My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 40

Episode Date: October 9, 2017

On this week’s My Favorite Murder minisode, Karen and Georgia read your hometown stories from Detroit and Toronto including spooky happenings from a nurse, a fingerprint dust date night, a teen that worked with a serial killer, and more.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. Are we recording? Sweet. Let's start this mother. Hi. Hi. We're in a hotel room that looks like it could be in the shining. Yeah, this is like the smallest conference room. This is like a child's conference room. Yes. Also, this is my favorite murder. Oh,

hi. The mini-soad. We're doing a mini-soad on the road. Yeah. Well, but we're downtown Los Angeles. I mean, we're at Podfest, LA Podfest. Yeah. It'll be over by the time you hear this. It was great. Everybody killed it. Thanks for coming. So many people, met so many lovely people. We really did. This is the mini-soad where we read you back your hometown murders that you email us at my favorite murder at Gmail. And this week, we're doing it in a room that is the true color of mustard in the worst way possible. This was last painted in 1974, I will guess. Yes. So we've got a deep French's situation happening. And I'm pretty sure the carpet is going to give me a seizure

from its busyness. Yep. Are we in Twin Peaks or The Shining? This is a hybrid. A crossover. Kind of like today's marijuana, where they have taken the worst of two things and combined them to give you a heart attack. Listen, do you want, look and listen. Don't smoke pot. Don't do things that you can't see before. Let us describe it in vivid detail for you. Have you ever had a bird shit on your car? And there is, yes, it's black, yes, it's white, but there's a very, very tiny, like light strand of yellow. That's the color of these walls. It's the kind of thing where when you cut into an egg at a shitty diner, you're like, that's not the right color of egg yolk.

Yeah. But somebody that designs rooms at this hotel was like, that's exactly the right color. That's the one. It goes great with the burgundy and tan carpet. With kind of like leafy medallions, like somebody's getting a carpeting award, but it's on the ground and it's permanently, you never actually get it. You just have to look down. I mean, let's be at least Stevens here. And we can just stay that gaze upon him. Steven secured this room for us. And so of course, we're eternally grateful and in no way have a lack of gratitude. It's not totally as fault.

What if the designer here, but don't want her to tell is a listener and she is weeping openly right now. She's like, that color mustard was the Pantone color of the year in 2007. She's a ghost. She was a ghost when she designed this room. Yeah. So which means she sees in black and white. So she doesn't even know what color this is. She's like a dog. She picked these beautiful, she said, let's not go with natural lighting. Let's go with fluorescent. Got to go fluorescent if you're in a conference room.

Listen, fluorescent fucking recessed lighting. This is like the smallest bat mitzvah ever thrown for any juice. Definitely. It's this as if you were an orphan juice. You turned 14 and your distant aunt is like, no, we're going to the Biltmore, but we only need one table, but we want our own room. One tiny table. That's the other thing is there's one tiny table. Yeah. This, it barely holds the three of us and it's in a, it's in a banquet room.

Four chairs. One is empty and it's for the ghost who designed this room. It's for the ghost decorator. They were like interviewing people and they're like, well, that first guy wearing the necrotift seemed like he knew his stuff, but I like the lady you could see through. I'm going to give it to her. She needs a job. She looks hungry. All right. Should we do this? Let's do it. Did you hear me belt directly into the microphone?

No, cause you did it very subtly. Thank you. I was a ghost burp. We just went, we just went to tender greens, tender greens for when you want to belch. This is just a short ad. Okay. Ready? This first one says the subject line is buck eyes and nursing ghost stories. Stephen, if this nursing ghost story is about a dead baby nursing, it's dead mother. I'm going to get really mad at you. No, he's shaking his head now.

Okay. Hello, lovely ladies and nicely stashed Stephen parentheses and adorable animals. He's picking these now so that he gets complimented. Absolutely. Look at all of these. Stephen, Stephen. Okay. It was such a pleasure to see all three of you in Detroit and I'm still on cloud nine from the meat and green. Oh, sorry, but it's kind of funny. What are you from the sixties?

