My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 207

Episode Date: December 28, 2020

This week’s hometowns include scary sounds and the United States’ first recorded murder.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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Hello. Hello. And welcome. To my favorite murder. This is the Minya Sode. Welcome to it. You wrote to us. Yep.

You told us stories. Yep. Here they are. And now we retell them. To you. Right back at you. In your face. It's the same every time on this one.

Same every time. Sap, do you want to go first? Sure. Cool. Okay. Where's the one that says one on it? No idea. Who could tell?

Lots of twos and threes. What the fuck? Oh, okay. I know what I did. Okay. I won't read you the subject line. I'm still catching up on episodes currently on episode 190. It just starts that way.

There's no greeting. No nothing. We're right into the business. Please never say hello to us. Never. Just call. It is truly whether you're on the street in the future at a party. Just walk up and start talking.

No one needs the bullshit. Greetings. Stuff. That's from the Victorian era. I am still catching up on episodes currently on episode 190. I laughed out loud when you said, quote, farmers don't complain. Yes, I know you don't remember saying that. So I figured I'd send you a short first responder story.

As a traveling emergency physician assistant, I was in the ER in a very rural town in Arizona. Being in and out of all kinds of ERs and urgent care clinics. I never bat an eye at the people screaming and making a big fuss. They're always fine. What is truly worrying is a farmer sitting quietly in the waiting room in the middle of the day. I was finishing up with the whiniest patient with an infected toe when the nurse let me know that a farmer was here with an ankle injury. He walked into the room with an injured ankle wrapped in a bandana in a boot.

I examined the patient who never flinched and ordered an x-ray. He said he jumped off a fence on the farm first thing that morning and had been working on it ever since. He never once complained. I was absolutely shocked to find that his foot, ankle and lower leg were broken in eight places. Oh my God. And completely unstable, like shards everywhere. I have no idea how he would have put any weight on this. Never mind walked in on it.

Since I was in a remote little native town, I had to life flight the patient several hours away to a real hospital. I more recently had a farmer in an ER in Pennsylvania with a fucking hammer embedded in his face. He didn't even want the lidocaine for me to suture his other wounds. Other wounds. Other wounds. I didn't end up touching this one. He went to the OR too. Farmers are scary ass motherfuckers and so is my father. One time he nailed three of his fingers together with a nail gun and with dirty old tetanus-y wire cutters, he made me cut his fingers apart so he could drive himself to the hospital.

Oh, I can't even open my eyeballs right now. I'm so... I was nine. I was nine. I was nine. Oh my God. We forgot to call my mom when we left for the hospital who came home to a very bloody scene. Bloody hand prints on the front door, big splatters of blood all over the kitchen floor, and a potential murder weapon slash wire cutters on the counter.

And was not phased in the slightest as this was our normal. She just calmly called the hospital, asked which one of us was the patient, and then made dinner. And that was the beginning of my professional career where I am still pulling things out of people with wire cutters and other fun stuff. Stay sexy and do let your children perform minor surgery on you, Jay. Jay, congratulations on the most interesting life I have ever heard. I mean, I could have... First of all, the compactness of the way Jay presented those stories to us. Thank you. Yes, great stories.

Just one... Yes. That was an anthology. Jay put together an anthology for us. Thank you kindly. That was amazing. And thank you for doing this good work. I would assume that if you see a farmer anywhere in the middle of the day with the farm, something's wrong. So, you know what I mean? Like, they don't... They're not going to, like, take half a day off because they feel like it.

No, no. That's not allowed. Unless they're at the bank. Oh, sure. Yeah. On Friday? Absolutely. Because they got to deposit their millions. Exactly. That was great. Anthology is greatly welcome. Or, like, how did you... How did you get into your weird career? Because as a childhood, you had to sew someone up who didn't realize you were eight and that was going to be traumatizing. Yeah. Recap your childhood trauma that brought you to your... That made you find your future.

