My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 187

Episode Date: August 10, 2020

This week’s hometowns include a murder saw and the Kentucky meat shower.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 soap. It's tiny and mini. It's real short, we're just going to keep you for a couple minutes. We've got some emails from other people to read to you. If you could just hang out for five, 20 minutes, it would be great. Got a PowerPoint presentation to go with it. It would be quick and easy. There's also going to be sound effects. We'll have lunch catered in. It'll be great. I'm going to go first. You got it? You want to go

first? You go ahead. Okay. Hey, MFM fam. I know you hate malarkey, so I'll get straight to the story. Oh, dad. An email from Joe Biden's writing to us. Joe Biden and her dad. I could see your dad doing malarkey. Oh, no. Jim, no. No. Malarkey, he would use it sarcastically, but no. He would say, Bullshit. Make it last four minutes. My dad owns his own business, a solid waste consulting and engineering consulting company. I actually work for him as his marketing director and then in parentheses, yay for family businesses. Question mark, question mark, exclamation point, exclamation point. Close parentheses period. W, W, W. Promo code murder. Because he's an expert on landfills, I know, right? He had been called in on many criminal and civil cases over the years,

most often because a landfill employee or customer is killed. But sometimes he gets called in on a murder trial where evidence or bodies have been found in a landfill. And this one I'm about to tell you is both riveting and heartbreaking. In 2001, Michael Black came home from work to find his wife, Jennifer and six year old daughter, Abby missing and a blood soaked master bed. He called the police, but eventually he was arrested, charged and found guilty of murdering his wife. Her body was found in a local landfill, which is why my dad was brought in. One of the key pieces of evidence was material from his workplace that was found in proximity to his wife's body. However, my dad was for the defense and argued that the evidence did not indicate that her body

and the pamphlets from his work could have come in on the same load. Regardless, Michael Black was imprisoned and a second trial just a couple years ago found him guilty. The evidence against him seems pretty contrived until you consider some of the other evidence, most of which was not allowed to be discussed during either trial. One, shortly after Abby, the daughter disappeared, a man was pulled over for a traffic stop in a nearby state. He had a little girl in his car and some sort of incriminating evidence. I think the mom's driver's license or something that linked him to the family. It wasn't Michael's car. He had already been arrested. And another suspect only identified as Mr. B was identified but never charged had confessed to murdering other little girls and

had a list with both Jennifer Black, the mom and Abby Black, the little girl named on it. Many people think that Abby was kidnapped and trafficked while her mother was murdered because she got in the way. I wonder if Michael did not murder his wife and someone kidnapped his little girl and he has been sitting in prison all of these years. Of course, maybe he did murder them and that's awful too. Either way, as a parent to two young children, this case is heartbreaking. I'm always proud that my dad played a role in trying to get to the truth. You guys are amazing and I so appreciate your honesty and sense of humor. Thank you for all your hard work. Much love, Sarah. Wow. I don't think you did it. I mean, that's the thing is that

idea that you could, it would be impossible to link evidence like that at a dump where it's pure chaos. It's just like, imagine all the things that are at the dumps and if they flew over and landed by a body, you can interpret it a thousand ways. Like, I wonder how many different people could be connected to that just based on the trash that happens to be there and then I wonder what happened to make it so that that other evidence wasn't allowed in court because that might have made a really huge difference, but who the fuck knows. But maybe there was a reason where it was, I don't know, but at the same time, it's like, if he were the murderer, why would he allow flyers from his work to be anywhere near? Yeah. It's not like, that's almost suggesting that he

had thrown out with garbage or something. Yeah. But then it's like, he had been at the dump, that would be the proof somehow, but why would he put his own, whatever. We're going to solve it right now. I mean, this is what, I feel like this is, this horrible and tragic case and situation is kind of what people who get hooked on true crime, this is a perfect example because you could sit here and like theorize in your armchair quarterback way for so long about it. It's just like what happened. And every little element and why. Yeah. Crazy. Yeah. Well, tragic. Okay, this one has maybe my favorite opening. It just says pleasantries. About a year ago, when my boss learned I was going to your show and what it was about, he casually asked, did I tell you

