My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 212

Episode Date: February 1, 2021

This week’s hometowns include farm stories and a murder out West.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. And welcome to my favorite murder. The mini-soad. That's Karen Kilgariff. It's Georgia Hartstark. Hi. Yeah. Oh, that's it. Enough explanation. Period.

It's Sunday night. Yep. It really feels, it feels like Sunday night to me very much. I just woke up from one of those naps where it was light outside when I fell asleep and it's dark outside now and so the rest of the night is ruined completely. I did a little napping in the middle of the day while I was trying to watch a documentary series. So then I have to go back and like rewatch it to find where I fell asleep. Yeah. And not just where you fell asleep, but like where you stopped being there. Yeah. You know what I mean? Which could be ten minutes. Ten minutes. What if I fell asleep right on this? Because this conversation is so boring.

All right. Let's start. Okay. You go first. I can go first. You go first. What do you want? What do you want? Okay. I'm good. I'm good. What about your needs? You want me to do it? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Go for it. All right. Here we go. This says the subject line is farming childhood trauma. Dear Karen, Georgia, Stephen and pets, I'll save the compliments and cut right to my story. In Minnesota 209, you asked for childhood trauma stories. And boy, do I have one for you. I was in the eighth grade and my brother Keith was in sixth grade. It was Mother's Day. My mom wanted nothing more for us than to plant a tree for her.

We went to the greenhouse and we were on our way back when we noticed our neighbor's cows were out. We live in semi rural Wisconsin. So this was a normal occurrence, especially since we had our own dairy farm too. These neighbors cows always got out. So it was a common neighborhood occurrence. My dad dropped off my brother and I and told us to get our two ATVs to help push the cows back into our neighbor's pasture. My brother ran out of the house as I put on a pair of boots. So I was behind him. I came out of the house two minutes later and found him lying face down in our dirt barn driveway. My grandma Carol, who lives across the road, this is so rural, like farming stuff. Grandma Carol lives across the road and she was watching them out the front window.

So my grandma Carol, who lives across the road came running toward me and told me my brother had rolled off the ATV and had been thrown off. My mom, who materialized out of nowhere, was trying to calm 13 year old me and my grandma down while also calling 911 and making sure my brother was okay. She was a registered nurse and had the necessary training for these situations because she was a badass. My mom assured all of us my brother was just unconscious and everything would be fine as she hopped into the back of the ambulance. Well, it turns out it wasn't. The ambulance took my brother to our local hospital. They found he had a skull fracture and a brain bleed. My brother was taken on the flight for life helicopter from that hospital to Children's Hospital of Wisconsin. The local sheriff's deputy, who showed up at the scene and was at the hospital getting my parents' statements,

overheard my brother had to be flight for life to children's. So the deputy told my parents there was no way they were driving to Children's Hospital while dealing with such major trauma. So the officer gave my parents a personal escort to Children's Hospital in Wauatosa, which is spelled W-A-U-W-A-T-O-S-A. So if they didn't put it in parentheses the way they did, I would have never gotten that right. Sure. Wauatosa. My dad says that's the only time he's ever ridden in the back of a cop car, but also remembers that they were keeping pace doing 90 plus miles an hour on the I-94 with the helicopter sirens blaring.

Oh my God. If you're wondering where I am throughout this portion of the story, I was at home on our dairy farm of approximately 65 milking cows and 50 heifers and calves. I, a 13-year-old at the time, was left in charge of everything. Holy shit. That's not like a little farm. No. That's a whole company.

65 cows, truly. It's cheese central. Okay, I assigned tasks to the neighbors and family for helping to take care of our animals and to get things done while my parents were at the hospital. My brother survived and had a full recovery with no loss of any brain functions. I credit this trauma with teaching all of us to be slow and work safer on the farm. It also gave all of us a really dark sense of humor. As for my brother, all that's left of that day is a long scar on the side of his head that he uses to pick up girls.

He was going to say, that's cool. That's hot. Hey, what's up, Frankenstein? Hey. He turned 26 this past Wednesday and he works as a diesel mechanic. Hey. Hey, mechanic with a scar. What's up?

