My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 221

Episode Date: April 5, 2021

This week’s hometowns include an explosion story and a school 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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Oh, isn't that cute? Hi. It's just a little tiny email reading service provided to you free. Right. Because you send them and we read them because you guys participate and we appreciate it. Do you want to go first? Sure. All right.

This is called Dirty Jobs and Stingy Mobs. Hello, extended spooky family. A while back, I was listening to a hometown that included a story about a mob boss in Tucson, Arizona. My ears perked up and I texted my mom immediately. I asked, am I remembering correctly that your dad painted a mobster's house when he was younger? To which he replied, he did. They provided him with a bodyguard all day and paid him in cash and wine. Some weeks later, they called him back to chip bullets out of a wall, repair and repaint it for them.

Which, by the way, I want to mention that, do you paint houses in mob speak is basically saying, will you assassinate someone for us? There's a book called, I heard you paint houses about this guy's involvement in the mob. Hmm. And so maybe you got to look into your grandpa a little more. Wow. George's Mafia fun fact. You've been watching Sabrina. Whole new area.

Okay. That's right. My grandfather and great-uncle both painted people's homes and businesses for years, interiors and exteriors outside in the Arizona sun. This was like the fifties, so it resulted in a lot of stories and a lot of skin cancer. And then it said, wear sunscreen, everyone. My mom then shared with me that the mobster family my great-uncle worked for owned a restaurant in town. He got tired of waiting for the family to pay a past due invoice he'd given them for painting their restaurant.

Yeah. So my great-uncle took my grandfather and some other family members to eat there one night. They ordered lots of wine and lots of expensive food. When the bill came, my great-uncle refused to pay it, wrote a note on the check and told the server that the owner would understand and just left. You're in no fucking way. Man, the balls. The restaurant was absolutely used for money laundering.

I'm honestly surprised that my grandfather and great-uncle lived to tell the tale. Apparently, they got all of their work as painters through word of mouth, no contracts or anything official, and they were on the good side of a lot of influential people in town, according to my mom. One of the local congressmen even gifted my grandfather a tiny handgun you might find on a lady's garter belt that had once been held as evidence from a crime for a time. Wow. I know, and was told to not tell anyone that he'd been given it. I'm so glad that you chose that Tucson hometown a few months ago,

because I got the chance to learn all of these truly bananas things about my mom's side of the family. Stay sexy and maybe don't dine and dash when the mob owns the restaurant. For real. Lucille Petty. Lucille. That is so ballsy. It's so ballsy. You're basically, you're just like, yeah, now you owe me money, the mafia.

Right. But continue to hire me to do work, by the way. Don't stop doing that. Yeah. Well, I bet they liked it though. Yeah. I bet you that that's one of those like, you can see a Tony Soprano type being like, I respect you for that. Yeah.

That guy's got foot spa. I love the idea of giving the gift of a secret tiny gun. I mean, what's better than that? Don't tell, don't tell anyone gift is like the best gift you could give someone. This subject line of this is my murder, you know, mom's crazy hometown. Hello to my favorite humans and animals. You all rock. Let's skip the pleasantries and dig deep into this one.

Amen. Okay. Take command of the email at the top is what I always say. That's the crucial. My mom has always been a huge fan of true crime content and made me the murder. You know, I am now as a kid, she would always tell me messed up stories. I always made her tell me over and over again. She would always tell me messed up stories.

I always made her tell. Okay. There's probably supposed to be a period in there somewhere, but I liked the way I read it the first time. Some of which I definitely had no business hearing at my age. I have a million stories, including a crazy one about how when my grandma was giving birth to my uncle in her home in Italy during the 60s, a man who had a hammer fall on his head from a scaffolding ran into the nearest door. My grandmothers with his head cracked open and blood everywhere screaming. My uncle literally came out of the womb purple from the trauma.

Oh my God. But that's a story for another. No, it's not. I love, I love a half teaser story. I love someone telling most of the story and that being like, never mind. You know what? You're going to have to wait for the movie. I want to tell you my favorite of all my mom's hometowns.

This story has everything, so buckle in. My mom grew up in Hoboken, New Jersey, known for its proximity to Manhattan and being the home of Carlos Bakery, a.k.a. Cake Boss from, oh, and then this here's the rest of the sentence for most of her formative years. From the 70s through the 90s, there was a history teacher at the local high school who was beloved by everyone who had him, Mr. Saki. In 1998, 20 years after my mom graduated from said high school, Mr. Saki was shot dead as he was heading to his car to leave for the day. The gunman then walked a few blocks and shot himself. This was when school had just let out.