Anyway, she loves it. I, she loves it when I give her shit. Okay. Okay. I'm a critical care nurse in a medical intensive care unit, basically critical care, critical care is where people are on life support and on continuous life saving medications in my hospital, which is approximately four, 1400 beds. We account for 30% of all hospital deaths and average a death a day. Oh, they should get better at their jobs. Well, no, I don't think they can. That's not the point.

It's at a certain point. There's no getting around it between death and dying and being a murderer. No, I have some odd dinner topics. Love her. Considering how many deaths we've had, needless to say, there's been some odd things that have happened. We had a patient whose last name was Isod changed name changed for medical privacy reasons. Oh, so that's a fake name. Okay. I hope. And was with us for three weeks. The patient died in a not very pleasant way. And the next patient in that room was talking to himself. One of my fellow nurses went into the room and asked the new patient who he was talking to,

he pointed to one of the corners and said, Oh, just my friend, Isod. There was also one room which three different patients all said, there are seven people in this room. Oh my God. The patients were all admitted months apart from each other. But the fact that they all said the same thing is just beyond crazy. A handful of us feel like different rooms feel worse than others. Either the weight of the room feels heavy or there's a weird smell. No. Then tonight, no shit.

Are you all right? Then tonight, one of our alarms showed a dying heartbeat. A bunch of us ran into the room and realized the room was empty. No, no. Oh my God, this room just creeped me out a bit more. It's getting mustardier in here. It was a great wave form, the heartbeat tracing on the monitor. So beep, beep.

I just wanted to do that. You knew what I was talking about and I explained it anyway. Immediately. No, no, no. You got it. But no one was attached to it. What? Uh-huh. That happened three different times. My husband and I are huge comedy nerds.

Every time you bring up Joe de Rosa, I always chuckle. We talked to him for a little bit last year during the Edberg Fringe Festival. Because he recognized my husband, I appreciate all three of you so much. Say sexy. Do your advanced directives and watch out for spirits in a critical care unit. Crystal in Cleveland. Crystal Cleveland. Oh my God, that was scary.

Beautiful. I love it. This room is haunted. Right. It's haunted with that one blue sequence on the ground. Oh my God. That fell off the Bot Mitzvah's dress. That's the clown that the Bot Mitzvah great aunt hired. Who murdered all of that?

Okay. Okay. Here's one. Because that was more ghosty, really. That was good. That was a ghosty. A good ghosty, Steven. All right.

This is just, okay, here we go. Hello. I just started listening to the My Favorite Murder podcast and I love it. In the first three episodes, you ask listeners to send murder stories. Oh, guess what, Olivia? We keep doing it. Yeah. I think that happens the whole time.

From their hometowns. I'm not sure if you're still doing that. Oh, this bitch hasn't listened at all. Girl, you listened to one and got out. I thought I would send a few over. Let's just go right to this one. Near the town where my dad grew up, about 15 minutes away from where I live now, there was a serial killer who murdered two women in the 80s.

His name is James. His name is James Kodach. He had been previously arrested for the murder of his roommate when he lived in Florida after 11 years. He got out of jail and moved to Moorstown, New Jersey. And two months after moving, he murdered Amy Hoffman. She had been kidnapped from a shopping mall and stabbed. Her body was found in a water tower.

12 days later, Deirdre O'Brien, who had gone to school with my dad and aunts, was kidnapped from her car and stabbed. I believe Kodach put sirens on his car and pretended to be a police officer pulling her over. Hate that one. Not fair. Not fair. Kodach, I don't know if I'm even saying that close to right, but I sound confident about it.

That's all that matters. He was arrested after he cut himself and went to the police claiming that the man who was murdering women in town had tried to kill him. What the fucking fuck? How about just stay away from the police station, dipshit? I mean, I don't want to give him advice on how to not get caught. Yeah, that would be a bad idea. But still.

That's how bossy and controlling I am. I even want to give people advice on how to not get caught being a serial killer. I want to tell you why you're wrong for having been caught. That's right. Even though I want you to get caught. I just see it so clearly that I feel like you would benefit from my wisdom. Everyone needs to take our advice. Yeah.