Exactly. Made you know your path. Yeah. You figure it out. And then tell us. Then tell us about it. Write it up. All right. This just starts... Hello, all. I'm trying to write this while listening to the snake story from last week and I can't finish my breakfast.

Thanks for that. I grew up in the same relatively wealthy suburb of Rochester, New York, aforementioned in your last hometown episode, which was a while back, right? Yeah. Fun fact, Rochester has a large deaf population because of the deaf college there. A couple months ago, my mother, who was profoundly deaf, was home alone sleeping in my childhood home. She woke up at 3 a.m. to the floor shaking, which she thought was thunder. She was trying to fall back to sleep when she saw her door open and a flashlight sweeping her bedroom.

Behind the flashlight was a tall shadowy figure. Instead of screaming or moving like anyone else would do, she pretended to be asleep. When the man closed the door, she went to her master bathroom and quietly texted my father, who was out of town, as she knew there was no efficient way to dial 911. Then she used the video relay 911 service, an ASL interpreter through video chat. It took two tries for her to reach an interpreter. Research shows it can take sometimes eight to nine minutes. Oh, no.

While she waited for the cops, she was so common intelligent that when my dad told her to turn on the light in the bathroom where she was hiding, she told him she couldn't because the fan would make noise even though she herself couldn't hear it. So she fucking knew there was a fan that would make noise that would alert everyone. She was thinking of all things and the people who weren't even in the house being threatened were not. Exactly. Incredible. Amazing. After a while, not being able to hear what was going on in the house, my mom felt running on the ground and a crash coming from the other bathroom,

which shared a wall with hers. We later found out that it was a burglar diving head first through a window. Which, unbeknownst to him, was over a small hill on the side of the house. He fell far. In 10 minutes, the cops came and three burglars, including the now badly injured window jumper, were caught on the scene. A few days after the burglary, after talking about his trauma from that night, my dad excitedly shared with me through Zoom that he had saved, labeled, and dated some items the burglars accidentally left behind in remembrance of this night instead of turning them in or throwing them out.

I now know why I am the way I am. Anyways, I was so angry when I heard the news because I figured they had noticed my mom in the days before and knew she was deaf and tried to take advantage of her. This was validated when we realized that the burglar with the flashlight probably saw her because he closed her bedroom door, then rummaged through mine and my brother's old rooms as well as the rest of the house, leaving her room alone. Well, fuck them because my deaf mom is the reason they didn't get away with it. Last week, a few months after the incident, they finally caught the fourth burglar. A quick PSA, if you visit nad.org, you will see the percentage of access to text 911 emergency services per state. Only 6.6% of New York state has this service. This is not okay.

We need to make texting 911 accessible to every deaf and hard of hearing individual. Stay sexy and do not fuck with deaf people. That's ridiculous. I had no idea. And also, the person who must have jumped out the window, I'm assuming, was trying to get away from the cops, but they dove through glass drugs. Drugs. Drugs. It's drugs.

Yeah. Can you imagine having to wait eight or nine minutes to get a hold of them because they don't have the correct services for your... It's ridiculous and I think it's a very... The little I understand is that kind of the awareness and the services for hearing impaired and deaf people are very... It's very underserved and underpaid attention to... Lacking. Yeah. Yeah.

And it's ludicrous. Everyone should have access to 911. That should have gone into the program when they started it. Totally. That has to change. That is important. And it makes me feel stressed right now because that's... You need to know that someone understands that you need help when you have 911.

And in a lot of ways, you're way more vulnerable. So you should have better access than people who aren't deaf. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yes. Okay. The story is creepy sounds when home alone. Hi, friends.

I don't know how many episodes ago this was, but after that creepy fucking bell sounded in Karen's house, y'all asked for some scary sounds we've experienced. We did. I don't remember that. Just writing and telling us what scary sounds we were. That sounds like us. Hey. That's why we got those emails that said lightning.

