My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 253

Episode Date: November 15, 2021

This week’s hometowns include sleeping through an emergency and a mysterious coffee shop regular.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We at Wondery live, breathe and downright obsess over true crime and now we're launching the ultimate true crime fan experience, Exhibit C. Join now by following Wondery, Exhibit C on Facebook and listen to true crime on Wondery and Amazon Music, Exhibit C. It's truly criminal. Hello and welcome to my favorite murder, the mini-zode. This is being videoed, this mini-zode for the fan. That's why there's such a strange self-consciousness to the introduction. That's us. We know where eyebrows are on video. It's a big deal. Think about it a lot. Yeah, I think we have a great eyebrow podcast, like collective eyebrow podcasts. You know what's funny? Because sometimes I overdo it with my eyebrows. I'm always, you know, stuck in like

90s, 80s of the huge brow. And I often look at your eyebrows and go, I need to do my eyebrows more like that because yours always look, they look really natural and really well shaped. So do yours though. Oh my god. We found common ground once again. You want to go first? You want me to go first? Stone cold sober. I'll go first on this one. Speak for yourself. Okay, here's a great intro. Hi, Murderino Collective. Ooh, love it. Love it. Yeah. Heard y'all were in need of some hometowns so I thought I'd send this in. Generous. This story actually happened when I was attending a small women's college and then it says Stevens College in parentheses, Stevens College in Columbia, Missouri.

Do you remember when we were doing St. Louis show and I called it Missouri and then the audience booed me? Yes. Yeah, that was not very generous. Well, I just wonder, I guess I should stop doing that. But I wonder what the implication is. I just think it's, I'm just doing a Southern accent. But yeah, I've heard it called that before. All right. I'll let us know guys. Let us know why I'm just offended you. Okay. We love to dig deep into the things like that. This story takes place in an apartment building that opened my senior year of college. Even though the apartment building was nice and brand new, there were some weird things that were going on once I moved in and then in parentheses, including an underground drug ring that was being run out

of one of the rooms. Oh, cool. However, my tale revolves around the handyman who worked all around the building. He was just one of those guys who was always around and he seemed fairly harmless, but there was just something a little off about him. Since he was the handyman, he had the keys to all the girls rooms in the dorm. And I, there were some times when he would need to fix things in our rooms while we were off campus or in class and he'd need access. However, it turns out that the guy was using those spare keys to break in at night and watch girls sleep. Of course he was. My best friend swears that she felt him come into her room a couple times while she was sleeping. I honestly can't remember if he did anything more than just watch girls sleep, but that in and of

itself is still pretty fucking unsettling. Sure is. Eventually he was caught and got fired and probably arrested. I tried to search for more info on this story in order to find out exactly what happened to this guy, but alas, it happened over 10 years ago and there weren't any new stories that I could find. Anyways, I hope this wasn't too long. It wasn't. Thank you for all the good you do and the light that you bring into this world. Stay sexy and always buy a deadbolt, I guess. Yeah. Lauren. That's so creepy. It really is. What is your, what is the, what are you getting out of watching? Is it just like a power trip? If you're not doing anything but watching? I mean, that's clearly going to escalate. That's how those things- Well, it does feel like peep,

it's in the peeping Tom category of it doesn't just, that's not just like, oh, this is a funny thing I used to do. Yeah. And then I got into other stuff. It's like, it usually is the beginnings of that. Also, the transgression of a person who doesn't know you're there. Oh yeah. That's power. You really kind of can't spin that in a positive way. Absolutely not. But I'll try. I think he was a Christian. He was praying over them. Great job. Thank you. You. The topic of this episode is generosity. It's generosity. You've got it in spades. What's that mug say? Oh, it says 12-foot skeleton fan club. Brandy Posey of the podcast Lady to Lady gave this to me for my birthday this last year. Gorgeous. It's a classic. It's on video for the fan club. Okay. For the fan club,

you can buy it somewhere else. All right. I'm not going to tell you. Well, who cares? Waking up to muddy footprints and a locked door. Who cares? It says that you can't. It's not a spoiler. Okay. All right. Okay. Years ago, I woke up one morning to find a jumbled mess of large dirty footprints on my kitchen floor. This was weird because I lived alone. And since I was young and had knees that still loved me, I scrubbed my kitchen floor every week in there. Wow. Also, the kitchen was where my front door was located. And weirdest of all, my front door was locked, not just locked when I went to bed at night, but still locked when I found the footprints. So as any reasonable human would do, I hid in my closet and then called my landlord to

leave a casual message asking if he'd come in to do some very normal early morning maintenance. He called me back a minute later and just said in the most bewildered voice, are you kidding me? The night before, some dick weasel had stolen a car, ditched it in our underground parking garage beneath a clearly residential building and lit it on fire. I lived on the third floor on the opposite side of the building, which is pretty lucky for me since here's like two sentences in all caps. I'd fully slept through a firefighter opening my door, coming inside, calling for me to evacuate, and then assuming the apartment was empty and leaving. Oh my God. Wow. That was all a cap. They had thoughtfully relocked my door so no one would

steal my shit. Which is nice. Yeah. Everyone else had to evacuate and go hang out in a local church for a few hours. Well, I just slept, blissfully unaware. No one was hurt, though several apartments had smoke damage and parts of a few people's cars had melted. I'm gonna ask, like, that is such a good point that you lit it on fire at night in a residential building where you just know people are sleeping. You could have killed 42 people, depending on the size of that building. How the hell did you sleep through that, you may ask? Because I was about as far from the fires I could get, smoke never reached my apartment, so my alarms didn't go off. Also, I slept with my bedroom door closed and multiple white noise sources that were apparently very effective.

Stay sexy and get some sleep, Brenda. I feel like the firefighter could have come in and seen if any bedroom doors were closed. Like, that's just one extra little step, but you know. Well, but it is pretty over the top to have the entire place on fire and then and no one is loud person like yelling. Yeah. And well, but also I don't know how was that front door still locked? He came in a different way? Maybe. Oh, I bet they had the landlord's keys. And so he locked it. Oh, okay. Right. That's hilarious. I know. Okay. Well, hi. Well, hi. That cat. Well, hi. Well, hi. Look up the well, hi, cat, everyone. Love y'all. Love your show. Adore your pets. All the warm feelings. I grew up in a tiny cabin of a house in Ojai, California.

My father inherited this home from his grandparents and promptly moved his family of six into a one bedroom home. Oh, he was a middle school teacher. And my mom stayed home with her four daughters. So despite the town's bougie reputation, we were quite poor. In 2004, I turned 16 and I badly wanted a car. So I started applying for jobs. I landed a job at the local coffee shop named stir crazy, due to my being an independent study and having a fully open schedule. The shop opened at 6am, meaning the opener needed to be there at 5.30am. So it was a highly undesirable shift. With my open schedule, it became the main shift that I worked with no car and no public transportation running so early. And then it says in parentheses, aka the trolley,

look it up, it's cute. I had to start walking from my house at five in the morning to get to work on time. Looking back, this seems pretty unsafe, as does scheduling a teenager to work entirely by themselves for the first two to three hours of their shift. Is this legal? It feels like it should be illegal. The coffee shop had a large interior layout and a huge awesome back patio. Because of this, there were regulars who would come around opening and sit at the shop for hours on end enjoying the space and the Wi-Fi. We had a self-serve coffee station so they would pay for their initial cup and then help themselves to all the free refills of drip coffee that they wanted to enjoy. One such regular was a man who never spoke a word to me. He would usually have

the exact change for a drip coffee, set it on the counter in front of me, muster a sheepish half-smile, and drop some change in the tip jar. If he didn't have exact change, he would grab the cup size of drip coffee he wanted, wave it in the air, and then hand me cash to change out for him. Most regulars tended to be semi-friendly, introduce themselves and chit chat with me, so his behavior felt odd and it made me uneasy. Also, he never interacted with the other regulars in the shop and he would sit quietly in a corner somewhere. There was something about his eyes that gave me the creeps. They were intense, bright blue, and I felt like they were digging into my thoughts. I dreaded interactions with him and would usually freeze up whenever I saw him

walking up to the shop and would be in stunned silence until he left the counter. My mom volunteered with the Shakespeare Festival every year and one day she casually mentioned that her acquaintance, Ted from the festival, mentioned that he was a regular of the shop I worked. I told her the name doesn't ring a bell. She half snorted and asked me if I really didn't recognize Buffalo Bill. It all clicked. Ted Levine, the actor who played Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lamb, was a regular at my coffee shop. He was in the show Monk at the time, so he had short hair and a full mustache and he looked very different from the only thing I'd seen him in that I would recognize him from. Those eyes that gave me the creeps at work were the same eyes that had traumatized

me from a much too early age watching the Silence of the Lambs. My mom mentioned that he is shy and he does not like attention or being recognized. Him not speaking to me then made sense since he has such a unique voice. Despite his different appearance, I am sure his voice was a dead giveaway for who he was. This is blowing my mind. It's the best. So from then on, I somewhat stopped being creeped out by him and would smile when he entered instead of freezing up. Those eyes never stopped feeling eerie though. So if you're a small business owner and can only afford to have one employee on shift, maybe don't schedule teenagers to work early morning or late night shifts entirely by themselves. They may encounter people who make them feel unsafe either for legitimate

reasons or because of an amazing performance in a fantastic movie. SSTGM and happy spoof season, Cassie. Wow. Holy shit. Isn't that also what I thought was really funny is my mom used to really like Monk so it was one of the few TV shows that she would actually watch and we watched it and like it took me two years to figure out that that's how I knew Ted Levine because he was the like the captain or detective or whatever on the show and I was just like this guy I know this guy and it when I finally looked it up I was like holy shit because he looks you know it's like he was a young like in his 20s and then he was a grown man. Yeah. He's worked consistently since Silence of the Lambs but he looks completely different. It's the same thing for me with Mr. I Don't

Want to Hurt Your Dog. Like when I see her I totally forget it's her. What's her name? I don't know. You should know this. You wouldn't hold on. That's a tough one but hold on. She's in Grey's Add-A-B right? Yeah. Brooks Smith. Goddamn it. Brooks Smith played Catherine Martin. All right. Sorry. What's happy spoof season mean? Spook season? Spoop. Do you think it was a misspelling? I think so because I don't know what the fuck a spoof is. Cassie if you if that's an inside joke of something that we don't remember please tell us. Spooky Halloween? It's got to be spook. Spook. What's spook? What's a spook? I wish I knew. I wish I knew. Well expect t-shirts of it next year. All right. Shit that happens at fancy outdoor malls story. Hello loves of my life. I

sent this in before as a random topic but now that you've specifically asked for this genre of story I figured I'd send it again. No this didn't happen at a quote fancy outdoor mall but it was one of America's first strip malls and it had a Starbucks so I'm counting it. Okay. Counts. When I was 16 I worked as the fitting room girl at Marshall's in my hometown. Nightmare. Nightmare. Nightmare. Any of those my friend my my cousin Carol used to work at I think Ross stress for less as at the fitting rooms she had stories of like the most insane shit happening. Really? Yes. Send in those stories. Is this true? Send it in. I want to hear this shit. Yeah. I was a shy and polite teen so when the strip malls much older security man came up to me one evening to tell me my underage tits look

great and were shirt increased sales I was horrified but not going to say anything about it to anyone. Hold on. What's your comeback to that right now? If that was you. You'll go fuck yourself. Why? No I'm just I think that's the kind of thing where when someone does that to you it's like it almost just like shots you into you just stand there so it's good to have a couple comebacks just waiting like hold it right there I'm going to call the police on you. Right. That's another good one. In reality if I were her and as a teen I would have well it's like that's what I did. There was I worked at I worked at a little like market like local market my first job in the bakery and the butcher shop is across the way from me and it was like these older dudes and they were

like come in there our office real quick and I go in and there's just like plastered all over the walls like porn oh and I was just like and like walked out I know like that's what I know 90s you know what but also what what I was 15 I was 15 so what is the what are you trying to do sir first of all why do you need porn on the walls like yeah what what's wrong also the what's actionable now and they thought it was funny they laughed at my shock but I mean after knowing that like I would never want to go to that meat department again like you couldn't wash your hands enough like porn porn at the grocery store is yeah but no one knew it was like in the private they fucking oh you mean like it was there it was in the private like meat butcher shop office

but I mean they knew it's like so you both are into this that's the weirdest thing in the world to me that one guy didn't go hey that's creepy dude what's wrong I don't want to look at porn with you guys this is creepy if you're a grown man and you feel the need to put porn on the wall yeah some you're crying for help yeah or to be fired okay anyways it was horrified not going to say anything about it that was until Heather the marshals security guard came to my rescue Heather was maybe five feet tall and a hundred pounds curly blonde hair and an absolute badass she sprinted into the fitting room and said I saw your face after that guy talked to you what did he say I told her and with her help wrote up a complaint to the mall's management

and got him fired yes so I never had to deal with his disturbing quote compliments again a year or so later I had been promoted from fitting room girl to customer service girl when Heather chased a shoplifter out into the parking lot to confront him and call the cops remember we talked about chasing shoplifters yes that's right much to my horror I watched from the front window as this tall heavy set man punched her right in the head and she hit the ground she was okay but stopped working security at our store shortly after and as far as I know they never found the guy I still can't believe that absolute twat punched a little lady over some last season Tommy Hilfiger what a douche canoe Heather was a tiny fearsome totally badass lady and I will

never forget how she went after that creepy old man for me and how she chased guys twice her size because she wasn't scared of shit anyway Heather if you happen to be a murderer now you left a lasting impression on me and you are the reason that when creepy men asked me to smile I'd show them all of my teeth like an angry dog ssdgm okay okay I love it just like a compliment to this badass woman who like changed her a little yeah that's very cool although yeah don't I now understand what you mean by meant by don't there's no reason to chase a shoplifter and then take that right physical assault for on behalf of the right major corporation that you work for insane and the but they stole cost nothing to them yes and if you're five feet tall in your security guard

you should have some kind of a weapon on you like yeah that's not safe unless you dick or something yeah something uh hardcore I'll never forget I have a similar story when I was 14 and like hanging out with the wrong crowd like punk rockers and there was this one older girl is this punk with tattoos and shit and her we were all sitting in the room probably doing drugs and her boyfriend like a mohawk hardcore leather wearing spike mohawk dude said something you know sexist to her and she fucking socked him in the face so hard and I was like and I was such a timid little girl you know and then years later I looked her up and she's like a fucking MMA fighter now oh yeah yeah I wrote her and I was like I just want you to know you like she's like I don't even remember

that I was like you changed my fucking like idea of like what kind of a woman I can be it was pretty rad wow nice yeah and then you all hit that bong together 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 why stop with just dinner now you can enjoy hello fresh's expanded menu of quick lunch solutions weekend brunch simple side dishes and amazing desserts karen january is going to be my month for hello fresh I am so sick of takeout I miss cooking so much I haven't lifted

a knife or a pan since like early fall so I can't wait to get back in the kitchen and hello fresh 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 hello fresh dot ca slash murder 20 with code murder 20 that's up to 20 free meals plus free shipping on your first box when you go to hello fresh dot ca slash murder 20 and use code murder 20 goodbye hey I'm a risha and I'm Brooke and we're the hosts of wonderies 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 will 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 let 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 here's my last one but i'm not going to read you the subject line this is how it starts hello and then it says in front of these in the mrs doubtfire voice yay long time listener first time writer here it goes i was probably around eight or nine and i

was in the passenger seat of my mom's 90s something Chevy Tahoe we were running errands and needed to return some books to the library i was thrilled to have the task of returning them through the drop-off box from the car window so fun i was one of the smallest in my class so for me to reach the drop box i had to basically hang my entire body out of the window while i was being super cool and dropping the books in the return the window started rolling i yelled mom stop i'm not done but as i yelled i could see terror and a bit of panic in my mother's eyes she started frantically hitting all the buttons on her driver's door while the window continued to roll up i'm yelling frantically mom mom stop the window does not stop rolling up and i'm questioning in my head

what did i do to deserve this is my mom trying to kill me while my little body starts to feel the window begin to squish me my mom is still going at it to every button in sight and i'm still screaming stop stop stop my mom turns the car off completely yes yes thinking quick thinking we both take a moment and just stare at each other letting the trauma sink in oh my god but then my mother notices my knee exactly on the window button yeah it was me i was rolling out the window on myself as i was leaning out oh my god stay sexy and window locks save lives alisha alisha i immediately thought of like cookie leaning her head out the window in the back you know and she's like buckled in but like oh my god she i didn't even think about it she

could totally step on the fucking oh frank's done that oh that's right frank has the ability he it's crazy and he's been like this since i got him he can like if you're watching an amazing movie that's exactly when frank will step on the remote and change the channel like he has this sense of perfect interference and one of the first times he rode in my car and this is when i had that honda fit yeah um we were going to the dog park and he had the front seat and he i rolled the windows down for both dogs and he got up he got up put his head out the window stepped on the window thing oh no this is what he did he it was the opposite of what happened to alisha he got up stepped on the window and the window went down so i didn't have it down all the way

he had his like feet resting on the half closed window he stepped on it it rolled down more and he started falling out the window oh my god and i had to catch him by the tail and he and kim back in as the car was going like 30 miles an hour down the street oh my god it was so hilariously like it was like a ruby goldberg contraption of how did you just do that yeah and like and it happened super fast so i just have to like for instincts you fucking their dogs and kids try to kill themselves constantly your job to not let them insanity this is my last one okay it's called vince's hometown adventures in babysitting and it's a little long but it's not that bad hi all it says i was in college and a seasoned babysitter so word of my

kid watching skills landed me a summer job for a family that lived in the forest in millford michigan which is where this is from before my first day i met the new family at their home to see if i would be a good fit as i knocked on the door i saw an odd bat shaped lawn decoration placed in the grass and when the dad answered the door i immediately noticed the shirt he was wearing had a picture of a furry brown bat on it i was then greeted by a three-year-old let's call her maggie and a smiley mom holding a baby a adorable family even though the mom was also wearing a shirt with bats on it so i'm getting the house tour and noticed framed photos of someone's hand holding real bats and in the playroom were normal toys in addition to stuffed animals blocks etc that you

guessed it bats we were finishing the tour upstairs in the spare bedroom where the dad pointed to a door in the back of the room and wanted me to quote never open that door i smiled said okay and was hired for the summer my first morning on the job the mom said maggie you should take miss sara to the barn to see moe today and since she didn't elaborate i didn't ask questions because i have midwest manners after breakfast maggie begged to see moe trying to get intel from a three-year-old was unsuccessful so it's still a mystery when later that day i took the kids down the path deeper into the forest we came to a small clearing where the barn stood and as i rolled open the door maggie bolted inside and disappeared into the very dark barn struggling to get my eyes to

adjust i walked slowly towards the where her little footsteps stopped then suddenly i saw a pair of bdi's watching me and the longest curled fingernails i have ever seen i froze panicked then realized the face staring at me all caps was a fucking sloth that's right that's right not a bat not a murderer a god damn two toad slaw oh you know i spent the summer not asking questions but i did discover why one should quote never open that door in the spare bedroom the little girl eventually told me because it's the addict and the bats will like your hair as it turned out moe short for molasses because he's so slow okay does that was a rescue sloth but i only discovered this the following summer with a new family of kids in tow when i took them to an exotic creatures exhibit and my old

pal moe was there and then it says i know him okay buddy it was there that i learned that the bat people are world renowned bat conservationists they founded the organization for bat conservation and have traveled the planet to educate wildlife conservationists about bats and endangerment it doesn't mean you need bats in your fucking house though like great it doesn't mean you need to wear your own merch you know how i feel about that it's like in your house casually constantly hey we have a guest coming over let's show them what we're all about put your shirt on they have even made appearances on popular late night talk shows sweet moe was eventually re-homed is now and is now living his best life at the detroit zoo where unsuspecting babysitters won't find him in dark

places i'm so proud of you both stay sexy and stay out of the attic sarah thank you sarah that was alarming yet heartwarming and funny yep and fun and bats it would like if you're in a dark barn yeah slots are kind of big yeah so it would i would assume it was a dude with a bad haircut or like an extra child that they forgot to bring into the house oh the child that only that only sleeps in the barn yeah well thanks for listening you guys send us any fucking story you feel like at my favorite marriage email these sorry these emails are just getting better by the moment things you offer trying pulling out these wonderful stories of child endangerment and um slots and bats yeah love it if you think you can do better send in your story if you think you already did

better resend your story because there's a lot of stories in there that we have to go through and if you don't think anything at all then stay sexy and don't get murdered come on Elvis do you want a cookie this has been an exactly right production our producer is hannah kyle creighton associate producer alahandra keck engineer and mixer steven ray morris researchers j lias and hayley gray send us your hometowns and your fucking raise at my favorite murder at gmail.com and follow the show on instagram and facebook at my favorite murder and twitter at my fave murder and for more information about this podcast our live shows merch or to join the fan cult go to my favorite murder dot com rate review and subscribe