The police instantly knew something was off, you think, and quickly realized Kodach was murdered, had murdered the two women. My mom also grew up in the area and remembers not being allowed to go out at night while this was happening. Wow. My dad worked at the gas station in the area during high school. After Kodach was arrested, he realized that he had been buying cigarettes from him at this gas station on a relatively consistent basis. Not sure how to end this email with a subject matter this dark. Well, I hope you enjoy question mark my hometown murders.

I love your podcast, Olivia. Olivia, it's not. First of all, yes, we did. I mean, the word isn't in joy, but what it is is holy shit. We're holy shitting along with you. Yeah. It's not weird how many serial killers you've never heard of. Yes, because there's so many. So many.

But also, I would say this isn't serial killer. It's three or more. Yeah. He almost made it. He could have. He's just a plain old lunatic. He would have done it if he didn't slit his own wrists. That's right.

If he didn't get his weird plan of trying to make himself look like a victim. Yeah. You nut. Okay. Okay. The subject line of this one is Bernardo plus Mocha plus six degrees of Kevin Bacon. Hello, MFM family. Smiley face icon made with punctuation. I attended the live show in Toronto last night and was blown away by your coverage

of the Bernardo homoca story. Oh, that was mine. Oh, I remember one which is so well known in Canada. It's hard to believe there was more to learn from it. But you're during your show, I did. Well, that's the ultimate compliment. Yeah. Because the reason I was redoing it is because I fucked it up so badly the first time.

That means the world. The fact that you told them stuff that they don't know after having followed this case for like a decade. Oh my God, how rewarding. Compliment almost makes me think I should do research all the time. I thought a very interesting bit was when you mentioned at the end that Carl Mocha took on the assumed name of Leanne Thiel, that's interesting and extremely creepy because both Bernardo and homoca adopted the Thiel name either right after they married or just before Bernardo's trial.

Bernardo adopted that from a little known movie starring Kevin Bacon. I do know this movie entitled Criminal Law. Did you ever see it? No. Also starring, it's from 1988. Also starring Gary Oldman. Who knew there was six degrees of Kevin Bacon with the Bernardo-Homoca murders? Oh my God.

I think the fact that Homoca re-adopted the name after she was freed is extra creepy and a nod to the fact that she definitely had no problem participating in the murders. This article also described Paul Bernardo's attempt to release self-published books via Amazon and the immediate backlash that happened when he did that. Oh, she included a live link. I think that's what she's talking about, the article. One more thing, Stacy Mae Fowles is a fantastic writer. That's the girl that I did the quote from who wrote that great article.

I was unaware you mentioned it that she had written that article in the walrus but came to know her from her other writings, her Twitter account and her newly released book, Baseball Life Advice, which chronicles her journey through depression and anxiety and how she alleviated that via following baseball in the Toronto Blue Jays specifically. It's a great read. I thought you should know. That's awesome. As always, thank you for everything you do in your amazing show last night, S.S.D.G.M.

Adam. You know, it's so interesting about the teal thing that he's mentioning now that we know is that she was giving a message to him for sure. That's like doing an inside joke. She broke up with him. She was like, I want nothing to do with him. I had nothing. He made me do these murders.

Yeah. You know, she had to show that to the public. No, she was like. Inside joke. Inside fucking joke. And also that actually is such a good movie. It's along the lines of presumed innocent. The Harrison Ford movie where you really don't know.

You are being led to believe that Kevin Bacon is this evil murderer. Don't tell anyone else. Okay. I'm going to watch it. It's really good. It's just one of those like you kind of don't know what's going on the whole time. And it's really good. Love it.

But also, yeah, that's fucked up because they basically that's being like, I'm going to move to Montreal and change my name to Clary Starling. Yeah. I mean, it's, but that's what it is. But it's like, because my ex will know. Yeah. Ew. Grotty.

They just continued to disgust all these years later. But she's the worst part is she's out of prison. That's right. All right. This is called fingerprint dust date night. Detroit. What did you? Sorry.