So there were tons of student onlookers. Holy shit. Here's where it gets crazy. The gunman was the husband of another former teacher at Hoboken High School. Apparently the gunman became convinced that the two teachers were having an affair. He kept sending threatening letters and phone calls to Mr. Saki. The kicker is that it wasn't true.

The poor guy was shot dead over an affair that never existed. I mean, even if it had happened, there's no excuse for that, but that's just fucking extra tragic. Yeah, exactly. The catalyst for this conspiracy theory is that Mr. Saki and his wife sent the man's wife a Christmas card in 1994 because they worked together. Oh, my God. Because who doesn't send family Christmas cards to mistresses, right? After dozens of harassing calls, the family chose to hire a lawyer and not humor the deranged responses.

It's believed that he was then stalked for a lengthy period of time. This story is so unbelievably sad and it's obvious the guy really needed psychological help. This is why access to good mental health services isn't so important. Thank you both for all that you do. You've got me through this unbearable pandemic and I still hope to see you at a live show one day. Stay sexy and don't get murdered just. Wow. What a sad story.

Yeah. Ghost sex at a Jewish camp. Actually, my last two stories are ghost stories. Hi, Karen, Georgia, Stephen, et al. This week, Georgia did her quilt episode about ghosts and I thought you might enjoy this story. Like Georgia, I also grew up going to a Jewish summer camp, but in Wisconsin. Like many summer camps, this one had its very own ghost. Her name was, it's either Susie or Susie.

I'm going to go with Susie. Her name was Susie. The version of her death story that I know, I'm sure there are many goes like this. The founders of the camp bought a big piece of property with an old white house called the by eat, which literally just means house in Hebrew on it. Think rickety stairs, a big porch, absolutely spooky as fuck. As the camp grew, the by eats was converted into the camp library, a study room and bedrooms for the visiting rabbis.

According to the legend, a young girl was staying at the by eat, likely a rabbi's daughter or something and fell down the stairs, breaking her neck and dying. She haunts the camp to this day. My connection to the camp ghost, there was a work program for seniors in high school where you could be a junior staff member doing basic maintenance, like taking out the trash, weeding and cleaning the public spaces. What high school student doesn't love fucking a good, a good weeding.

Exactly. You can get paid, but it was a chance to go to camp for free with less rules. One oppressively hot night. The other girls and I convinced our unit had to let us sleep in the by eat on the first floor because it had air conditioning. Wisconsin summers with no air conditioning in a cabin. Can you freaking imagine? We dragged our sleeping bags to the main room enjoying the candy we'd smuggled in and the AC.

At one point, another girl stopped whatever camp gossip we were talking about, claiming she heard something. We all immediately shut the fuck up and heard a muffled girl's voice and thumping coming from the back of the by eat. We froze terrified. For more to Reno reasons, I decided that investigating the sound was a good idea. So two other girls and I got up and crept slowly towards the noise. You're either get the fuck out of there or go towards towards the noise kind of girl.

Yeah, I think I'm the latter. Which was coming from the small library next to the main room. The library was dark. So I pushed open the door and flipped on the light expected to see some paranormal activity or maybe even sassy herself. Instead, we found two of the college age counselors having sex in the corner. Yeah. We screamed, slammed the door shut and immediately ran back to the other girls to tell them what happened and celebrate this trophy worthy piece of camp gossip.

Yes. We never saw sassy, but I can't help but wonder how many sneaky camp quickies were interrupted by small girl ghosts or just random campers. Stay sexy and watch where you do it. Steph from Chicago, Illinois. Illinois? PS. Thank you so so much for all the work you do to make this podcast happen.

Mondays and Thursdays feel like the chance for me to catch up with my awesome older cousins each week. You really do mean so, so much to so many people. Thanks Steph. Nice. I want to say it wasn't by eat for us at my Jewish camp. It was the swim house. What is that called? Like the swimming pool offices.

Pool house. Pool house. Thank you. I made out in the pool house with Michael. Hell yes. Yes, I did. Did it smell so good like chlorine and love? Beautiful clean smell of chlorine.

And a little bit of mold. Yeah. I wonder if there even was a ghost at all or if every time the younger kids thought they heard a ghost, it was just the older counselors hooking up. Absolutely. But I wonder if the older counselors hooking up ever actually got haunted because that seems likely. I mean, all of these are possibilities for the horror movie. We're going to write about this by eat.

And meanwhile Susie's in the corner eating popcorn being like, yeah. Yeah, bring it. This, the subject line is just explosion story. Great. Hello, hello. I heard some fun explosion stories on a mini soda a couple of weeks ago and figured I'd write in with mine. In May 2019, I was living with my parents in the North Chicago suburbs having recently finished with my master's degree. One night I was watching TV with my mom when all of a sudden there was a massive bang, which shook the house.