about the time I almost bought a murder saw? No, I replied. We'll strap in because I'm going to break it down for the sake of time. Back in 2009, a lady named Patricia Kimme of Horton, Kansas, was abducted from her home. After days of searching and collecting evidence, the police believed she had been taken by force and might be deceased. Flash forward a few months to when the police officially detained Patricia's killer, Roger Hollister, because he tried to kill himself and his wife in a head on collision after police named him as a prime suspect. Whoa. Let me just say this motherfucker must have never seen a single true crime show because of how sloppy he was with everything. Anyway, this was followed up by his wife, Rebecca, being salty as shit that her

husband tried to kill them both and proceeded to tell the police what she knew, including taking police to the grave site. Oh, shit, Rebecca. So what led to the slang Patricia's ex-husband, who owned a sawmill that Roger frequented, contracted a hit for $70,000 because he was angry about the division of property in the 2008 divorce. Note that this guy was also an idiot because once the division of property was issued, he told anyone who would listen, would listen, including various family members, that he wanted her dead and was willing to pay to have it taken care of. Not smart. Uh-uh. It was at this point in the story. He followed, I want, not only do I want her dead, wait, come back. I know that's creepy. I also will pay any

price. I'll pay for it. And then a week later. I mean, she's gone. Isn't that weird? I'll circle back with you to really underline all the ways that you can look out for me being guilty in the future. It was at this point in the story that when my boss said that during the months when Patricia was missing, he met with the ex-husband to buy a used saw from the sawmill. Oh, no. He says that when he met with the guy, he was being a bit weird about everything and was willing to sell the overly clean saw for a lot cheaper than what it was worth. With the situation not feeling right, my boss passed on the purchase. Turns out he made the right decision because when Patricia's remains were found, it was documented that quote, a forensic pathologist examined the

vertebral body and the few ribs that were still attached and noticed a line of deconstruction where the ribs appeared to have been cut in a straight line. In the end, the ex-husband settled in civil court in a wrongful death suit. What the fuck? Roger died in prison in 2013 and his wife, Rebecca, was officially charged with aiding a felon. I'm just glad that Patricia got justice and that my boss didn't buy a murder saw, Whitney H. Wow. Yeah. That would be a very creepy position to be the person that answers the craigslist ad and the second you roll up your every hair on your body stands up and you're like, get out of this sawmill. I feel like let's not buy saws secondhand guys. Let's stay out of sawmills in general. I don't think unless you are run a lathe

or like a very talented logger, there's no, don't be over there. Go to your local hardware store, pick up a, you know, something cute and kitschy and a new brand new saw that's never been. It has to be new. Yeah. Whether it's a saw, a hatchet, anything, stopping such a cheap bastard. You're getting yourself into trouble. Right. I'm not reading the subject line of this. It gives it all away. Okay. Let's just get right to it. My hometown is Paradise, California. You know the one that was completely destroyed by the campfire two years ago. Yeah. My family survived by the skin of their teeth and images and articles from the events still send me reeling into anxiety and panic. I bet. Anyway, that's not this story. In our middle school, there was a program for

eighth graders called Northwest eight. Literally because the four portable classrooms the program used were on the Northwest's corner of the campus. About 45 students were sectioned off from the rest of the school. We attended separate classes and we had just three teachers between us. The real appeal of the Northwest eight was that the teachers used alternative learning methods such as simulated history and trips to our local wildlife areas to learn about the land and California history. This is some California Montessori shit like going way back. We went to San Juan Capistrano to learn about the swallows that came in every fucking whenever the shit. This is so California. It's amazing. Every fucking whenever.

It all went straight into little George's brain. Clearly, yeah. I was picking up on what they were laying down. Yeah. This reminds me of like when Mrs. Tawilagar would come and visit our school and she would bring like this is a living abalone or whatever and you'd learn about the coast land or whatever. Yeah. Get into it. Immerse it. Hold on. Let me close my door really quick. Hold on. Yeah. Yeah. We bought a jukebox from the 1960s. You guys did? For Vince's birthday and it's fully, it's from a record store that refurbishes old jukeboxes so they filled it with like 250 records, old records. That's badass. We had to apply to be in this program and it was competitive.

