My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 208

Episode Date: January 4, 2021

This week’s hometowns include a killer photographer and a Christmas Eve robbery. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is exactly right. 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. Let's see, it's truly criminal. Hello and welcome to my favorite murder, the mini-so, the mini-so, the first one of 2021 everyone, welcome, whoo, sound effect, sound effect, whoo, whoo, whoo, that's my whoo, old

fashion car. Thank you. Um, coconuts, you want to go first? That's just my hands. Oh yeah, yeah. Good idea. Yeah, let's start. This is where we read your stuff in 2021.

You sent it to us. We read it to you. That's right. It's so exciting. I'm not, I'm not going to read this subject line, it gives it away, but one of the greatest intros ever. Okay. Hi guys, gals and non-binary pals.

Yes. Love it. Right? Inclusive. I'm currently rocking my newborn to sleep listening to your podcast and was reminded about a chilling story from my childhoods that I had to share. So when I was a wee young and my mom thought it would be a great idea to have my twin brother and I take photos at the school she worked at.

Apparently this was a yearly thing where a photographer, let's call him Richard, would come take slightly incestuous photos of siblings who went to school together. What? What? How? My brother and I were the lucky ones to pose holding hands, hugging a tree. Super great. They're just saying that basically it's like stuff that siblings would normally never

be doing. Okay. Because that... Remember it's like you'd have to take a picture, it's like you and your sister cheek to cheek where it's like... We have one where we're leaning our heads on my brother who's in between us and I'm making a face of like, just, I don't want to be here face. Yeah.

Just get me out of here before one of these two people punches me. Right. Exactly. Okay. Well, I was looking at the photo the other day and my mom said nonchalantly, I love those pictures too bad the guy who took them was a murderer. Shocked, I asked her to explain. She said that every year Richard and his wife, we'll call her Pam, would come to school and

take pictures, Pam was always in good spirits and assisted Richard in lighting and poses, etc. Well, one night Pam was found bludgeoned to death in the snow in front of her house. Richard had been physically and emotionally abusing her for years, killed her with a baseball bat and he was later found in their garage having killed himself. Apparently Pam had been working at a, well, it will just say she had been working part time and told her coworkers that if anything had happened to her, Richard was to blame. Richard and Pam are survived by two daughters, one of which is adamant that her father didn't

do it. Thank you for keeping me awake during my son's 4 a.m. feedings, especially since his dad is deployed and my dog doesn't help much with the baby. Stay sexy and don't trust baby photographers all the best, bae. Wow. What a horrible story all around all around horrifying. Just awful. And I wonder if this story is especially sensitive to a new young mother, a baby photographer

where it's just like, I bet that's the kind of stuff that all comes back up as you're, well, I mean, her mom said it, but also just as now you're in that position of like where you're bringing your kids and what you decide to do and who you expose them to and not having any idea. Yeah. So when you're with a new parent, it's just constant red flags everywhere you look. It must be. Yeah.

It must be. All right. This one, this is called Christmas Eve Near Murder Miracle. Oh. Okay. It just starts, hey. Hey. Hey.

My husband and I were flying home on Christmas Eve when we got a text from a neighbor that read, OMG, someone just got shot in your driveway. With that, the flight attendant shut the main cabin door and we were forced to turn off the phone and sit in suspense for the next two and a half hours. Oh my God. By the time we got home, there was nothing left but a medium sized blood stain in our driveway. However, we were able to piece together what happened thanks to our neighbors, the police

and our security cams, which caught a lot of the action. Apparently a group of four guys at a nearby apartment complex had tried to buy pot, which is not legal here, using counterfeit money. Oh. Don't do that, guys. I honestly didn't even know counterfeit money was still a thing. It's always a thing. I know, right?

It's like a piece of paper that you draw on. Counterfeit money, now more than ever. The dealers took offense and shot the guys as they drove away. Four bullets went into the side of the car, one hitting the driver and the leg. One last shot went through the back window, missed all four guys and lodged in the back of the driver's headrest. Oh. Exclamation mark, exclamation mark, exclamation mark, but he didn't get it.

