My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 403

Episode Date: September 30, 2024

This week’s hometowns include working for a jeweler and drinking with a trash aunt.  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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Hello! And welcome to the new episode of The Sound. Hello. And welcome to my favorite murder, the mini-sode. This time I pressed record. What a great advantage we have on this episode where Georgia is actually going to be a part of it. I think it's a great idea. Let's keep it like that.

I like it. Let's keep it like that. I like it. Let's keep it and then have you read your email. Okay. This one's called Made Up Dad Stories. It just starts, hey-o. You recently asked for made up stories by parents to make their kids behave, which I am so proud of us for doing. I mean, genius. And voila. Antiquing was a family hobby, but in order to keep his three

young kids excited little hands from grabbing and potentially breaking everything, my dad used to tell us we actually had a fourth sibling, a brother none of us knew, but he was the problem child. He'd touch everything in stores and run around wild. So one day his hands were cut off and he was sent in a boat down the river and never seen again it's still funny i'm sorry it's still funny the second time it's so fucked up it's so fucked up i'm like where is that dad from i don't know what the fuck he told us that this was just what happens when kids misbehave in stores. It sounds like a fucking, it sounds like a plot line to... Game of Thrones?

Yes. Thank you. Jesus. I can vividly remember thinking how crazy it was that I actually had another brother. Anyways, as you can imagine, we grew up to be three very well mannered children and through checking with other family members, learned that there was no other brother. Oh, whew. Still enjoy antiquing and can't wait to pull that on a future child of mine one day. Don't do it. Don't do it.

Don't do it. And then it says PS, he also used to tell us on a day where my mom was out present shopping for Christmas, that my mom had gone to the moon. And that was why she was going to be gone for a while. I'd cry and ask why she didn't say goodbye and hope she had a safe journey. Luckily she always came home. From the moon. From the moon. That one is unnecessary.

That one is teaching no one anything. No, we need to have a conversation with this dad before he becomes a grandpa and gets even worse. I wonder if that dad was thinking, these children are too soft and they need to get, you know, they need to get toughened up a little bit. So we're going to tell them some fucked up stories, have them have their action. The mom walks in and then we just do that enough time so that by the time they get to like high school, no one can touch them. I mean, they're three well-behaved kids. That's a hard thing to do. I'd imagine.

Yeah, you better be when you're fearing for your limbs. I mean, I know I've told you the story probably five times over the years, but it's my favorite story about my sister's friend Adrienne and her three kids, who she would just say, the man's coming. And she would act scared, and then the kids would stop doing anything they were doing. Oh my God. The man's coming or the man can see you. Who's the man?

Right. And like, it's the funniest part to me is that Adrienne is the most, I am not a theater person in any way. But when she, like Laura told me and then Adrienne reenacted it for me and I was like, holy shit, that's the creepiest thing of all time. The man's coming. Oh my god. The man can see you.

I'm going to try that with my nephews. Like she was worried too. All right. Let's take a little left turn. Okay, please. The subject line of this email is loose uncut gems. That's the rated X version of uncut gems. Okay. My people. I had to write in after listening to Karen tell the story of the Antwerp

diamond heist. Karen's description of these lads as both brilliant thieves and big dopes was very entertaining and made me reminisce about my time in the diamond industry back in the early 2000s. Picture a young Irish Catholic girl from the Midwest who had just moved to New York, paying just one month's rent in a shitty apartment in the Upper West Side. I found a job in the nick of time through one of my jam band friends. I met a woman who was a fourth generation jeweler who needed an assistant. She asked me what I knew about diamonds, to which I replied, they are pretty.