We usually looked forward to simulation days where they remade our little world of classrooms into sets for whatever we were learning about. From Ellis Island, we were checked for nits and segregated by our home pre-assigned countries. To the Industrial Revolution, they had us assembling little paper hats in a hot loud classroom under cramped conditions to a slave ship. I'm not even going to describe this one because yikes. One of the simulations they did was dot, dot, dot the 1976 Chow Chilla bus kidnapping that Karen covered in the last episode. That's right. Our three teachers dressed as kidnappers with fake guns, bandanas and lots of yelling. They shuffled us into the back of a pitch dark U-Haul

parked on school property and we were given instructions to figure a way out. I think I blocked, I think I blocked a lot of this stuff out, but listening to Karen tell the actual story that inspired my teachers to do this was disturbing. Looking back, I'm really not sure what the lesson was. Something about teaching us survival and strength maybe, but the lesson I learned was don't trust adults, even your teachers because what the fuck? I might add, this was in 1997, so not that long ago. Wow. This is some educational teaching skills then. They've been teaching us in the 80s. They pushed that 80s shit right up to 97. Anyway, thanks for everything. The years upon years of listening to you both has helped me through some rough times. See first paragraph.

Oh, thanks. Recently, I completed listening to every episode from the beginning. It took me 18 months and approximately 350 miles of morning walks. I love that. Stay sexy and don't let your teacher fake kidnap you, Rachel T. Good one. That is, okay, yeah, what? I mean, I kind of have to say, but I know it's wrong, but I love the idea of it's like, what are you going to do now? This crazy shit is happening. What are you going to do now? It's very unfair for maybe the more delicate people in that class. It'll be like, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to pee in the corner and then I'm going to be known as the peeing in the corner girl for the rest of my career. I'm going to, I'm going to obsess about the fact that this happened to children my age every night

and not be able to fall asleep. What did you teach me? What were they thinking? I had a teacher and also just like lawsuits and parents. I still remember this fucking teacher I had in third grade wanted to show us what sexism was like, you know, in the old, when like women couldn't work and be in the workforce and so she separated the boys and girls and let the boys do whatever they want and made the girls like turn in homework and then switch it and let the boy have to make the boy like she basically did sexism. She underlined sexism. I still am mad about it and the boys were such dicks like ha ha and they were playing cards and stuff and we were all like, this isn't fucking fair and she's like, right, it's not fair. That's it. But also how about the lesson be

reversing the people who actually have the power? We already know what sexism is like. It's already like this. The boys are already in charge. It's ingrained already. What was her? How about you flip it, flip that script and let the people learn who, oh wow, opportunity missed. But Rachel, not you. Thank you for sharing your your trauma and the things your weird teachers did. So thank you for sharing. We love to know all about it. Yes. Okay, this one's called a Mexican Revolution Family Murder. Great. Hi, y'all. Just listened to the latest episode and when Georgia talked about the Mexican Revolution, I decided to send you my family murder that happened during the Mexican Revolution. I came across a story when I was helping my abuelo sort some belongings and found a

letter from the Mexican Embassy. And since I can't speak or read Spanish, my greatest shame, my abuelo filled me in. In 1912, my great, great grandfather and great, great grandmother came to America seeking asylum, which they were granted and they built a life for themselves on a small farm on the Texas Mexico border. One day a few years later, my great, great grandfather was out working the farm when American soldiers rode up on their horses and shot him dead. Holy shit. Their reason he was Mexican and looked like a rebel. This left my great great grandmother alone to raise eight children. She was pissed and rightfully so. She fought in court against the United States and was awarded $2,000 for the death, around $28,000 today. She took

that money and bought a huge plot of land and built a home, which is the same home my abuelo would grow up in, the same home I spent my childhood, some murders at visiting my mama, great grandma, until she passed. My abuelo still owns the home and rents it out to locals and other family members who still live there. We used to visit their old town multiple times a year, less so now that my abuelo's Parkinson's is advancing, but it's a special place to my family. It's our American roots grown from a horrible injustice. This story reminds me that not that much has changed, so we must keep fighting. As my abuelo has gotten sicker, every time I visit, I worry it could be the last time. And every time he tells me to never be ashamed of who I am and

where I come from. He spent his whole life feeling ashamed of who he was because of some racist bastards. And he told me, quote, watching you and your sisters grow into successful independent women taught me that there is nothing to be ashamed of. We are strong and beautiful people, and we should be proud of that. Thanks for all y'all do. Your podcast brings me so much joy in times of real darkness. Love y'all s. That's so cool. Also, a grandfather that's telling his granddaughter he's learning from them. Totally. What a badass, like awesome, thoughtful man. That's so cool. It is. It's really a beautiful story. Thank you for sharing that s. And I love how much you use the word y'all. That's just one of my favorite words. True. I sound sarcastic.