Yeah. Yeah. So the guys speed off and tear. They turned down our street and at about when they hit our driveway, they realized the street is dead end. So they pulled in and ditched the car running into our backyard. We're assuming the plan was to run through to another street, but luckily for them, our yard backs up to a reservoir.

This is when the adrenaline starts wearing off and the driver realizes that he's spurting blood from his leg. They get back to the front yard and call 911. That's when my neighbor son, a former police officer and current owner of a tattoo parlor AKA a very big guy comes over and shouts at them to, quote, get on the ground now. He ends up having to use his own belt to turn to get the guy's leg and probably saved his life. By then the cops are pulling up.

The guy who was shot went to the hospital and the other three guys had to wait for one of their grandmas to pick them up since the cops towed the car for evidence. Oh my God. Uh-huh. Probably not a very merry Christmas for any of them, but hey, it could have been a lot worse. Stay sexy and just legalize pot already, Sarah. Don't ever use, listen, don't do drugs, drugs are, you know, drugs are, drugs, don't do,

don't use counterfeit money for anything, especially illegal things. Not with a drug dealer. No. You fool. I bet you they're not fucking around. You know where you use counterfeit money? Just this is off the off the top of my head. Like a red box machine, you know, somewhere, I guess, I don't know if they take cash, but

you know, something like that, yeah, of ski ball, like somewhere where you're just, you're hurting yourself. Right. That would hurt the business too. Yeah. Yeah. No. But not with a drug dealer.

Absolutely not. Absolutely not. They always have guns. They have to. Oh my God. They have to. Wow. Yeah.

So that's that. Okay. Hi friends. I can't believe that after all these faithful murdering years, I never thought to send this to you. But after the documentary about the killer in question came up in a recent episode, my memory was jogged and I thought you might enjoy this story. A few years ago, one of the owners of my company was going through a full on midlife crisis.

Being recently separated from his high school sweetheart wife, he found himself heartbroken and rich with lots of wild oats to sow. So he did what most attractive recently single wealthy men in their late 40s do. And he bought a sports car and got a killer bachelor pad and hosted Hefner level parties every night with 20 something year old strippers. Yeah. So after enduring weeks of late night drunken hot tub shenanigans, his downstairs neighbor was more than fed up.

One morning, he awoke from his stupor to find a note taped to his front door that said, If I have to clean cigarette butts up off my balcony one more night. Thanks to your parties. You and I are going to have serious problems signed your downstairs neighbor unfazed. He went about his day, but happened to mention this note to and its contents to his doorman as he was leaving for work. The doorman's eyes immediately widened in a very concerned tone. And he said, Sir, do you know who your downstairs neighbor is?

To which the owner replied, No, why? And the doorman paused, looked around, moved in closer and said, Sir, your neighbor is Robert Durst. I knew it. I was going to call it. Oh my God. That's right. Robert fucking Durst.

Suffice it to say a love note from a serial killer who was not only who not only murdered his neighbor, but dismembered him too, was all that he needed. Oh shit. That's right. Oh my God. Yes, it was his neighbor. Oh my God. I totally didn't even think about that.

That was all DB needed to put an immediate end to his party boy ways for which his liver and brain cells were eternally grateful. He even ended up reconciling with his wife. So I guess to some degree Robert Durst saved not only his health, but also his marriage. Not really sure what we all can take from this one except to say stay sexy and maybe do some research to see if you have a neighbor dismembering serial killer in your building before you accidentally wind up on his bad side. Love y'all.

XOXO, name withheld to protect my career just in case. Absolutely. Yeah. For real. That thing, to me, that's like in California, you'd have to disclose that, but like anywhere else in the country, you wouldn't like, Hey, your neighbor has murdered a neighbor. Before. Right.

I mean, do you have to disclose that though? You don't have to disclose shit. I feel like if you're like out and about, you just get to go live and people, it's like if you have, that's the thing about rich murderers is they can do whatever they want because they have the money to do whatever they want or people who got off. That's why I'm because they're rich. You can't guys be real. Don't flip people off in the car.