Finger print dust date night. Oh. Don't know what that's going to mean. I'm loving it. Hello, ladies, Steven and adorable animals. We're on to you, Steven. I'm a huge fan of your podcast, not only for bringing true crime founds out of the shadows, but for your hilarious commentary, support a friendship and honesty about your struggles

with mental health and addiction. Nope. She wrote addition. Your mental health and addition. Oh, all those additions you keep putting on your apartment? Well, we always say that we are a math. So she's not wrong. My idea is like it's the Winchester Mystery House or we just keep building additions.

Additions and we don't know subtraction. And we cannot add. As someone who is trying to be open about my own troubles with mental health hearing, each episode brings me a feeling of solidarity. I have to say that I love Steven's voice to smiley face. Steven. Steven. Stop adding shit in.

Tina Belcher, get on that mic and let the people hear your voice. She doesn't have one. Oh, hi. Sexy, the sexiest. My interest in true crime started at a fairly, fairly young age. Thanks to my father, my dad, well, an amazing man did not always know how to filter or word things for kids. Even now I have to remind him that NCIS and bluebloods aren't really age appropriate viewing

material for my five year old. Yeah, not really. My grandfather was a mounted police officer in Detroit. Oh, and my father always wanted to follow in his footsteps. In 1967, while in college, my dad was hired as a campus police officer for the East for Eastern Michigan University. During the co-ed murders in Ypsilanti, the various police forces banded together to try to locate the serial killer later found to be John Norman Collins.

I fucking, there's a great book called Michigan murders about this whole case. It's really good. My dad was a very, was a very eager officer and was thrilled to join the investigation due to his hardworking nature as well as my dad's physical appearance and age. The police officers felt that he could be very helpful in undercover operations. When Collins was arrested for Karen Sue Benjamin's murder, the police believed that he had an accomplice, Andrew Julian Manuel, who was on the run in an effort to trap that accomplice. My father was assigned to live in John Norman, she wrote John Normal Collins apartment undercover

in hopes that in hopes of catching the accomplice when he returned as he lived in the same boarding house. My mother remembers helping my father pack up Collins belongings and cleaning up the fingerprint dust that still remained from the investigation. I have to say the thought of my dad living undercover for several months in an effort to catch a murderer always blows me away. I didn't know that that happened in the case. That's amazing.

My dad's stories of this of his time as a police officer during college fascinated me and this interest in John Norman Collins is what's spread to a larger interest in true crime. My aunt who went to the same college at the time actually met Collins. At one point, he had given her roommate a ride on his motorcycle, which is one of the ways he got women to come with him and killed them and offered my aunt a ride as well. My aunt specifically remembered the look in his eyes made her uncomfortable and despite his attractiveness because he was super hot. That's what I was just going to say.

He was the hot guy, right? Dude, so hot. Yeah. She declined politely, I believe. No fuck, fuck, politeness needed. Well, later it's discovered that Collins often offered girls rides as a way to abduct them. So my aunt went with her, got stayed sexy and did not get murdered. Amazing.

The picture of where John Normal Collins lived at the time of the last of the murders he committed was pictured in a recent book, Tear in Ypsilanti by Gregory Forner. The picture is attached. My dad and mom remember talking to the landlady about Collins often and she always swore up and down. Johnny was such a nice boy. Of course. Right.

Anyway, sorry for the long hometown murder. I can't wait to see you guys this week in Detroit. Already happened. SSDGM Katie. Oh, yeah. Nice. All right. Do we do one more?

Yeah. Let's do one more. Okay. Do we have a live guest? I guess just came in the door. Ghost. Okay. Looking for a better cooking routine?

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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. Hey, I'm Arisha. And I'm Brooke. And we're the hosts of Wondery's podcast, Even the Rich, where we bring you absolutely true and absolutely shocking stories

about the most famous families and biggest celebrities the world has ever seen. Our newest series is all about the incomparable diva, Whitney Houston. Whitney's voice defined a generation and even after her death, her talent remains unmatched. But her incredible success hit a deeply private pain. In our series, Whitney Houston, Destiny of a Diva, we'll tell you how she hid her true self to make everyone around her happy and how the pressure to be all things to all people led her down a dark path.