I'm not. I remember the one time those Texans remember in the beginning when we were we were all met, like someone tweeted, I tweeted something and use the word y'all and you text us. I'm like, Stephen, why did you use the word y'all? We don't talk like that. Actually, that was me. I like it because it's gender neutral. I don't know. Like it's just because it's so not something I would normally say. Looking for a better cooking routine with meal planning, shopping, and prepping handled Hello Fresh has you covered. Hello Fresh makes home cooking easy and affordable so you can stay on track and on budget in the new year. Hello Fresh meals are convenient, seasonal, and delicious. Stay cozy all winter long with classic comfort foods available weekly.

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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. Okay, here's my last one. Okay. Hey ladies, I love the podcast, even if it sometimes freaks my roommate out. Yeah, that's right. Stand by us. This story is

about my parents' spooky house and they're very good dog, all caps. Good dogs. Georgie and Frankie. Look at how quiet. Sleep then. They know what they have to do to stay in the room. Yeah, that's right. It's just like me when I used to ask to be in my cousin Cheryl's room. You just have to zip the lip and you can stay in there for as long as you want. Simple really. Okay. My parents' house was built in 1915 and they bought it just before I was born in the 80s. It's a pretty normal house, two stories, three bedrooms, a big yard and an unfinished basement. We've never finished the basement as it's prone to flooding and we've always just used it as a general sort of laundry workshop, et cetera space. It's just a little bit creepy the way that all

unfinished basements are, but never freaked me out too much as a kid. When you grow up in an old house, creepy basements and spooky noises at night like noisy radiators are just part of life. Anyway, around 2008, my parents adopted a new dog, a black lab mix named Clark. Mr. Clark. I don't want to miss that name when I was reading this. That's the funniest. Our childhood dog had passed away. My sister and I were long grown and gone and my parents wanted a furry friend around the house. Clark was six months old and incredibly sweet. He'd been rescued from a bad situation and for years he hated to be alone and always wanted to be in the same room as someone. That's so frank. He was pretty well trained by his foster family, housebroken and

almost never barked. He was and still is to this day. He's doing great for his age, pretty much the perfect dog. A day or two after he came home with my parents, my dad was at work and my mom went downstairs to do laundry. The basement is accessed through a door with a little closet area on one side in the kitchen and it has creaky wooden steps going down to it. Clark predictably followed my mom down these stairs into the basement and immediately freaked out. It was the first time he'd been in the basement and something terrified him. He looked around and sniffed the air a little bit, then let out one sharp bark the first time my mom ever heard him bark. He backed up, his hackles were raised, tail between his legs. He was so scared he peed on the floor a little

bit and then he raced back upstairs to the kitchen. My mom was at a loss for what had scared him so much, but obviously something did. She went upstairs and comforted him, but he refused to go back down in the basement. He refused to even stepped through the door leading to the stairs to the basement. There's a door to the driveway halfway down the basement stairs and that's the only door where you don't get a face full of flying lab if you enter. We've tried everything. Favorite dog treats, people, food, toys, but nothing in 12 years has convinced this incredibly social dog to even pass through that doorway. Once when I was visiting, something happened to cause a small hole in the kitchen floor and Clark wouldn't go near it until it was covered up. None of us have

ever experienced anything too creepy in the basement, but obviously something terrifying is down there and Clark's the only one with the good sense to avoid it. Stay sexy and don't get murdered in a creepy basement and then scare a sweet dog. Oh my God. What's down there? They don't know. Dig it up. Dig it up. I mean something's down there. That dog knows what he's talking about. Or it's like, I believe. I think it like, it just, for me, it like makes me believe in like bad vibes more, you know? Sure. But if it's unfinished, there could be like one corner of the basement where there's just a body. It's just like, like, you know, in a cartoon when you scan down underground and you see the skeletons and stuff, there could just be a skeleton just

right on the other side of one of their unfinished dirt walls. Or he's just a design snob and is like, finish this fucking basement already. It's garbage. I don't want to look at it. I will pee on it. It's not fear. It's disdain. It's dog disdain. It's just like the one thing he stuck up about is unfinished flooring. Finish it. I'm Clark. Finish it. Okay. This, my last one's called Kentucky Meat Shower. Oh, yeah. Karen, Georgia, Steven, Vince, and all the pets. All Vince. I was listening to the recent mini-sode where you shared about the Jell-O rain shower in Washington. And finally, I have a hometown to send you, the story of the Kentucky Meat Shower. Here we go. Back in March 1876 on a clear night in Rankin, Kentucky, Mrs. Couch,