Stay sexy and always wear a helmet, especially when wrangling your neighbor's cows. L. P.S. I live, I currently live in Monroe, Wisconsin, and that is the cheese capital of the world, not Athens, Wisconsin, contrary to popular belief. Humble brag, but I actually do know the cheese, the cheese stays ambassador, a.k.a. the cheese stays queen. She's pretty cool. Let me know if you would like me to connect you.

Would we like you to... Yes. Free cheese. Does she get free cheese during her reign? That's my only... Can she roll down the street on a giant cheese wheel like we've fantasized? So. This one's called Old Timey Wild West Murder, hometown librarian story.

And we need, we love librarian stories. Hi, Queens. Steven and Pets included. I'm a grad student getting my degree in library and information sciences so I can do cool shit in archives. I used to work in an archives department at the, at a university library and was tasked with digitizing old newspaper clippings written by this guy, Alfred Doton. Besides being a terrible racist human in general.

Oh. He loved to write about murder. One of the most interesting murders he talked about in his column was the murder of Julia Boulette in 1867. I'm too lazy to find the articles and feel like you wouldn't want to read Doton's terrible handwriting. Think Old Timey Cursive, but super shaky because he was always drunk. So I'll give you a quick, a quick synopsis.

What a bummer to be like tasked to archive an absolute piece of shit's writing. Yeah, you're trying to pick through, get the information and leave the racism and shaky handwriting behind. Right. That's a bummer. Right. So Julia Boulette was born in London in 1832 and moved to Virginia City, Nevada in 1859 during the California Nevada mining boom.

If you've never heard or been to Virginia City, think of a stereotypical Old West mining town and that's literally it. She was one of the most popular sex workers at the time and was great friends with all the miners in town. She made a lot of money because of her shining personality and exceptional sexual prowess and would often donate to the city's fire stations. Because of this, she became an honorary member of Virginia and engine number one. Jesus, that's the first one ever probably.

And was even elected queen during the Independence Day parade. Hey. On January 20th, 1867, Julia was found murdered in her bedroom. She was strangled and bludgeoned to death. The next day, a funeral procession took place down Main Street. Thousands attended and the shops were shut down, not a respect for her. She was truly loved by the entire town. A few months later, a man named John Million was arrested for her murder after attempting

to sell Jules' clothes just a few towns away. He may or may not have been the actual murderer, but like, hey, don't go selling the clothes of a recently murdered woman, my dude. He was charged and hanged on April 24th, 1868. Approximately 5,000 people attended his execution. Julia Boulette was truly a hero to her city and was memorialized after her death. Saloons hung pictures of her up on their walls. People wrote countless books about her life.

And the Virginia and Truckee Railroad even named one of the rich people cars after her. Mmm. I actually first heard about Julia Boulette from my grandma who lives on a street that is dedicated to Miss Boulette. It's B-U-L-E-T-T-E, if you want to look her up. Anyway, thank you both for bringing me joy during my work days. If you are reading this, I just want to tell everyone to go into an archive once they reopen. Archives are filled with incredible materials and hardworking archivists slash librarians who are doing

amazing work to preserve the history of everyone, not just old white dudes. Stay sexy and support sex workers. Challenge. That email truly had everything. It did. It was a great tale. You know? I really liked it.

And also I think that's the kind of history that because of our pure, tannical country, you know, like a sex worker like that would be the hero of this town or this area or a huge part of this community. And then that would kind of get erased. Totally. Whitewashed from the history because how dare. Totally. And now in there, fucking setting it straight.

That's right. Man, librarians are cool. It's very cool. Yeah. You got library stories or archive stories. Fucking send them in. Are you an archivist that discovered some crazy old fucking fascinating thing you want to hear about it?

Yeah. Or even if you just found old rat bones. Fucking tell us about it. What's the weirdest thing you found in a book? What do you mean? Describe us. Make skin wrapped in a rat bone to us. Okay.

I just realized that I definitely have gone with a theme, but this is just the batch I got. But these are all harrowing medical stories. Essentially. That's a fun theme though. We don't ever, we don't take long to pick these. So if there's ever a theme, it's never on purpose. No, it's, it's fate.

Okay. That's fun though. Okay. This email, the subject line is a groundhog almost murdered my dad. Hi all. I'll jump right in because how can you not be intrigued? I grew up on a farm. Very rural, right?