That's my thing is like, you just don't know who you're driving next to, you know what I mean? Yes. You're going to have, that's a great opportunity if you're feeling road rage to practice just separating yourself from your emotional title wave and saying, let it flow through you and don't react real time because especially these days where people are just getting angrier and angrier and angrier. Everyone's so stressed.

Everyone's stressed and enraged and you just don't want it. This one is called creeping out the FBI. Greetings MFM crew and furry companions. I'm a crime analyst for an urban police department. Several years ago, my partner and I, along with other analysts in our area, got to take some specialized training at the FBI Academy in Quantico. Behavioral analysis is part of our certification training, but we mostly see serial property crime and not serial killers.

So being in the FBI BAU is a big deal. After one of our sessions, they took us down to the basement where they had some artifacts to show us. The first thing we saw was a life-size animatronic, Hannibal Lecter in a cell who greeted us as we got off the elevator. We went to a small room where they had letters, drawings and papers on display. We were shown a letter that I recognized as being from Keith Jesperson. So I said, oh, that's the happy face killer.

There were a few clown paintings that I recognized as being done by John Wayne Gacy. This happened with a few other items and our instructor turned a look at me and said, is there something we should know about you? I was a bit embarrassed to be the only analyst who could identify a lot of the objects. I guess all analysts aren't naturally murderinos. Stay sexy and never let the FBI know how much you know about serial killers are. I mean, shouldn't they all know that? They freaked out the FBI.

Congratulations. A, I want you to be at every dinner party I have when this is all over. But also, I love that it sounds like it's like the Wax Museum in their basement. It's like an animatronic, Hannibal Lecter is corny as fuck. It is. And did my tax dollars go to pay for that? It's my second question. What are you?

Did you seize that from someone's house? I better write a fucking gift from some foundation. Wow. 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.

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And I'm Brooke. And we're the hosts of Wanderer's podcast Even The Rich, where we bring you absolutely true and absolutely shocking stories about the most famous families and biggest celebrities the world has ever seen. Our newest series is all about the incomparable diva, Whitney Houston, Whitney's voice defined a generation and even after her death, her talent remains unmatched, but her incredible success hit a deeply private pain. In our series, Whitney Houston, Destiny of a Diva, we'll tell you how she hid her true

self to make everyone around her happy and how the pressure to be all things to all people led her down a dark path. Follow Even The Rich wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. Okay, this subject line is so good. It includes hand clap emojis. Yay. It's grandparents, a woman named Bonnie, names.

This story has it all with hand clap emojis. Yeah. Okay. I've submitted this story before, but after hearing your episode from stories from 2016, I figured I'd try it again. Here's to hoping. It worked. It worked.

Yes. Okay. If you haven't, try again. We've told you this before. Yeah. Onto the story. My great-grandma was raised in southern Utah during the early 1900s. Really?

So, that's... A long ago. It's very hot, I guess. Okay. It's hot and salty. Her name was Bonnie. Yay. Okay.

You saw people have sent us so many Bonnies that are bunnies, but we also got a couple Bonnies that are babies and the two that I saw were two of the cutest babies I've seen in a while. Oh, my God. Yeah. You got to pull that name off. Really? With dead balls.

Oh, yeah. They nailed it. They're just like, there are some baby Bonnies out there. And there it is. And there they are. Okay. Her name was Bonnie, but everyone called her Goodwitch. She owned her own cafe, baked the best pies, cinnamon rolls, and homemade candies.

She led her local women's relief society, swore like a sailor, made and sold bootleg moonshine during prohibition, and raised 10 kids, the two youngest of which she won in a pinnacle game. What the fuck? I'm sorry. What? Does it say anything more about that? Nope.

Nope. That's the end of the paragraph. Holy shit. What the fuck? You're going to have to write back in about that. Yeah. Oh, horrifying. But although it's essentially like the Wild West is what we're talking about.