Screaming. Okay. This could have been last week or 10 weeks ago and I wouldn't know because like Karen said, time is becoming a serious problem. Anyway, although I am not the person who experienced this, it still is one of my favorite family stories. When I was a teenager and my step-sister was a little kid, my older cousin lived with us for a few months. He was in his mid-20s, so he generally kept to himself. One day, my parents and I left the house and let him know that he would be home alone. This seemed peculiar to him and it stuck in his head, especially with what happened next.

A few minutes later, my cousin heard a loud crash followed by a moment of silence and then a child's voice. It said, now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. Supposedly my cousin was hauling ass out of the house in my parents' very suburban neighborhood, thinking that a portal to demonic children hell had just opened. I don't know about y'all, but children menantlessly reciting religious things is one of the most cultish activities I can imagine. In reality, my mom's shutting the front door had barely dislodged a shelf in my step-sister's room.

Minutes later, it fell and struck the foot of a stuffed animal that recited that prayer. What are the fucking chances that there having to be someone there to hear it and lose their shit? A strange Christian Rube Goldberg machine to fuck with this 20-year-old. Okay, wait, because the shelf was still on it, the prayer was still playing when we finally returned and inspected it for my cousin who was still too scared to return to the house. We all tease him now, but fully admit that we probably would have shit ourselves had we been home alone like him. Thank you all for what you do. You have helped me stay grounded the last few months as I am currently writing this during finals week of my first semester of law school in the middle of the pandemic.

Georgia said that your 20s are for finding yourself, your 30s are for achieving that, and your 40s are for living it. I'm approaching 30 and returning to school and have lived by these words since I've heard them. Thank you both for being such an inspiration to so many. Your work is truly important. Best M. Aww, that's so nice. That's nice. I'd also like to say that a random shelf randomly falling from a door closing and landing on a fucking children's prayer sounds pretty haunted to me. That's not a... It either sounds haunted or that's the Lord working in that 20-year-old young man's life where he clearly was supposed to join the seminary and...

But I'm a Jew. Okay. Jewish representation in these stories, please. Please, Karen. Can we please... Can we please for once? Not always assume that they're your people. I assume.

Chris. Jehanity. Okay. Let's see here. All right. This is called Classic Dad Revealed Hometown. Hey, y'all. Love you to death.

Let's get to it. Recently, I got to see my dad for the first time since last Christmas with three negative COVID tests between us. It's the first time it's been safe, quote, enough, and it meant the entire world to me. Sitting over a pine of Guinness with breakfast. Nice. And then it said, because the world is ending, so fuck it. He inquired about you, too. He introduced me to the podcast over two years ago on a road trip after one of his colleagues told him about you.

And while I kept listening after the trip, he prefers to wait until we're together. Oh. After my usual gushing and telling him I wrote in about my new town's murder at the Serpentarium. Serpentarium. Is that a snake house? Sounds like it. Or a cool bar. That's right.

He asked if I'd ever written about Pearl Bryan. I asked him what the fuck he was talking about and I realized I was having my moment finally. Yes. Yes. So here goes. Pearl Bryan, born in my hometown of Green Castle, Indiana in 1872, was a sweet and loving 20-year-old. And then it says, quote, socialite, when she was murdered by her asshole dentist boyfriend. Then it says, I don't really know how you can be a socialite in the middle of the cornfields I grew up in, but there you go.

So the story goes that when Scott Jackson swept through town, that she immediately fell in love. After she got pregnant, she begged him to stay and marry her so they could start a family. But Jackson, however, was an aspiring dentist and didn't want a family to get in the way. You know how in your... Yeah, because you need to be free as a dentist. You need to just stay up late at night. Right. Can I wear that baggage of a wife who loves you and a child who looks up to you?