Very rural county in Illinois in the 1970s. Groundhogs were not very popular with farmers because they would munch the tender new crops coming up in the fields and cause crop damage. My dad was a funny, sweet man with a buzz haircut who never got mad at anyone, but he was not fond of groundhogs. He purposely would not allow anyone to hunt coyotes on our land because they weren't the natural predators of groundhogs and kept the population in check. I was in elementary school and my sister was in junior high when we got off the bus

to an empty house. Our mom was a teacher in another town. Dad should have been there, but all we found was a note that said, I cut myself, went to the doctor, dad. The scene was pretty bloody with bloody hand prints on our avocado green telephone and the bathroom sink absolutely covered in blood. Even in fourth grade, we knew this was worse than just a cut. From there, details are a blur, but we got whisked off to a grandparents' house for

a few days. This is how my dad told the story later. That day, he was working on his tractor near a shed in our woods when he saw a fat groundhog waddling along and decided to choose violence and grabbed him from the toolbox and tried to chase down the guy. He caught up to it as it was diving under a stack of old wooden fence posts. My dad bent down swinging with the hammer at the same time, but did not judge a fence post with a sharply angled end that was sticking out farther than the rest of the posts.

He hit his head on it and it cut a five inch gash in a scalp from just the front of his hairline to the back of the top of his head. This is hot head scars themed again. Yes. I swear to God, it was not conscious, but it's so obvious now as I'm reading it. Good. I have a passion. Also because the head wounds bleed like crazy.

Oh, right, because the skin's so thin right there. Okay. Yep. Okay, so he immediately felt the warm trickle of blood and crammed his cap back firmly on his head and calmly walked the three minutes back to the house. He went to the bathroom to assess the damage in the mirror when all the blood his hat had been holding splashed all over. Being that it was very rural, there was no 911 and no ambulance.

He had to call the local funeral home to get a ride in the hearse to the nearest hospital about an hour away. What? Talk about a conflict of interest, but that was a common practice at the time. If there had been someone to ride with him and keep pressure on the wound, it would not have gotten so much worse like it did. He lost so many pints of blood that he died on the operating table and had to be shocked back to life.

Thankfully he made it and got to come home a few days later. When he was strong enough to go back to the scene of the accident, there was the hammer laying next to a very dead groundhog. Rest in peace, little guy. My dad never fucked with groundhogs again. Stay sexy and don't ride to the hospital in a hearse, Amy. The conflict of interest was my favorite. I know.

That's so funny. It's so good. It's like rural accidents. I could listen to rural accidents stories all day long. I can't even think of the suburb I grew up in and how, I mean, just completely different that life is and I'm fascinated by it. Yeah. It's far away from things.

You're far away when it's almost like you move out to where no one lives and you start working with all the sharpest and most dangerous tools you could possibly be working with. Right. Right. An anger at little marmots or what are they, rodents? What are badgers? I think maybe a rodent. Could be a mammal.

Mammal. Could be a mammal. Okay. But this was a groundhog. That's right. I don't know if you want to talk about badgers separately, but I would really love to talk about badgers. Okay.

You don't mind for just a moment. Okay. Just for a second. This one is, I'm not gonna name it. It's called podcasters and podcasters with the W, like pause, podcaster and pro podcasters. Yes. Podcasters. Podcasters.

I may be a bit late on the celebrity encounters right in. There's never a too late. No, nothing ever closes. None of our asks ever close. That's right. And if they do, we just won't read them. Right. Exactly.

Once we've requested something, it's for life. Yep. So yesterday was a much awaited inauguration day. I'm writing the story of when Kamala Harris touched my arm. I guess I could have read the subject. It's the time I met Kamala Harris. I worked too many years at a luxury hotel in California. I knew I was in for it when I met Cameron Diaz on my first day and Kirsten Dunst the

next week. Over the years, I learned to keep my cool when being asked by Zoe Deschanel for recommendations for, quote, lovely parks nearby, or when Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani jokingly invited me on their wine tour. I've pointed Bill Nyee. Is it Nyee? Bill Nyee. Yeah.

Nyee. I've pointed Bill Nyee to the restrooms and tried to upsell Lisa Vanderpump on a luxury suite. And then it says in parentheses, it didn't work. I'm a terrible salesperson. If you can't upsell Lisa Vanderpump on anything. Yeah. But she's made of money.