For some unknown reason, she hired me. She was more Janis Joplin than high-end jeweler. She wore long skirts, carried a backpack, and was a total stoner. We worked together in a grubby building full of seedy humans, handshake deals, and under-the-table cash operations. Karen's story and the description of the vault security in Antwerp made me laugh to myself. Let's just say my boss was very loose with how she operated both the diamonds and all that cash that she made from her private sales. Her desk drawer was full of job envelopes, pens, paper clips, and scattered

loose diamonds. Jesus. Yes, just diamonds flying around in her desk drawer. She also stuffed her backpack full of cash and would walk around 47th Street with the bag open and cash strewn all over inside. My internal OCD was off the charts most days as I wondered how a person could be so cavalier with thousands of dollars worth of diamonds and actual cash. I'd be running behind her, zipping her backpack. I've had so many people do that where it's like, the strap is off your purse and your shit is hanging on.

Be like, oh, sorry. But I don't have diamonds in my purse. You don't have diamonds. I just have really good lipstick. I'd be running behind her, zipping her backpack and stuffing money back into it. It was very fly by the seat of-seed-ear pants back then. Anyway, the contrast between Antwerp's vault and my experience with my old friend on 47th

Street made me chuckle. You guys are the best, Kate. Just jobs you don't realize, like, illegal shit's going on when you're in your 20s and you're young, and it's like, the best, the best. Also, it's like, if she was a fourth generation jeweler, then she grew up, diamonds were like coasters in my house, right? It's just like, oh yeah, those sure means to an end. Yeah.

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That's 20% off your entire order when you head to r-h-o-n-e dot com slash murder and use code murder. Rhone. For every day, for every you, forever forward. Goodbye. Okay, this one's called Architects Listen to Murder. Mini so 395 follow up just starts listening to the mini so related to the trapped in the bathroom story. That's the one where the kid was trapped in the bathroom and the mom took an axe and knock the whole hell yeah, axe the door down. On my way home from a construction site visit this memory rushed over me so strongly that I'm writing it down immediately.

I was young maybe 10 or 11 when I slammed my bedroom door so hard that it failed to open again. Trapped, I knocked and screamed as loud as I could to alert my mom, who was solidly into her Days of Our Lives episode just downstairs below. When it hit a commercial break, she trekked up the stairs to see what the matter was. When she tried and failed to open the door, yelling at me to make sure it was unlocked, we had no locks, or to stop pulling on the handle when I'm trying to pull on it, she trekked back downstairs to call my dad. She came up about three minutes later and said, you'll have to wait till your father gets home. Four hours from now. No, the wait seemed to be

forever made worse by being able to hear my siblings play out in our backyard in a perfect summer afternoon. My dad got home, came up the stairs and removed the pins from the door hinges and lifted the door panel off the frame. In under 60 seconds, I was free. My dad hollered at my mom. I walked you through how to do this on the phone Rosa. Why didn't you?

She replied to teach her a lesson about not slamming doors in the house. That's right. I guess some moms are willing to tear down a door with an axe and some will let you rot away in a bedroom until you've learned your lesson. Oh, they were in their bedroom for some reason I mixed it up and thought they were in a bathroom. No, we're in a bedroom. Oh, you're fucking fine in your bedroom.

I know, right? Side note, I'm an architect who now, at every opportunity I get, lay outdoors to have their hinges on the outside to be readily accessible to parents needing to bust out their locked-in children and hopefully avoid having to use axes to break them free. Thanks for the laughs, Heather. Heather, I'm sorry I judged you. I didn't realize you were an architect. I didn't bring it all together. But I do think that's funny where,

because like when you're 11, that is the age where you're like, I want to, slam. I want to. Yeah. Slam. We were just talking about that.

It's so sad you can't slam anything anymore. You can't hang up. You can't, you know. Yeah. Everything's very, you have to figure something out. You have to attack people online. That's the better version.

That's the new slamming the phone down. Okay, the subject line of this email is strange tales from a Victorian house. Dear MFM, thank you for your hilarious and informative podcast. I often sprinkle in your stories into my art history lectures. That means we're teachers. I mean, you might. And you can quote me on that. Now my story.