Yeah, no. God, that's not the dentist's way. No, that's not everyone. They're lone wolves. That's right. Before there were rock stars, they were dentists, throwing stones. So we left town, leaving instructions and writing continued letters to Pearl, instructing her on how to terminate the pregnancy. After months of refusing, he lured her to his dental college in Cincinnati, Ohio on the false pretense of a wedding.

She was last seen at a restaurant with Jackson and his roommate, threatening to go back home and tell her family about the pregnancy. Her headless body was found a few days later by a farmhand in Fort Thomas, Kentucky. The details from then on became a mess of cross-jurisdictional legality and shoddy 1800s journalism. Suffice to say, the two men were hung for their her murder in 1897, and they never revealed the location of the head. There are a million tiny amazing details about this case, like the fact that her shoe was used to track down her hometown and provide identification when no one could identify the body, and her story helped fuel the satanic panic because of rumors that her head was used for devil worship at Bobby McKee's in Kentucky. But this is already incredibly long.

We finished the meal with my dad adding, oh, and there was that love triangle of murder that shut down the only two good restaurants in town, like a month before we moved there, too. But that's a whole another story for a whole another email. Love forever, stay sexy and never date a, quote, aspiring dentist, mad. Great advice, Mads. You know what, Mads, here's what I would like you to do. Tell your dads to write in that email of the second story. I want to hear the love triangle murders. I want to hear about the restaurants, too.

Yeah, we definitely want to know what the appetizers at those restaurants were, which ones were better, what the charcuterie board looked like, and then, of course, go on to the horror of the murder. That's right. 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. While I stop with just dinner, now you can enjoy Hello Fresh's expanded menu of quick lunch solutions, weekend brunch,

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Goodbye. What makes a person a murderer? Are they born to kill or are they made to kill? I'm Candice DeLong, and on my new podcast Killer Psyche Daily, I share a quick 10-minute rundown every weekday on the motivations and behaviors of the criminal masterminds, psychopaths, and cold-blooded killers you hear about in the news. I have decades of experience as a psychiatric nurse, FBI agent, and criminal profiler. On Killer Psyche Daily, I'll give you insight into cases like Ryan Grantham and the newly arrested Stockton serial killer. I'll also bring on expert guests to dive deeper into the details, share what it's like to work with a behavioral assessment unit at Quantico, answer some killer trivia, and even host virtual Q&As where I'll answer your burning questions.

Hey, Prime members, listen to the Amazon Music Exclusive Podcast, Killer Psyche Daily, in the Amazon Music app. Download the app today. Okay, I'm gonna have to read you this title, but I'm mad that I have to say these words. Okay. I was today years old when I learned that I worked at the site of America's first recorded murder. Are you mad? They made me say I was today years old. A thing that needs to stop being said yesterday.

I can't believe you say that. Are you on Reddit? I know. Are you Reddit? I know. This is my new thing. It's personality, being young and saying what everybody else says on Twitter. Now that I've been mean about this person's title.

Okay. Here we go. And this is how it starts. You're my favorites. Okay, let's get started. Oh, not anymore. In the middle of, in the middle early odds, I was in my late early 20s and recently moved to New York City to work at a makeup store on Spring Street in Soho. The retail space was impressive in and of itself, but what was not visible to shoppers but accessible to employees was a labyrinth of rooms throughout the lower level below.

Okay. Let me just say this. I shout on you for your subject line, which was, I was today years old. That was one of the best opening paragraphs I've read so far. It was fucking solid. Beautifully put together. Solid. Really nice, really nice stuff going on.

My full apologies and my humblest sincerest. Some rooms were finished to be a break room. There was an office for higher ups and a storage space for corporate, but there were other unfinished rooms clearly from yesterday year that gave me the downright creeps. One, one room with an ash floor contained a huge iron furnace that looked straight out of Nightmare on Elm Street. They were just hilarious because I just watched Nightmare on Elm Street part two last night. No, don't do that. 1985, baby. But the room that gave me the chills, literally, we unanimously referred to as the cold room.