I never could find her name. Only her husband's, Ugg, was outside minding her own business doing farmy-type things on her farm when all of a sudden chunks of meat started falling from the sky. The chunks were as small as a golf ball up to as big as a grapefruit. I'm sure this poor woman was freaking the fuck out. She was interviewed saying the shower of flesh must have been a sign from God. Yeah, probably. What kind of sign? I don't know. Go inside. Stay inside. Finish your basement. Go inside and finish your basement. The next day, some random dudes came to the farm to investigate and said the mystery meat had the distinct taste of, quote, rancid mutton, which means they ate it. Who tasted it? It's like the cocaine rubbing it on your tooth, but the meat

shower tasted it. You just dab it under your tongue each side. It says, no, thank you. A scientist later studied a preserved sample and said it had to be some form of no-stick or cyanobacteria that can fall when it rains, much like the story in the last hometown, which I pronounced totally wrong, by the way, in the last, I got so many tweets, but I don't care. Whoa, whatever that's called. Sciencey pronunciations that I don't know. Oh, are you not a scientist? You know I'm not a scientist? Wait, no, because you've really been acting like one this whole time. Yeah, and it's on my resume that I gave you this podcast. Science, smoking, fencing. The only problem with that theory is that it was a completely clear night, so it couldn't have been part of Lorraine. To add

further confusion to the story, a later analysis of the tissue discovered it to be either lung tissue from a horse or, all caps, a human infant. And then it says, apparently those tissues were indistinguishable back then, weird. So it's probably horse meat. A human infant? But, okay, questions. Okay, let me keep reading. So what actually happened, question mark? No one knows for certain. The favorite theory of locals in the area is that the meat from the sky was quite literally meat. They think vultures flying overhead must have disgorged their stomachs all at once to cause the chunks of meat to shower down. They'd probably previously chowed down on an animal carcass, hopefully. And poor Mrs. Couch was just incredibly unlucky that night. I've lived in

Kentucky for more than half my life now, and I love my weird and wonderful state, hoping to see you come through here again if the world stops ending. Thanks for keeping me sane at normalizing my true crime obsession and just generally being the best. SSDGM and watch for meat showers, Kayla. Kayla, I need to know. If you're going to say a meat shower, in my mind, that means meat is going from as far as the eye can see to the right, as far as the eye can see to the left, back and forward. So if it's vultures throwing up, did it just come down within like a 10 foot radius? Or was it just like a one person one? And then that's it? Who knows? Yeah, because, yeah, right? Because then that I, there's so many theories you could start inventing about what that'd be from. But I imagined

that it was like when you talked about the other one, that it's like rain, but other stuff. Yeah. Like rain goes everywhere. It doesn't just. No, I think it was just the meat. Can someone also, like a biology major tell us if fucking horse meat and human infant meat are at all similar? Why, back in the 1800s, they would have confused the two? I have to say that I bet you the scientists that theorized that was like, this, the chances are this looks a lot like horse lung to me. What if it was a baby? Oh my God. And then then the person that they worked with is like still writing it down. Or he's like, no, no, no, no. Don't write down everything I say. He's thinking it and accidentally writing it at the same time. You know, when you do that, that's gotta be like,

he's like, he's writing what it probably is. Then he accidentally wrote what he hopes it's not. Right. What would be the best case scenario and the worst case scenario? Best case scenario. And then when he will quit is when it comes back. But if this ever happens again, and it's human infant, I'm out. I just need to know the range. I need to know the what by what did this fall in. Yeah. Send us your fucking stories, please. They're so fun. They're so fun. They're getting better by the moment. They really are. So good. I had so many good ones to choose from. You can send them to my favorite murder at Gmail. There's a place on the website to send them and in the fan cult as well. We love them. And come and be a part of things.

Listen and then get just find one noun that you can relate to your own life and that like many people did on this episode and then go, I finally have a reason to write in and write it in. That's right. Maybe Steven, leave in the conversation about the jukebox. So maybe people will write in about random jukebox stuff. Honk to jukeboxes. There are jukebox didn't work because they opened up the back and there was horse lungs inside. Come on. Don't make me do all the work. You do the work. Yeah, you get your horse long story together. And also you stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Elvis, you want a cookie?