Having previously lived in apartments with dumpsters, it sounded and felt a lot like when the garbage trucks would just drop the dumpsters on the ground. But given that it was 10 p.m. It clearly wasn't that after looking outside to make sure nothing crazy had happened. My mom and I promptly declared it to be title title case, not our business and went to bed. No B. It wasn't until the next morning when I would find out what happened 10 miles away from my house. There was a silicon manufacturing plant. And on the night of May 3, 2019, the plant exploded.

And I mean exploded. The blast was not only felt strongly at my parents house 10 miles away. It was reportedly felt as far as 20 miles away from the plant itself. As it turns out, one of the products they were making that night had the potential to produce flammable gases. And that night, something went very wrong. The company, of course, denies any wrongdoing. However, they refined $1.6 million by OSHA for a grand total of 12, quote, willful safety violations, including the minor detail of not having flammable gas detectors.

Four people lost their lives in this incident, including one man who reportedly ran back into the building to make sure the rest of his team was able to escape. It seems like a miracle that anyone survived at all. For a long time, nothing remained of the building except for several large metal tanks. However, it's now finally being rebuilt. I currently live less than a mile from the facility, so I certainly hope it doesn't explode again. Stay sexy and always follow OSHA regulations, Ken's. Wow, that's so terrifying. I feel like...

And huge. Yeah. I just feel like that doesn't happen as often. Like the house, you know, we have hot water heaters. We have gas and all this, you know, it's just right there in these neighborhoods, especially old houses. And the fact that it doesn't happen more often. It happened in my town of Irvine once as a kid. Did it?

And we drove by the house and I just remember being terrified of it. Just one house exploded? One house exploded. I think it was just a gas leak, you know, nothing nefarious. But it's just like... So scary. So scary and just so hard to predict and fix. I don't know.

Yeah. It's scary. Wow, that's sad. So sad. And he ran in to save people. What a hero. There's like a real hero in that story, which is pretty cool. I wish you knew that guy's name.

Never mind your own business. Always go out and check out what it is. I mean, I guess the theory behind, you hear something as like loud like an explosion, but you can't see anything. Yeah. And then they're like, well, yeah. Here's what you're going to do. Go drive around.

Yes. Yes. What are you busy? What do you have work early? It's the only reason to talk to neighbors is when something goes wrong. Put on a fun light jacket and go stand in the street and cross your arms. Gossip. That's what I do.

Gossip. And then there's someone else to come out. It turns out the only reason I'll ever talk to neighbors is something bad happens. And now that cookie wants to meet every single person we walk by. She's just ruining my avoidance of people. Oh yeah. If you have a puppy, your, your avoidance of people goes right out the window. She goes up to people and sits like when they're coming and is like, what's up?

We're best friends. And then they freak out cause it's a puppy sitting. Well, unless they're assholes. And then I'm like, oh yeah. Good. There's a lot of people that don't like dogs. Yeah. But she's so cute.

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Okay, home alone haunted piano. Howdy there short, sweet and slightly spooky story here. A few years ago, my husband and I had just recently bought a home together. He had left for the night to whoop it up with his brother in town about an hour north of our house. So I was alone in our new home. For the first time, allowing me the freedom to watch any soap operas I wanted and use the bathroom with the doors open. Amen. God, live it up girl.

Just keep those doors open. As loud as you want. Oh my dear self. I was enjoying myself care night sitting at the top of the stairs. Talking to my brother-in-law on the phone when suddenly the piano started playing scared shitless. I hung up the phone. That's the wrong move. First of all, you stay on the line open and listen silently as the eerie but pleasant tune filled our home and echoed off the walls and through our mostly empty home.

So like no furniture, that's even double terrifying. Nightmare town. The music continued for almost a full minute. Then silence fell over the house, making it suddenly feel huge and full of dark corners. When I finally got the courage to walk downstairs, I checked our windows and they were shut. I checked our speakers. They were off. I did all in my power to promise myself that this music came from inside our home.

It sure did. The kicker? We do not have a piano. No. What? Steven's screaming. No. I thought the kicker was going to be it's a player piano.

It sure as shit ain't because they don't even have a motherfucking piano. Oh shit girl. Well you do now. You do now, get one in case that ever happens again, you can blame it. You have one, you can't see it. I truthfully believe that someone joined me that night. Someone who in their former life loved to play the piano. They accompanied me on my evening alone, brought me a housewarming present and have since never returned.

My husband and brother-in-law still to this day give me a hard time about the haunted piano. That's why you stay on the phone. You say, Doug or whatever, you hear that piano. Guess what? We don't have a piano come over right now. Witness. Always keep the witness nearby. That's right.