Totally. Okay. This is one of 12 children who lived in a small two-room house in the middle of nowhere, what is now Zion National Park. In the spring of 1900, an outlaw gang called the Wild Bunch were on the run from the law and were making their way from Arizona to Wyoming by way of Utah. That April, my grandma's parents were making their monthly multi-day trip into town for supplies and left my 10-year-old grandmother in charge of her younger siblings.

Knowing that the Wild Bunch was potentially in the area, her parents instructed her to lock the door and keep the lamps out so as not to draw attention to the house and under no circumstances to let anyone in. My God. That evening, my grandma was awoken by the sound of men's voices. She looked out the window and saw a group of men roaming around her home. She grabbed her four siblings, her youngest sister being just about a year old, and hid under the bed.

One of the men knocked on the door and when they didn't receive an answer, proceeded to break in. The group of men entered the house and once they thought no one was there, made themselves at home, eating their food and making a fire. One even slipped his boots off and laid down on the bed in which the kids were hiding, under which the kids were hiding. As my grandma listened to the men chat, they called one of them by his name and she realized the man laying on the bed above her was Butch Cassidy, the leader of the Wild Bunch.

She was obviously scared for her life and she knew if they were discovered, they could be taken hostage or killed. Luckily she and her siblings kept quiet and the baby stayed asleep. They hid in total silence for hours before the baby finally woke up and made a little whimper. Hearing this, the men suddenly stopped talking and drew their guns. Butch got off the bed, lifted the blanket and looked under the bed. He and my grandma locked eyes.

He winked and smiled at her. She then announced to the others that there was no one there and instructed all the men to remove their guns and place them on the table in the middle of the room. I've since read about Butch Cassidy who, contrary to popular belief, was famously non-violent and prided himself for never having killed anyone, so this move makes total sense. My grandma said that she knew then that the men weren't going to hurt her and she actually felt safe. She and her siblings eventually fell asleep.

From during the early morning hours, the gang left. When she woke up in the morning, the men were gone, the door was fixed, the woodpile restocked, and a pile of cash sat in the middle of the table. I always knew she was a badass, I'm hearing this story only confirmed it. She passed away in the 1990s and left behind an amazing lifetime of stories that are captured in her daily journal entries, My Prized Possession. Stay well and thanks for all you do, Nick. That is a fucking legendary hometown story.

Historic. That's so good. I mean, oh my god. Butch Cassidy was next to her grandma. Oh my god, Butch Cassidy left you guys money because she had little kids you needed to feed. Why did they leave a 10-year-old in charge of three children by themselves in the middle of the National Park?

Next time we complain about the 80s, let's remember. They weren't shit compared to the 1900s, the early aughts were fucked. Fucking right. Oh my god. Holy shit, Nick. That was incredible. This story did have it all. Nick nailed it.

Okay. Well, I have a father story to end with. Great. This is my Scottish father taught me how to headbutt people. Yes. Heidi Ho, MFM gang. Perfect. I just finished listening to your mini-sode with the key-in-cheek story where the reader

mentioned that her mother taught her self-defense skills. I thought you might like to hear about how my Scottish father, which somehow makes it so much fucking better even, taught me, female, and my two older brothers, how to headbutt people as children. Yes. For self-defense. The Glasgow hello. That's so gross.

And then it says for self-defense, question mark? Not really. I distinctly remember my dad describing to me the, quote, right way to headbutt people. I was maybe eight or nine years old at the time. It says, quote, people think that you headbutt the other person's head, but you'll hurt yourself with skull-to-skull contact. The thing for you to do is use your forehead and get them in the jaw to dislocate it or get them in the bridge of the nose and break that, he told me, which I actually think is

great advice and I'm glad we all know it now. I mean, yeah, it's something, it's something when you're in a pinch. Yeah. Don't ever forget the head, the ye old headbutt. Okay. Yeah. I have yet to use this knowledge in the real world, bummer, but my dad and my oldest brother have used it a number of times.

My mom always tells the story about going to the bar for drinks with my dad when they first started dating. She had turned her bar stool to have her back towards the wood and some random guy came up to her, grabbed her chest and gave it a squeeze. My dad grabbed the guy by the collar and immediately headbutted the guy, knocking him out cold. Yep. That's right. That's right.

