh, man. Many of the patrons were actually married women meeting their lovers. Oh, around that time, many women were being reported missing. Witnesses said they were always last seen wearing a lot of gold and with either or both of

the sisters. For some reason, that wasn't enough proof. They were questioned. The sisters were questioned then released until one night a police officer was passing by Rea's house and smelled a really strong incense. I guess that was more suspicious than being seen with every single one of the 17 missing women. And they searched the house's brothels finding 15 bodies buried under all of them. Oh, no. Apparently, Rea and Sakina would go to the market, find the woman wearing the most jewelry, invite her over to the house for drinks, then suffocate her with a wet cloth over her nose and mouth. They stole their jewelry, money and clothes before burying them. This news was pretty sensational because at the time women's crimes were usually

limited to, quote, killing their husband's second wives. Because it's the 20s. It's Egypt in the 20s. Sure. The media went crazy. And at some point, a headline read, Rea and Sakina in the zoo, which got people to flock to the zoo to see them in a cage and then realize it was just a room. Oh my God. Good. I was like, wait. I know that's horrified. Hold up. The sisters were helped by their husbands and two other men who are all convicted. Rea and Sakina were the first women to be executed by the modern state of Egypt. There were many movies and plays written about them, for some reason, mostly comedies. I used to watch the play about them recorded off the TV on VHS on a loop as a kid. I thought they were so funny only to realize they were actual serial killers

when I got older. This is amazing. Stay sexy and don't go for a drink with the lady not breaking eye contact with your jewelry. Salma. Say her name again. How do you say it? Salma. Almost like Salma Hayek. S-A-L-M-A. Salma. That was excellent. We're so excited to have you in the commune. Tell everyone we say hello, everyone. Please. Tell all Egyptians everywhere that we say hi. Okay. This one is called Underwater Ghost Town and I just realized it's also from Northern California. So, oh, all right. Yes. Hey, ladies. After listening to a recent episode and learning about Georgia's deep passion for underwater ghost towns, I felt compelled to tell you my story. I grew up in a small town. What? Is it your deep passion or mine? Both of us.

I think most people. Okay. Yeah. How could you not? Right. I don't really care. No. You're made of stone that you don't want to hear about the town covered in water. No curiosity about life whatsoever. Okay. I grew up in a small town in Northern California just off the American river and adjacent to Folsom. Yes, Folsom in the prison, but also Folsom as in the lake, a man-made lake that was built on top of the town known as Mormon Island. So, a little history. In the 1840s, a ton of people came to Northern California in search of gold. A group of about 2,500 Mormons settled in present-day Folsom and founded Mormon Island. In 1856, a fire destroyed the town and it was never fully rebuilt. Only a few families remained into the 1940s. In 1955,

the government built the dam, relocated the cemetery, and flooded Mormon Island. Crazy. Are there a lot of Mormons in Northern California? No. I'm completely surprised because Folsom isn't too far from Sacramento. It's like around the area. And I've never heard of Mormon Island. I've never heard of any of this. Well, check this shit out. It gets crazier. Check this fucking shit out. We learned about this weird history in school and in anecdotes from parents and grandparents, but during the drought of 2011 through 2017, we saw the evidence for ourselves. Foundations of homes started to emerge from the beaches and rusted tools and gold panning equipment were taken to museums. Treasure. True treasure. Then on November 13, 2015, the skeletal remains of a human were

found by a 12-year-old boy. Oh, lucky. No, it says Nightmare Town for that kid. Back up then if you can't handle it. Don't go to underwater ghost towns if you can't handle the truth about underwater ghost towns. All I wanted was to find a skeleton. 100%. The remains were transferred to Chico State University for forensic analysis. And in June of 2018, they were identified as the remains of Oleg Zelivnikov. Oleg was a Russian immigrant who had gone missing while swimming in the lake in freaking 1996. Oh, no. Which means I spent my entire childhood swimming with a dead guy. Yeah. When Oleg disappeared, he left behind an eight-year-old daughter. She lived in Russia still. So with the help of the FBI in Sacramento and Moscow, they were able to confirm his identity

using DNA. Oh, I know. Oleg's remains were then cremated in the same mortuary as my grandma. The daughter came to El Dorado County in October of last year, 2019, to collect the remains and bring them home to Oleg's final resting place. Love you, gals. Stay sexy and don't swim with dead bodies. Lacey. I know. 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. Why 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 podcasts. You can listen ad free on the Amazon music or Wondery app. I'm not going to read the subject line of this one because it gives it away. Okay. Hey, it just starts. Hey, fun fact, when you die as a way to recycle your body, you have the option to have your body cremated and the carbon from your ashes pressed into pencil lead

and made into pencils. Why would you do that? Why would anyone want that? I would totally do it. There's so many other ways to. This process yields about 200 pencils per human body. So when the unspeakable should happen, you can become pencils or you can do what I'd like to do, which is have the carbon from my ashes pressed into a diamond and given to the youngest person in my family. No, no, do pencils. I think pencils is more, it's more of a keepsake to do a fucking number two pencil instead of a big old diamond ring. But wait, they say, give it to the youngest person in my family. So when someone explains how beautiful the ring is, my distant relative can say, Oh, thanks. It's my grandmother moving forward. My Aunt Lydia, sister of my mom's