I know. I've never heard her whole thing like spending money. That's true. Always upgrade. Ever get an option to upgrade guys? I don't care where you are upgrade. That's not true. I once got treated to an impromptu concert by Pink who started singing in the lobby.

I probably made my dad prouder of me than he'll ever be when I made Bill Murray laugh. But brag brag. I always treated those people just like that as people. I always stuck with the hotel series of name-draws, but she treated them normally, but it's like sure. I always stuck with the hotel policy of discretion, except for now, oops, and not breaching the wall by acknowledging their fame and asking for an autograph or photo. All that changed when then Senator Kamala Harris came to stay with her husband.

I escorted them to their suite and as I was leaving, I couldn't help myself. I blurted out, I voted for you. And I wish I had thanked her for her service, but instead just blush bright red and turn to leave. She put her hand on my shoulder, glanced at my name tag, then looked me in the eye and thanked me by name. In addition to the huge numerous milestones her vice presidency brings, I can now say that I've met the vice president of the U.S. and that it says in parentheses and be proud

to say so. Thank you for reading. I love your show and all you do. Stay sexy and vote, Elle. Elle, you can say that you met the first female vice president of in history. That's something you tell your great-grandkids someday and they write into our great-grandkids new podcast, my favorite murder that they take in our great-grandpa, what's a paw for our pets?

They took over the podcast. It's still paws. Yeah. Still paws. Pets who are running the podcast by then because they've created the app that you can hear with pets are saying, that concept was big and tough. Looking for a better cooking routine? With meal planning, shopping and prepping handled, HelloFresh has you covered.

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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. That makes a person a murderer. Are they born to kill or are they made to kill? I'm Candace 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.

Subject line of this last email of mine is, baby let's get in the ball pit. Yeah, ball pit stories, ball pit stories. Best friends, you recently asked for ball pit stories so pull up a chair and sit a spell. I grew up in a very small town in Louisiana, very conservative and very religious. Every Tuesday in high school I attended a Bible study at My Towns McDonald's at 6.30 a.m. before school. Oh, those Christians love 6.30 in the morning, that's, I wouldn't, I'd be out immediately besides being a Jewish.

Rise and shine and give God your glory, glory. Over our pancake platters with the side of Jesus, my best friend and I started eyeing the ball pit. So we developed a plan. We began to arrive a little bit early to Bible study with empty backpacks. For weeks we filled those empty backpacks with balls and dumped them into the back of my 93 Ford Explorer until I had a full ball pit in that beloved truck. Oh.

High school parties in rural Louisiana meant backing trucks up in a circle around a bonfire, hanging in those truck beds, drink and drinking red dog. Jesus' favorite alcoholic beverage. Malt liquor. My ball pit quickly became the hookup spot at these parties. Yes, ew. These were lost in the ball pit. Look, the juxtaposition of Bible study balls and hookup balls is not lost on me, but the

existential crisis of growing up in Southern Baptist, a Southern Baptist in rural Louisiana is the reason my therapist has a designer bag. Oh my God. Say sexy and never trust what's in those balls, Ruth. P.S., as a nearly 40 year old woman, I am deep in the throes of the most difficult time of my life thus far. Listening to your podcast has been a rock during this time. You have quite literally saved my life in some of the darkest moments, moments when

I cling to your voices simply to stay alive. Thank you doesn't begin to cover it. Oh my God. I'm going to cry. Isn't that lovely? That's beautiful. Hey, Ruth. Ruth, thank you.

And also, I have an assignment for you. I need you to write 10 essays about your existential crisis of growing up in Southern Baptist rural Louisiana because if that is one story, I bet there's fucking at least 10 more that we need to hear about. That's right. And the memoir is called Backseat Ball Pit. It's your memoirs. Please tell us that you, between parties, disinfected those balls because all I can

think about is the many fluids that were on it in the germs before you even took them out of the ball pit and then the ones that came after her. No, no, basically you're saying she didn't and they didn't. They're high school students. Okay, you're right. They're amazing. That's all we can think about. What are they going to do, rinse them down?

I guess the spilt beer hopefully disinfected some stuff. All right. The love. The love disinfected them. Oh. That was beautiful. Yes. Okay, my last one is called My Badass Mother, Indigenous Rights and Paul Brandt.