When I was a broke student in the mid-2000s, I rented the attic room in an old Victorian red brick house in North Dublin, Ireland. Oh, come on. Right? The house had many original features, including beautiful stained glass, stucco ceilings and large original sash windows. It also had creaky floorboards, drafts that would whistle like the banshee on a stormy night, and very unreliable electrical wiring. But as I mentioned, I was dirt poor putting myself through post-grad studies on very little

and the room was cheap. Another way of saving a few quid was to buy secondhand books. I had a stack on the floor next to my bed. On days when I couldn't face the world or simply didn't have the money for bus fare, I would pick up a random book and hide in my attic room until I finished my restorative escape into a fictional world. Dream. I think when we're young,

we don't understand that we are living the fucking dream. Is it raining too? Because it's raining. Like stop it now. Do you have a cup of delicious tea? Tea? Is there a cat? I love that there's a cat. Come on, a little jazz in the background. On one particularly stressful poverty stricken occasion, the book I was reading was called Possession by A.S. Byatt. It tells the story of a post-grad student who finds important letters in a book. As I got closer to the end, I folded the back cover and noticed that my book held a surprise

too. Four crisp $50 pound notes fell out. And by a mad coincidence, it just so happened that it was the exact amount I owed my landlady and the main cause of that duvet day of avoidance. Oh my god. So they were hiding in their room because they're like, I'm broke and I can't figure out how to pay the rent. Read a book about a person doing a thing and then you do the thing and then you... okay. That's beautiful. I couldn't remember where I bought the book so I couldn't return it. I still wonder to

this day if a past owner left the money there by accident or it was deliberate given the plot of the book. Either way it got me out of a tight spot. I love this so much. Other strange things happened when I lived there including some possible ghost sightings but I'm skeptical of my own memory due to my student days drinking habits. Anyway, the scariest thing that happened had nothing to do with ghosts. One night I woke up panicking as hands were on my throat. As I struggled, I quickly realized they were my hands. It was a sort of sleep paralysis and it took me a few seconds to move them, terrifying.

Stay sexy and don't strangle yourself in your sleep. Jess, she her. paralysis and it took me a few seconds to move them, terrifying. Stay sexy and don't strangle yourself in your sleep. Jess, she her. Wow, that's so sweet. Jess was really going through it up in that attic room. Yeah, that's, I love that. Yeah. Oh my god, I mean not the strangling part.

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Salutations from the Midwest, longtime listener, first-time writer here. I am sure that you have asked for trash ant stories before and boy, do I have one. My Aunt Jodi was my mom's older sister and sort of the black sheep of the family, you might say. She moved to Nashville from her small Nebraska hometown after college, was married to a convicted felon for a short time, and never looked back.

Hell yeah. She developed quite the Southern accent, smoked Virginia Slims, drank rum and diet cokes, and referred to us all as Yankees whenever she visited, and once inadvertently got me drunk at my grandma's funeral. Oh, that's where that's the place to do it. That's that actually is appropriate. That's right. It was circa 2001. I'm 14ish. My Nana had just passed away after a stroke post cancer surgery. Aunt Jodie flew home for the funeral by being traumatized by my first big loss, refused to leave Nana's house for a week after she died.

In good Midwestern fashion, people brought a bazillion casseroles and frozen meals and other assortments of food. The night after the funeral, several of my aunt's high school friends came over with a bottle of bakari. Yeah. They sat around the table drinking and smoking,

telling stories about Nana and their younger years. It was very entertaining and educational. At one point, my aunt let me have a sip of her cocktail. One sip turned into two, two into three, and so on. At one point, I think she gave me my own drink. She's mixing them up for everyone else. She's making a fucking mess of it. You're going to stay here. It's not a big deal. You're just going to end up throwing it up anyway. I am about two-thirds deep into my drink, and I started to feel the pukes coming on. I book it to the bathroom and proceed to pray to the porcelain gods. I hear both of my aunts outside the bathroom door whispering, Oh my God, is she drunk? How much did you give her? Finally, and Jodi comes in, Oh girl, you must have drank too many Mountain Dews.