But I will forever stand by the music that filled the walls of our house this night as I sat alone at the top of our stairs. Thank you for reading. XOXOXO Sam. I want to say as someone who isn't afraid of ghosts, allegedly, to make it into a positive thing is the best thing. To make it into a positive thing is the best thing you could do. Talk to them if you're scared and be like, welcome to my home. I feel like that's the way to not freak yourself out. It's to think it's a positive spirit or someone who loves you.

As someone who does believe in ghosts and has been hugged by one. Bullshit. Move out of that house. Get away. You're kidding yourself. Someone played the piano. Someone played a ghost piano. Ask that again when Vince has gone for the night.

For real. And Cookie's barking at the corner. I can't believe. Wait, what could that have been? Like a neighbor turning the radio on for a minute? Maybe an iPod that you forgot you had dying in a drawer. Oh, maybe moving in. It rattled the drawer and then an iPod just ran in.

Do you have classical music on your iPod? Are you a pianist? Were you just having a memory? Is there toxic mold in your house? Were you high? Were you high as a kite? Pollucinating music. God, that was a real good twist.

That was real good. Okay. The subject line of this one is, a Les Mis fan robbed my boyfriend. I can't even imagine what this is going to be like. Karen, Georgia, Steven, animals and listeners. A few years ago, a guy I'd recently started dating, invited me to go skiing with him. This is a pretty normal thing in New England,

though a bit aggressive for a third date. We had a great time and when we got back home, I invited him into my apartment for some dinner. He parked his car in the street, leaving two pairs of skis and all his ski gear in it, boots, poles, etc. The next morning, no judgment, please. He went out to his car and found the side window smashed and everything stole.

While he waited for the police to arrive, he noticed a plastic bag in the back seat. In it, he found all his tax documents and a four page letter from the thief. Yes, that's right. The thief went through everything he stole, realized the tax documents had no value to him, but a lot of value to my boyfriend and returned them.

The letter apologized for ruining my boyfriend's day and explained what led him to breaking into the car. The thief also said that he hoped this would be a turning point for him, like the candlesticks were for Jean Valjean. Oh my. I'm a huge Les Miserables fan and what crazy when I saw this reference,

my boyfriend who had never seen Les Mis had no idea what I was talking about. Anyway, the note went on into so much detail that any detective with the slightest interest could have solved this crime. But alas, the police didn't have much sympathy for a guy who had skis stolen out of his car in a posh part of town.

Naturally, I was certain my new boyfriend was going to break up with me after the robbery, but he stuck around. A few weeks later, when dropping me off at work, I said, have a great day and he replied, stay sexy, don't get murdered. Needless to say, I realized pretty quickly that he was the one.

Fast forward four years and we'll still be happy as ever, despite our wedding being postponed a year. Merch idea. Fuck you, I'm a COVID bride. Oh my. That's genius. Oh my God.

Thanks for all you do, Susie. Susie, we caused a wedding, a marriage. We've been there for Susie and let's just say Dave, because our guard is. And Dave and me and Georgia all the way down the aisle. We caused a wedding.

It's like causing a car accident. I love the thief that's just like, I really hope this turns things around. I also love when it's like, here's why I'm in this position and I hope you can understand and like, you know, you're in a posh part of town, so hopefully like you have insurance and replacing this isn't a big deal for you.

But for me, this, I'm able to pay for my school books to go to theater school. But for me right now, the black market ski trade is so lucrative that I could not walk by. What if you were like, here's the thing.

This is the name of the pawn shop. I'm going to pawn them off too. You can buy them back at a discount. Just give me a day or two. I'm going to make it really easy for you to buy back your rented skis. Because I'm a good person ultimately. Good Samaritan.

Anyway, right back soon. Jerry. I mean, honestly, the tax document thing could have ruined his entire life. So that is pretty immense. It's a, he's a mensch thief. You know? Yep.

Like he's ruined. He could have sold those to someone who He's a robber with a heart of gold. He's like, I don't want what's worst for you in life. I just need what I need to get by. I need a couple hundred bucks to buy my lame as DVD. Because I refuse to pirate it.

That's bad morals. What if he was literally taking the cash that he made off of ski, rented ski boots and skis and went and just straight over and bought tick front row tickets to Les Mis. And he just can't stop.

And changed his ways because of it. Yes. Oh, this has turned out to be a beautiful story. Oh, what a minisode. Hey, if you love minisodes or we're each doing one extra story every week for the fan cult, they're called mini minisodes.

So make sure you check that out. We also have videos and we answer your low stakes advice on the there's like a ton of other videos and fun stuff on the fan cult. So go to myfavoritmurder.com to check that out. And if you're not interested in that, then why don't you go ahead and stay sexy. And don't get murdered.

Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie? Ahhhh!