sister's husband died suddenly a few years ago from something I think diabetes related. I wasn't very close with her, but because she and my aunt and the other sister-in-law severely disliked one another. And so she rarely attended family gatherings. She had been a very wealthy and very eccentric woman always wearing very colorful, flowy outfits and enormous jewelry made from beautifully exotic stones. Those Egyptian sisters would have loved her. Oh, that's right. They would have been all over her. The jewelry pieces always had some amazing story behind them, like who they belong to. And most importantly to Lydia, how much they had cost. So when she died, you can bet your ass that the sister-in-laws raided her home immediately

to snatch up all of her beautiful expensive jewelry. Lydia had, uh, had kept a handful of the more expensive pieces in a safe in the wall of her garage. But over the coming days, they found more pieces hidden throughout her home. Jewelry was hidden in the rafters, stowed away in hollow holiday decoration boxes, taped up in the back of cabinets, inside mattresses, and stowed in her safe deposit box. Whoa, she sounds awesome. I love this. This is the dream. Yeah. So the sister-in-laws gathered up every piece they could find, sprinting straight to the jeweler to have the pieces appraise. And you guessed it, every last piece was fake. Yay, worthless jewelry. Every single piece of jewelry laid ever on. Shown often talked about had been

nothing other than costume jewelry. The whole story makes me kind of sad, but I like to think that it was just a long con executed by Lydia to disappoint the women she hated the most one last time from beyond the grave. I wish I had the discipline. So stay sexy and become wealthy by buying fake jewels, Dana. I love it. That is just perfection. Because if that's really what she, if she did it on purpose, which clearly she did. Right. Oh my God. That's incredible. That's all taped up into her house, like it's even more valuable. You gotta, you gotta just at least let your family think you're hiding some worth, like some shit that's worth something, right? Got to. Just get, just so that that one weekend, it's not just sad that they think there's also a bit

of treasure hunting involved. Okay, here's my last one. This is called Things You Find in the Desert. Hi, I obviously wouldn't be writing in if I wasn't deeply obsessed. So let's jump right in. My dad was 16 years old when both his parents died in a plane crash in Arizona. His mother had taken up piloting. Is that a word? Question mark? Yes, right? When my dad got into high school and they died at an unexpected plane crash in January, 1977. Fast forward to 1997 and my family was living in Phoenix. It was around the date of the 20th anniversary of the accident and the priest at our church suggested to my dad that perhaps they try and visit the site of the crash to get closure they never had. My dad said, I saw the trip to be an opportunity to introduce my mom and dad to my

adult life. My dad was connected with a retired sheriff from the area as he was trying to gather more information about the location of the crash. Unbeknownst to my dad, the sheriff had been the first deputy on the scene and was the one who had found his parents' bodies. When my parents, aunt and uncle were hiking to the crash site, they saw something totally unexpected. My grandmother's plane, the one that had crashed 20 years prior. What? They had no idea it was still there when they set out on the hike that day. As they approached the crash site, they found the ragged remains of his mom's cosmetic bag that still held a bottle of perfume with some perfume still in it that my dad had given her for Christmas in 1976 and they found her curling iron. No. So that's the

story of my grandparents dying in a plane crash and my parents finding the plane in the desert 20 years later. Stay sexy and next time we're allowed to touch another human being, hug your loved one's tight exo, Jordan. Oh, Jordan. That was beautiful. Yes. Finding a little treasure of memory that no one had found in 20 fucking years. Well, you know what's funny? Every time I go back, you know, I was just back up in Petaluma, I always go through my mom's drawers to see if there's something because, you know, it's all kind of as it was. Yeah. But I always look for if there's something I've never seen before. Yeah. Or like something, you know, something to take or whatever that is and just like most of it's like old nail polish. Yeah. Or, you know, there's nothing. But

like that idea that there would be something so connected, you know, because the smell or just the bottle itself, like he can take that back with him. Have you looked for any hidden treasures? Like maybe your mom taped an envelope. I would think like an address or to the top of the drawer. That's where I would tape an envelope. Well, you know what? I did find a card from her when it was, I think it was like right when our stuff started popping off and there was a card from her from when I very first moved to LA just about how proud she was of me and it was very like it was perfect because it was like I forgot that my normal regular mom was big in descending cards. So it would be like, you know, St. Patrick's Day cards or like Halloween cards.

That's so cute. Yes. She was a big card person. She had a drawer full of like un-sent cards because she always had one ready. And so I strived for that and it's so hard. So fucking blast bat soul for doing that. She did it. But at the time, it's like one of the many things I took for granted that then later on when I went and pulled this thing and I can't, I must have been keeping it somewhere and just kind of forgot. So yeah, that was like the closest like something like that because it was her writing and it was her words and it was really beautiful. But I love that every time you go in and like see if something jogs a memory or is actually a keepsake that you hadn't even thought of. I've gone through the... Does it still smell like her?

Or nail polish? It smells like nail polish. The nail polish, all that kind of stuff. There's old lipsticks and stuff. That's adorable. Well, this was a touching one. Touching stories, please. We need these in times like this on Mondays like this. On Mondays like this, we need some touching things. Yes, please touch us. Touch us from a social distance. Yes, don't touch us, but touch us. Touch us deep inside. That's right. And stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Bye. Elvis, do you want a cookie?