Follow Even the Rich wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. All right. The subject line of this is a Toronto hometown. I worked with the Angel of Death when I was 15. Oh my God. Hi, gang. I got a Wicked Hometown Murderer, but a serial killer nurse for y'all.

Where are you from? When I was 15, because that's Boston and that's the South, but this person is actually from Toronto. She's from all over. She's that's right. She's an Army brat. Yeah. Okay.

When I was 15, I worked as a student nurses aid at this super shady nursing home in Woodstock, Ontario. Cool. No, not the Woodstock. This one is the Dairy Capital of Canada. Same. That's what I was thinking of. Yeah.

I love to learn. So there was this nurse at the home named Beth Elizabeth, and then full name Elizabeth Wett Loffer, and I worked with her from 2010 to 2013, which happened to be right smack dab in the middle of her active killing spree. In 2007, Beth started working at this nursing home. And in that first year, she tried to kill two old lady sisters by injecting them with insulin, but they survived. Apparently it's pretty hard to accidentally overdose people with insulin.

So it's pretty intentional if someone does administer a lethal dose. Between 2007 and 2014, she killed eight seniors and attempted to kill four more along with two aggravated assaults from before, making her Canada's first female serial killer. During her confession, Beth said she felt that God was telling her to kill who to kill next, or that the seniors were mean and difficult. So she just killed him. Jesus Christ. Sorry.

That's not, it's not funny. It's like, what are you talking about? Right. But that I have a nervous reaction that when I'm very upset about things, I just start laughing. That's what this podcast is. That's why we're here. Yeah. Okay, great.

So you're not mad at me? Oh my God, no. After she was killed, she said she felt a cackling from the pit of hell, that's in quotes, within her. And then in parentheses, what the fuck does that even mean? She apparently had confessed to the murders to a former girlfriend, a pastor, a lawyer, a narcotics anonymous sponsor, and a student nurse. And no one did anything except to tell her to stop or pray for her or some shit.

Sorry to give advice again to fucking serial killers, but don't tell anyone. Right. I mean, and also, if you're going to tell someone because you want to be stopped, don't pick the lamest people in your, in your life. Or the people who won't believe you. Yeah, or the people who kind of don't have the guts to do anything. And they're just like, you should pray. You're so silly.

What's her name, Margaret? You're so silly. What's her name, Margaret? Sounds like a Margaret. Okay. So almost exactly one year ago today, Beth went to a mental health institution in Toronto and fessed up for the sixth fucking time, I might add, and that she'd killed eight old people and they contacted the police.

Beth pled guilty and immediately on, oh, pled guilty immediately. And on January, on June 26, 2017, like this was three fucking months ago, you guys, it's crazy. She was sentenced to eight concurrent life sentences in prison with no possibility of parole for 25 years. Some other weird shit she did while she was actively killing. When asked if rumors about her being a murderer were true, Beth started, quote, laughing hysterically as you do. Oh, and then it says in parentheses, cover Elvis's ears for this one.

No. She offered to put down her neighbor's sick cat with a lethal, a lethal dose of insulin. No, thanks. Um, she says parentheses, I'm a student veterinarian and this one makes me so sad. And then finally, she, she published some weird ass poems online about a woman, quote, quenching her craze, uh, by stabbing someone to death. And another about how much she likes old people, quote, their wrinkles, their frailty, their smell, knowing this is their last home.

Ew, Margaret. Super fucked up. A, I also forgot to mention that Beth went to high school with my mom, gotta love small towns, fuck politeness and stay out of the forest, Amy. Oh my God. That's super nuts. Margaret, stop killing people. Margaret, her name's Elizabeth.

Elizabeth, Elizabeth Margaret. Stop killing people. Margaret is short for Elizabeth. I almost said, really? Jesus, I'm so gullible. Um, I think that's it. Yeah, that's it. Send your hometowns to my favorite murderer at Gmail.

And stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Bye. Mustard.