Oh, no. Most of us working in the store did not need to access the cold room as it was out of the way, mostly used for storage and was a mess of old display units and makeup supplies. I, however, as one of the key holders to the store would more would more than occasionally go to the cold room to get something or lock up at night. I never saw anything, but there was always a strange and palpable energy in the room. And you guessed it, the room was always freezing. It could be the hottest. Why did I even shower a miserable day of New York summer? And this room would be icy boost goose bump ghostly cold.

Cool. I had heard stories of how Spring Street was built on or near an actual spring, but never thought to research it until now. As it turns out, if we press rewind, going back to our nation's infancy. Did she actually send us her term paper? I mean, I, the apology I owe this person is giganto. As it turns out, if we press rewind, going back to our nation's infancy before Soho was the land of trendy loft spaces and commercial extravaganza. Where I worked was once a marshy place called Lisbensards meadows. There's no way.

No, Lisbonards, Lisbonards meadows and the location of the first recorded murder in the United States. We're going to fall back. We're going to go back to our old ways right now. Okay. The interwebs tell us that Aaron has a love hate relationship with this letter. No, no, it's 99.8% love. Okay. Here's the thing that I will tell this letter writer.

You don't need to do things like interwebs and I was today years old when you're so genius with everything else you're doing in here. Shun the trends of language of today. It will only sink you. Totes. And now we're back. The interwebs tell us that approaching Christmas 1799, the lifeless body of Elma Sands was recovered from a well located on Lisbonards meadows near the current day intersection of spring and green streets. Levi Weeks, a young carpenter who was reportedly courting Miss Sands at the time, was accused of the murder which went to trial the following year. Through his family connections, Weeks retained none other than Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr as his defense attorney.

Those guys were buds? Those guys had a lot drama TV show where they were. Wait a second. This email was written by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Famously, Weeks was acquitted after only five minutes of jury deliberation. The case became known as the Manhattan Well Murder and it is on the books as the first murder in our country containing a recorded transcript. Over the years there have been reports of eerie occurrences in the area. Some say the ghost of Elma appears in wet clothing.

Me? I'm harangued that I finally have something to write to you fine folks about and that the energy of the cold room did not live in my lone imagination. So that's all I got for now. I'd like to thank you for bringing laughter storytelling and the beautiful honesty of your work into my home during this doozy of a year. Remember to trust yourself and that your body knows things that your mind is unconscious. Oh, no. You lost, Karen. You're just completely lost.

No, no. I'm back entirely. That was a beautiful sentence. What is true? Remember to trust yourself and that your body knows things your mind is unconscious of. Stay safe and maybe don't accept a job to unknowingly work on a historic murder site. fondly scott p s the well still exists and you can visit it. Creepy.

Okay, Scott, please don't stop being my friend. I was mean about the about the trendy language, but that was a beautifully written hometown. I was very worried about how long it was and that thing clipped right along because you're a great writer. I love that about New York. We're like the city where like when you are you're in like a fancy new restaurant and then you go to the use the restrooms, which like because everything's so old. It's like down these tiny stairs and suddenly you're in the 1800s. Yes. It doesn't matter how nice the restaurant is.

They have like terrible access to bathrooms at every fucking location you're at and it's creepy and celery and celery. It's like a seller. It's seller filled with celery. It smells of celery. Also, like the room he described the nightmare on Elm Street room where it's like the floor is ash and there's a gigantic old furnace because like, yeah, of course, they're not going to just like go in and crane lift a huge right out of there. They just leave everything where it is and then things are built on top of it. I bet there's so many like basements and addicts to go through and. Oh, for real.

I mean, damn it. The treasure of New York, perhaps Scott would write a book called the treasure of New York. Truly the treasure of New York. Truly treasure. Truly treasure. New York style. Okay. My last one is called black mold story.