Hello, my favorite murdering wine aunts and crew. We're wine aunts. I'm also a favorite spelled with a U so that you know they're Canadian. Let's get right into it. I'm in small town Alberta, socializing pretty much consists of hockey in the winter, swimming and rivers in the summer and doing all the suburban teenage shit you do in small towns. However, I was raised by my amazing, incredibly hippy mother. We're talking forced fort building, weird tea drinking and aromatherapy hippy.

Not your local urban outfitters loving milk latte drinking hippy, an authentic hippy is what she's saying. Yeah, a real one. Yeah. Needless to say, there was never a dull moment in my childhood. Now, I could tell you several stories about me and my mom only speaking in British accents when we get bubble tea. The pudding fiasco or the time she was in labor and only sent me a text.

But by far the most amazing thing she has done in my eyes is assisting the Canadian government with programs to help find missing and murdered indigenous women. My stepdad is a well-known Blackfoot elder. Blackfoot is a prairie group of Canadian indigenous peoples and elder is more of a rank than an age thing and has traveled all over the world sharing his teachings. Recently, he and my mom have been working with the Canadian government, even through coronavirus to help the families and friends of these lovely women who have lost their lives.

One day, while my mom and stepdad were in one of these meetings, my mom realized that Paul Brandt, a very famous country singer in rural Alberta, and his wife were at the meeting too. Paul and his wife do a lot of work with stopping human trafficking and educating those about MMIW, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. Now, it's polite and traditional to have a blessing in the form of a Blackfoot song to start or end a gathering of significance and my mom was so freaking excited because she, a raging hippie and humanitarian with a perfect pitch, I might add, got to bless

Paul Brandt with her beautiful voice and helped put a stop to the atrocities happening in our own backyard. The tragic deaths and disappearances of these women are not something to be taken lightly and it's people like my mom, stepdad, and everyone using their platform to amplify the voices the masses do not hear that are putting an end to these horrible happenings. Thank you for everything you do. Stay sexy and always be prepared to serenade a famous country singer, your Canadian friend, Gigi.

Wow. Gigi. Imagine having such inspiring, your mom's a nurse and your dad's a firefighter, so you do have inspiring parents. No, but that's next level because that's service and that's really, that's people working in an area and with a problem that she's exactly right, that people don't hear about enough or know about enough. And like a group of people whose voices need to be amplified and the fact that that is,

it's starting to happen, you know, slowly but surely, but that kind of work is like, it's beautiful. It's, thank God. It's really, it's really, it's got to be so inspiring to see your parents like that. Yeah. Well, yeah, it's such a great example of that's, that's what's that kind of social work and community work is for. It's caring about your neighbor, it's caring about the people in your country.

You know what I mean? It's just like, gets getting in there. I mean, that's like, that's classic hippie shit. That's what the hippies are all about. That's right. There's nothing to do with fucking urban outfitters. That's just style. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Yeah. Hippies are like. Capitalism. This stuff's real. Humanitarianism. Not capitalism. It's humanitarianism and a little bit of weed, which never hurt anybody and is natural.

That's right. Scar stories of your inspiring parents, they always love to hear that and they have to be inspiring like Gigi's. That's right. They've been inspiring. Like Gigi's. They, we need more scar stories. Oh yeah.

They have to be maybe survivors of terrible injuries that they, they're self-inflicted accidentally self-inflicted. What good people they are. I think separately also want like good stuff, like scar stories too, don't you think? Like how you got your. Yes, I'm agreeing. But that was your parent though. Oh sure.

Send in a well-written story. You know what that sounds like. Yeah. Ruth did it. You just heard a bunch of them. Think of what Ruth just did. Gigi did it. Set something up.

I'm Christian. I'm at McDonald's at 6 a.m. but what you think I'm going to tell you is not. We're going to take a left turn into the ball pit. Now we're talking about stealing from McDonald's. Something we always support. We'll always support. Tell us about where you stole from McDonald's. Please.

Anything. You know, I know Boyfriend who worked there and that they would just steal like the packages of the monopoly cups when a monopoly came out. Sure. And just spill each other's trunks with the monopoly pieces. Cut to the documentary. That's right. Where it didn't matter anyway because no one was going to win.

It didn't matter and they didn't even know it. I love that documentary so much. It was so good. It's called McMillions. McMillions. Good one. Oh yeah. And then stay sexy.

Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie?