My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 390

Episode Date: July 1, 2024

This week’s hometowns include getting trapped in an elevator and going on a blimp ride. Support this podcast by shopping our latest sponsor deals and promotions at this link: https://bit.ly/3UFCn1g Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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The mini-soap. How cute is that? Little precious emails that you've written into us. Thank you. Oh, we should say it's the beginning. If you guys want to watch what we're saying over via video, go to the fan cult. We're videoing this. We have makeup on.

Oh my God. It's so good. You wouldn't believe it. It's a whole different experience. All right, you want to go first this time? Sure, sure, sure. Okay. Mine's called Biker Gang Parents.

Hello, ladies. Love you both. Love the podcast. You make my workday so much better. I'm a medical biller and some days I get to listen to my girls tell me some stories. Shout out to my friend, John Paul, who tried to tell me for years that I would love your podcast. He was right. You have to listen to John Paul. John Paul, who tried to tell me for years that I would love your podcast. He was right. You have to listen to John Paul.

John Paul knows what's up. Settle in for this crazy shit. This story has been told to me by both parents at separate times. My parents met at a party at Kent State University in Ohio. My father was from a neighboring city about 45 minutes away, asked my mother if she wanted to go for a ride on his motorcycle. The rest is history. Hot, hot, hot. In 1972, my 19-year-old mother, Debbie, was pregnant with me. And she and my 18-year-old father, Glenn,

were in a motorcycle, quote, club called The Chosen Few. Oh. The club members, quote, hung out in an abandoned house. My dad was the vice president of the club and went by lush. The club president went by sex and then it's cracking up emoji. And then it says it was the seventies. Sex is not a good nickname. That's just straight up your nickname. It's so, it just really ruins everything about like double entendre and trying to be kind of like flirty, it's just the word.

There's no subtlety. Call yourself that. Lush, I guess. It's okay, but. So there they all were hanging out doing God knows what. The story goes, there was some beef with another club and the rival club went looking for the chosen fuse clubhouse.

Is sex here? Is love here? Knock, knock, knock. My mother was sitting on a couch getting ready to smoke a cigarette. Remember, she's pregnant. When she reached down to pick up her lighter. Just then, someone began shooting up the house.

So this really is a fucking motorcycle gang. Yeah, this is a motorcycle gang. Yeah. My dad and the other guys began shooting back. The first shooter fled, so they got in a car and chased him. Thankfully, no one was hurt or killed. My mom said, quote, after the guys left, the girls were all freaked out and began to nervously clean up.

That's when we see the bullet hole right above the couch where I was sitting. If I hadn't been down to get my lighter, we would have both died, her and the baby. Oh my God. My father and another member of the club were later arrested for shooting into an empty car they thought was the car involved in the shooting. I can't, I still have the newspaper articles about how the quote gang members known as sex and lush were told by the judge in court to take a shower and get a haircut.

LAUGHS My father was in jail for almost two years, including the day I was born. He and my mother split shortly after his release, and he moved to Florida, not before my mom became pregnant with my brother. We still live in Ohio. I reconnected with my father about 10 years ago,

when I was 40. He came to visit, and we talk and text. He has actually grown up, and I'm glad he's in my life. I have heard so many stories about the crazy shit they did. Most of the stories about their lives back in the day come from my 71 year old Harley Davidson wearing chain smoking tattooed mother. She is still a fucking wild child. Yes. Stay sexy and don't let your teenage parents join a motorcycle gang, Trina, she, her. I mean, here's the thing.

I feel like that's a long-term lifestyle. It's not a trend that you're joining and then, or I would say very uncommon. Because that's in Northern California, where I'm from, there's lots of people who are like hippies that then became bikers that that was what was happening in the North Bay kind of, and you were either kind of like the kind of hippie that looked like a biker,

but you actually owned like a vegetarian sandwich shop or you were literally just dealing meth and whatever. It's weird, it's like, it's lifestyle. Yeah. Anyway, that's I love an inside, a true crime story from the inside kind of. Yeah. I want to see a photo of them back then of lush. Lush. Now I'm scared that I insulted sex's gang name. Don't do it.

Where it's like, hey, I want no beef with either lush or sex. No beef. No beef. Please. Where it's like, hey, I want no beef with either lush or sex. No beef, no beef. Please. Okay, here's my first one. Dear Karen in Georgia, hello from Ireland. Oh yay. This is a bit of a long one,

so I'm going to get straight into it. My grandmother lives in a beautiful, old, three story house in Dublin that's been in our family since her aunt moved in way back in the early 1900s. My grandmother has lived there her whole adult life, raising four children alone after her husband passed away when she was only 30 years old. Oh my God. Not so fun fact, when my grandmother was a single young mother, her neighbors petitioned to kick her and her children off the street as apparently a single mother in Ireland at that time brought down the quote unquote prestige of the neighborhood.

Oh my God. Yeah. But being the independent woman that she is, she said, fuck politeness and is still living there to this day. Nice. Yeah. God forbid any woman be single or independent. About 10 years ago, she was getting work done on the house, which had builders going through the house and into the attic, a place my grandmother probably never, ever stepped foot in in all her time living there. One day, as my grandmother and uncle were having a cup of tea, one of the builders came into the

kitchen, white as a ghost, putting two brown objects onto the table saying, I think we need to call the police. Oh my God. After the police and a full blown forensic team arrived, it was determined that the objects found were two human feet, one child's foot and one adult foot, which still had parts of the leg attached. Preserved from a bog dating back over 2,000 years. Holy shit, bodies of the bog. I mean, of course my whole family were in shock

as to how there had been literal human remains in the attic for all these years. And my 80 year old grandmother was even questioned by the police. Turns out my grandmother's uncle who lived in the house before her was a pathologist who worked in the Midlands where many of these bog bodies and body parts turned up during the cutting of turf and milling of peat. He passed away a few years before they were found, so I guess we'll never know why he decided to bring them home. The feet are now on display in the National Museum in Dublin if you want to go see them yourself.

Wow. Wow. Thank you for everything you do in relation to mental health awareness. And even though my boyfriend is very unsettled by it, your podcast helps me peacefully fall asleep most nights. I love it. Lots of love, IFA, which is spelled A-O-I-F-E. Oh my God. You wanna know how to pronounce that name.

IFA just explained it to all of us. IFA. IFA. That's so pretty. Isn't that incredible? Oh, I wanna be there now. I wanna be there. Like that sounds amazing. Jesus Christ, he put him up in the attic

and now we're all going to jail for it. That's how my grandma would say it. But she's drunk, but do it when she's drunk. Geez, well, I can't do that. That's very disrespectful to my grandmother, who is who I'm doing an impression of from my memory. And she didn't drink. She did not drink.

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domain by using the promo code murder. That's squarespace.com slash murder and use promo code murder to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Goodbye. Okay. I got framed for arson as a child. It just starts, I grew up in a tiny town in Northern California called Olivehurst. Never heard of it.

Never heard of it. That's crazy, right? I've never heard of it. Never heard of it. Although, do they say anything about what it's near? Nope, just Northern California. Can I look really quick? It might be near, oh no, it's right near Yuba City.

Oh, okay, yeah, I would never venture that way. No, you wouldn't, but it's between Sacramento and Chico. You'd stop over at Olivehurst to have a nice milkshake. As most small towns go, there wasn't much for kids to do, so we would hop the fence to get to the area behind the local park that everyone just called the bowl. One time, well, with some friends and some other kids in our class,

we were probably in like sixth grade, we rode our bikes to the park and then hopped the fence to hang out in the bowl. It was partly concrete, but it had a lot of dry grass. One of the people in the group, a kid named John, who I disliked, my best friend had a crush on dry grass. One of the people in the group, a kid named John, who I disliked, but my best friend had a crush on, this will be important later, found a box of matches. Just how every story from your childhood in the 90s starts.

Just a random box of matches. Oh, sorry. I was thinking of like a box of match books. So it's a ton, but it's one small box of matches. I guess so. Found matches. And in his young teenage brain, he decided it would be a great idea to light one of the matches and drop it into the dry grass.

As you can expect, this went poorly. And we quickly realized that we could not actually handle this fire. So we did the logical thing and ran. While attempting to get back on our bikes and flee, I got about one street away before I spoke on my wheel snap and I crashed my bike going over the handlebars and the bike coming down on top of my head. And it says, of course, with no helmet.

My best friend stopped to help me while everyone else kept going. It's a good friend. Yeah. I don't remember how, but the next thing I know, my parents were there while firefighters were busy trying to put out the fire in the bowl. I bet they had a concussion. I bet. You go ass over tea kettle on your fucking bike. As you're hauling ass away from a fire. Totally. Totally. Since my best friend had a crush on John, she made me promise not to tell them that he was the one who started the fire. I, like a fool,

listened to her and said that I didn't know who said it. My parents decided that I must have been the one who set the fire and I was grounded." That's not fair. No. Your honor, no. Were the parents trying to do high pressure, you will tell us? Yeah. And if you, was it that idea? No. It says, even now as a full grown adult, I'm pretty sure they still think

I was the one who set the fire. No. That's not a lot of faith your parents having you. I don't remember getting in trouble with the fire department at least, but I don't think I ever went back to the bowl. Stay sexy and don't take the blame for an arson that you didn't commit, Milo Heave.

Milo, I'm so sorry. What worse injustice is there than being accused of something as a kid and having your parents think it's true? That's right. We believe you here at My Favorite Murder, the murderinos, we believe you. We're on your side.

We believe you. We know you're not stupid enough to pick up matches. Yeah. We'll call your parents and tell them. Yeah, that's right. Or just play this for them. I don't know. Will you play it and then write in their phone number if they're not going along with whatever

it is we're making up right now? Yeah. Yeah, we'll go see them in Olivehurst. We owe that town a stopover. We owe Olivehurst everything. They made us and they can break us. This is a drunk elevator story. Dear wonderful women, your episodes are something I always look forward to

during my work week. Hearing your voices instantly gives me peace, even when you're almost always talking about not peaceful things. It's real weird. It's real, we don't get it either. We don't get it either. Thank you for all that you do.

Y'all are amazing. I also love hearing you try to say y'all. I hate taking on regional trend language because I just feel phony and like I'm doing it wrong. Yeah, y'all is very much not one of your words for sure. I write it, but I don't say it in like emails and shit. Right. It is the kind of thing where I think this podcast

has really opened my eyes to like how often I'm wrong. So those kinds of things where you have to have the kind of blissful ignorance to be like, y'all come in here and come over for dinner party or whatever. It's just like, it doesn't sound, it's, you're not from there. Yeah, but it's gender neutral.

And so you're allowed to adopt it to be able to accommodate everyone. True. You know what I mean? That's a good, yeah, that's a good point. Okay, so it says, I just listened to this week's mini-soad where you said you loved hearing stories of drunk people doing dumb things and elevator stories.

I knew I had to write in this stupid combo from when I was briefly in college at Appalachian State. A group of seven of us were leaving my friend's dorm room, a little stoned and smelling of shitty weed, our underage pockets and jackets shoved with loose cans of cheap beer, most likely PBR. We cheerily loaded up on the very small elevator looking forward to our no doubt mediocre night out.

On our way down, we decided it'd be fun if we all jumped at the same time. Oh my God. Oh my God, I love it. To make the elevator shake. Can you tell our brains were not fully formed? We counted to three and jumped. The weak little elevator jolted and we all looked at each other and let out a nervous

laugh when it stopped moving altogether. We were trapped. The call button on the elevator did absolutely nothing. None of us had cell service and who would we call anyways? The elevator police? Wouldn't you know it? Out of our seven friends, two of us had claustrophobia.

Oh my God. That's a high percentage. I'm just trying to think of like, cause I just went to New York recently and it's, the elevators there are small and like smaller than this, I feel the standard of California elevators where it's a little like roughly two people wide, you know, two, maybe three. Because they had to build, they had to add them. Whereas LA like was like so new that they were already in the plans, right? It was like, let's get this thing six people wide

and see where we can go with it or whatever. I don't know, maybe they're standardized, but there was an elevator that I was in while I was in New York, I was like, this is too small, I don't like it it and it sounds like they had seven people in one of those kind of elevators. At least you know everyone, okay Yeah, that's true. You know everyone but two people have claustrophobia. Okay within a few minutes one friend started joking about establishing a pea corner That's when the panic really set in for me. I Would have been the friend that made that joke for sure.

I curled myself into a little ball in the corner to give myself the illusion of more space and then in parentheses it says, I'm one of the claustrophobic ones. The other truly panicked person, one of my best friends, Jordan, took the initiative to start screaming into the little crack in the elevator doors. Help! Help! To this day, I can hear his goofy sounding cries. No offense, Jordan. He repeatedly yelled that same word for probably 10 to 15 minutes before an RA peered through the small crack and then walked away to call for help. Oh my God. I guess the police were the ones to call since they showed up to rescue us 30 to 40 minutes

into our elevator nightmare. At this point, everyone's buzz had worn off. So we were mostly sober by the time they pried open the doors to pull us out. We had to climb out being pulled up through a two to three foot gap at the top of the elevator door. No. Luckily, no one got cut in half during this rescue, and the elevator police kindly ignored the beer can-shaped lumps sticking out of our clothing. I'm very

grateful that we all had better control over our bladders than our impulses, and we can still laugh about the experience, except for Jordan. To this day, Jordan will only take the stairs. Stay sexy and don't jump around on elevators, Ashley. Oh my God, that's a nightmare. Oh, I mean, it's not fair to name check Jordan so extensively in this email, but there's so many people that would be on Jordan's side and in Jordan's exact position that I don't think there's any shame in being like, oh yes, I can't be in a very small confined space with seven other people.

You don't even have to be quote, claustrophobic for that to be a fucking nightmare. That's not part of the equation necessarily. Correct. Okay, here's my last one. Crazy neighbor story and then in parentheses it says, please read ILY. I love you.

Please read I love you. Oh. Hello, MFM crew. Love to you all. I've been an avid listener since the beginning. When y'all asked for crazy neighbor stories, I decided it was time to write in. First thing to note, my neighborhood has an insane Facebook group. They are so paranoid. Every car, I love this.

Every car that even remotely goes, quote, too suspiciously around the neighborhood gets posted with a caption sort of like, quote, does anyone recognize this car? It was looking like it was casing the neighborhood type stuff. I feel like we have a piece of responsibility in that. Hey, communicate. Yeah, tell your neighbors.

You got to tell everyone. I had minor cosmetic surgery last summer. I was still on narcotics and my dad, who I was staying with, was as usual drunk by 7 PM. We decided we were craving wings and placed a door dash order for Hooters since neither of us were sober to drive. My house is kind of hard to see at night. It's down a long driveway that you could easily miss.

This poor teenage door-dasher calls me and says, I accidentally delivered to the wrong house and now they won't give it back. And they're saying they're calling the police. Oh, my God. I was obviously like, what the fuck? So I walked down there. My neighbor was holding his door closed

with just enough opening to stick out a cell phone and let the girl know he was videoing for, quote, evidence while she was trying to get our food back. And yes, he did call the police. He told them he was delivered a suspicious package. Oh my God. Yeah. He was holding my wings hostage. Two sheriff patrol cars pulled up and then had a good laugh once I explained the situation and they realized it was not a bomb, but in fact, two orders of chicken wings. Also to note, the delivery was clearly in a Hooters bag. Stay sexy and my guests don't trust Hooters wings being delivered to your door. With all the love, Sarah, she, her.

Sarah, thank God that you took the initiative to go and right that wrong. Oh, Jesus. But you know that was like a lonely old person or something trying to start a fight or get a little interaction on a little connection. You think so? Well, because none of it makes sense.

Like if you're claiming you're afraid of that mysterious package, why did you bring it into your house? Yeah. You weren't. I hope they tipped her really well, the door-dash her. Oh my God. The subject line of my last one is,

this is a blimp podcast now. And then it starts, get in losers, we're going blimping. I love it. I was born and raised in Akron, Ohio, And then it starts, get in losers, we're going blimping. I love it. I was born and raised in Akron, Ohio, home of the iconic Goodyear Tire Company. One of their three US based blimps has a home in Akron and it is a common sight to see it flying

in the Northeast Ohio area for no reason. It was so exciting as a child to be at recess and see the blimp flying over your playground. Yeah. I bet. It flies much lower than airplanes and the old model made this distinct humming noise that you could hear overhead. All the kids would run and wave excitedly at it.

As a grown ass adult who now lives in Columbus, two hours from Akron, I still get the same excitement when I see the Goodyear blimp here for an Ohio State football game or some other big event. I still wave at it. I just can't help myself. Of course. Of course you do. Childhood friends that live in other States now always send me pictures if the Goodyear blimp is in their city. I love it. We know you love this blimp. So here. Remember? I love it. We know you love this blimp. Yeah. So here, remember? As it really brings back innocent feelings of childhood for all of us.

Goodyear actually donates blimp rides for charities to sell at auctions, hence the frequent weekday flyovers. My parents bought one back in 2012 and we all were able to ride the blimp along with my grandparents. They casually asked us where we wanted to go. And we had them fly over all of our houses and my old grade school playground. Oh my God. Full circle.

Where do you want to go? Shouldn't there be regulations that tell you exactly? I don't know. And we could have had a world like this if we had given blimps a chance and the Hindenburg had an exploding. It was not scary at all. Just felt like a calm, peaceful floating. So this is my peer pressure to have the two of you get out on that good year blimp in California. 2010 would recommend, this is the content we need.

Can't wait for you to become blimp girlies, your friend Ro Ro. I love it. I'm in, I'm in. I already am a blimp, girly, first of all. Secondly, I'm into, you know what? I want more and more people to write in to explain exactly what the experience is going to be like. And then once we know for sure.

Do you have a blimp story for some reason? Send it in. But it's actually really interesting to know that about that it'll just go where you want. Yeah. Because one time my friend Bradford and I, who works in the Great Lakes office of Exactly Right Company, we were both unemployed and we were in my backyard in my old house sitting around the pool and the Goodyear blimp came toward us and we were like, what the hell? And we're like, at first we were laughing, like that's so crazy.

And then it like came toward us, like toward the backyard multiple times. What I think I realize now is they were probably trying to go over the Warner Brothers lot. Oh, well that makes sense. Which was like three blocks from my house. Yeah, see someone famous. And so I think they were like, oh, look at this.

And then trying to turn around, but it looked like they were like coming to look at us. So unnerving. Oh my God. It's like a hell. It's like a police helicopter, but way less chill. Still pretty chill chill. Very, very chill. So the silent version, the slow silent version of that. Hey guys, thanks for listening. Hey guys, what was this? We appreciate you. If you want one more story from each of us, it's in the fan cult. And at this point, if you have a good story about your family, a blimp, something scary, or a near miss, or your own hometown true crime, which is how this series started,

then please write in at myfavoritemurder.gmail.com that's right and stay sexy and don't get murdered goodbye Elvis do you want a cookie this has been an exactly right production Our senior producer is Alejandra Keck. Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo. This episode was mixed by Liana Squalacci. Email your hometowns to MyFavoriteMurder at gmail.com. And follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at MyFavoriteMurder and on Twitter at MyFaveMurder. Goodbye!