Speaking of rooms that are too cold. Okay. Hi best friends who don't actually know me. Hi. I heard Georgia mentioned black mold on a Minnesota and wanted to send in my family story. The first house I ever lived in was in Hancock Park about three blocks from Larchmont Village in LA. What's up Richie Rich?

Yeah. Must be nice. Everyone that's there's like gorgeous old Victorian mid century ish mansions. It's either. Who's your dad? Did he direct friends? Just tell us. Well, check this out.

I wrote in about how haunted that house was as well. Well, we didn't see it when I was two. I started to get extremely sick. I started to cough uncontrollably all the time. I was weak. I looked like I had cancer and no doctor could figure out what was wrong with me. I wasn't the only one to experience issues. My mom would get bronchitis all the time.

She was head of casting at Paramount at the time. There you go. So missing work was not an option. My sister kept getting nosebleeds and my dad started having memory issues. We only found out about the mold when the bathroom ceiling collapsed and black water started pouring out. Ew. Yeah.

That's bad. It says casual. I know. Casual. Turns out our house was completely infested with black mold. I was an AM extremely allergic, which is why I got the worst of it. We ended up having to literally burn all of our possessions. But before that, our insurance company, who knew about the mold the whole time,

tried to tell us that the house was safe to move back into after the bathroom was fixed. What? Had the contractor not called my dad and told him in Hebrew not to come back. I might not be around today. Why in Hebrew? Because they probably were both Israeli and so was like, hey, brother, what's up? Oh, oh. Don't move back in.

Listen, I'm going to level with you in our native time type of thing. Yeah, because we're brothers, so I'm going to tell you this. Don't listen to insurance. Safe to say, insurance companies are assholes. Hmm. After the whole fiasco and three rental homes later, we moved into a wonderful home in Los Viles, right down the street from the lobby on the house. Ooh.

Thank you for being my comfort during zoom law school. I'm hoping to be a public defender because this legal system only benefits the fortunate few. Stay sexy and don't trust insurance companies. Katrina Katrina. Got to burn all their possessions. Jesus gets on every it's it it's and it's terrible. Yeah, it's terrible for human beings.

Very bad. Oh, I just want to see the crazy. I want to see the fucking ceiling collapse of black water pouring out. Do you know that that that happened at my aunt Jean's house where we spent much of our time. It was there were these there in, I think it was like 1978. Yeah. There were really bad floods in Petaluma.

It never stopped raining. It was like November ish. And it was the final episode of mash. So we were all in the living room of my aunt Jean's house. Yeah. In the TV room and the like the living room, let's call it that that was the living room, the front room. Yeah.

No one ever went out there unless there was like a party and all the adults would go there. But like the TV room is where everybody actually hung out. Every both families were in the TV room watching mash and it like the reception got worse and worse because it was storming so bad outside and we lived out in the country. So everything was on an antenna and we're like as we're watching this thing, all of a sudden we hear this cracking sound and then the ceiling in the living room just collapses in like like probably a six or seven foot like circumference hole with water. Like pouring through all my because there was like holes in my I guess my aunt's roof

was leaking. But it was like totally soaked insulation. It was the craziest. And it was. Yeah, it was amazing. But I don't. I think it was like more like green mold. Yeah.

But when you when you have a lot of when you live in somewhere with a lot of floods, that's when the mold happens. So check you guys if you move into a new place and you start getting acne or some weird symptoms, knock down your drywall and see what's in there. Get your first of all get your contractor's license. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I get a big one of those laser compass things. Right. Laser balance. Those look right. Those are. Those are very send us all your fucked up disaster house stories or whatever else you feel like. Yeah.

We want to and whatever you want, do it, send it. We want to hear about it. That's right. We'll definitely insult you at least one point at one point. That's part of it. That's right. Always. Yeah.

But we love you. Yeah. Thanks for sticking around. Despite that. We love you. And because of it. Some people come because of it. That's true.

Not everybody doesn't like it. That's true. Stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want to cookie?