It's kind of a perfect move because it's like, what you're basically doing is like controlling this, controlling the situation. There's no fucking fight where other people are going to get hurt. And also when you grab someone by the collar, like both of your hands are occupied so they don't know anything's coming, they're almost relaxed in that way. Yeah. I've seen headbutting became popular in my high school. What?

The boys, yes. The senior boys would headbutt like the younger kids. It was like a, it was very high level bullying and I watched many of the boys in my class burst into tears because it was so, but they actually did it forehead to forehead. And it was loud and it's very fucking disturbing. But I'll tell you what, I've also seen it at a bar we both used to go to that the owner did once somebody, somebody was getting riled up in the front and demanding that they get to come in and he walked him outside and then just headbutted them on the sidewalk.

I'm guessing it wasn't the fucking Soho house or like it was a divey dive bar. Soho house. Can't you know that? How we love to hang out at the fucking Soho house. Soho house. Oh my God. It's so great there. How do you have multiple headbutting stories and I don't have, I mean, I'm glad I don't

have one. It's just pretty. It's my people. It's how my people do things. I have to say. All right. So also my mom tells the story of watching my oldest brother's soccer game at a soccer tournament in Pentagon, British Columbia, I'm sure I got that wrong.

He was about 14 years old at the time. My brother got in a fight in the field and the other players spit on him, prompting my brother to headbutt the kid. Hell yeah. My brother got a red card and was asked to leave the game. My father sitting in the bleachers berated the referee arguing it was a bad call. The ref responded by ejecting my dad from the arena. My granddad, who was also there, argued with the ref about throwing my dad out and became

the third person told to leave the arena. Then Robert Wallace came and screamed freedom when the stripes on his face. Ghost of their great, great grandfather showed up. It says like father, like son, like grandson, I guess. Anyways, well, I haven't had someone to mess with me enough to warn a headbutt. I guess it's nice to have the knowledge of how to headbutt under my belt. Stay sexy. And if you're going to headbutt someone, aim for the nose Abigail.

Yep. Hell yeah. It's bridge of the nose. I didn't know that if I were to have ever headbutt anyone, which I honestly like have always like in my anxiety, I've always expected I'm going to have to do someday. Just something. You've anticipated headbutt. Uh-huh.

I've pictured it. Well, yeah, during my insomnia, insomnia fights, it's been there. You know, fight plans, fight plans, but I didn't know that's, that's great to know. Yeah. Like these details are important to know actually how to do it. I tell you though, if I was in a bar and some fucking asshole came up and groped me, the man who headbutted that asshole would be my betrothed. I mean, like what better.

No surprise she married him. I mean, that's the, the dad should have been like, thank you so much, sir. Because you basically like, you, what's better than that? It takes care of shit. You don't get to touch people and I'm going to teach you that lesson by slamming my forehead into your nose. In the most efficient way possible. Yes.

I also love. And it's going to be a total, it's going to be a K-O in the middle of the bar. I love that. I love that. I do love too that like, if a guy comes out at you, he's expecting you to try to kick him in the balls, right? So like this is another way to like surprise, surprise attack, surprise. You maybe lift your leg.

You do kind of a faint lift your leg as if you're, it's, you're making the effort. And then as you lift your leg and you're looking down, then you just slam your head. Some ab work going on in there too. It's like, you know, some yoga because you got a balance on one. You're like. Don't be afraid to drink like seven shots of whiskey before you headbutt because I feel like that's the crucial element that we are not discussing here is it's nice to be fucked up when you do it.

Right. It's almost necessary. Yeah. That's fair. I guess I've been watching too much Cobra Kai. Too much Cobra Kai over here. We've done it. We're back.

That's right. It's 2021. We're not going to say anything positive or negative about it because we don't want to jinx it. So welcome, just let's just keep it up. Welcome. Yeah. Let's just, let's just do this thing as we do.

That's right. Send us your stories at my favorite murder at Gmail, whatever they are, send them. Yeah. And practice your headbutts while you're home in quarantine and stay sexy and don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie? Yeah.