I looked at her like what the fuck? And then she said it again with eyebrows raised. I looked at her like, what the fuck? And then she said it again with eyebrows raised. Ah, yes, I agreed. It was definitely the Mountain Dew. I drank water the rest of the evening and woke up feeling just fine. She was one of the driving forces in me going back to school at 30 to get my nursing degree.

I loved her stories about being a badass nurse in a large county jail in Tennessee where the inmates would lovingly call her Miss Jodel. Aunt Jodi passed away at the height of COVID from end stage heart failure. I miss her every day. Some days I just want to hear her voice and I'll play the last voicemail she left me and smile.

She was a spitfire and was always willing to answer my phone calls that usually consisted of talking shit about her sister, AKA my mother, who I love dearly, by the way. Anywho, thanks for reading. Stay sexy and don't let your little knees drink too much, quote, Mountain Dew. Whitney. It's Whitney spelled W H I T and I and then it's pronounced Whitney. And then it says the eye throws people off. Yeah. I mean tell me about it. The eye throws people off. In Georgia? Me? No. I mean as in me. Just as a

person you throw people off? That almost made me cry. Aunt Jodie is a very real person in my mind now and I love that fucking story. I love that she smoked Virginia Slims. I love that she was a badass nurse. Like, hell yes. I'm gonna be like her one day. Yeah. Wait, she was giving her Bacardi? Was that the, was it rum?

Bacardi is like rum and cokes. Gross. Diet cokes, ew. I can taste it now. As a big teen drunk barfer, you don't go anywhere near rum. There's no reason to go anywhere near rum. Even as an adult, I don't fucking touch rum. That's just bad night.

It's just sugary. And also it's so easy to drink. It's so delicious and such a good, it mixes so easily. It tastes like mistakes. Yeah. Okay, here's my last one. I'm not going to read the subject line. It says, Hi, murder besties. So much love and gratitude for your both. But I'm a Karen, so let's get right to the story. That makes me think of like, I saw somebody in public recently who was like, Hi, I'm really sorry. They literally were crouching over and whispering like I was going to hit them in the face. And I was like, this is the best thing I've ever done.

This just seemed like the most irascible, like unapproachable person. I live in the Yukon in Canada. Ooh, the Yukon. Holy shit. And this hometown is a legend. In fact, I had to look it up to see if it was true. In the early 80s, during the breakfast rush at a hotel cafe right across from the police station, a man was murdered in front of all the staff and patrons.

Legend has it the customer sent back his eggs because they weren't cooked to his liking. The cook stormed out of the kitchen and stabbed him in the chest with a large kitchen knife more than once and the victim died of these, and the murderer later turned himself in and was charged with second-degree murder. Holy shit. I mean, horrifying. Yeah. Just, good lord.

Okay. Yeah. Also today on the Minnesota, Karen jokingly asked for fucking in public stories. Do you remember that? I kind of remember. I didn't think I worked blue like that. I didn't think I worked blue like that. Oh, remember? Because they were having sex on the roof of the apartment in New York and the cops burst in. That's right. That's right. I've thought about that story multiple times because the woman tells us she's a woman of

color. She's like, it was really embarrassing. But also I'm lucky they didn't kill me where I'm like, Jesus fucking Christ. I know. Jesus. Okay. About 28 years ago when we were young and dumb, my now husband and I took a four by four ride up to the top of a large hill that overlooks our town. The obvious part you can guess, but we soon realized in the middle of the deed. So basically they start, they get up to the top of this hill and they're like, well, I

guess we were, we better have sex. Jesus. So the obvious part, you can guess, but we soon realized in the middle of the deed that this hill is in the direct flight path of where every single plane lands at our only airport. I'm betting we gave quite the show to everyone on that plane that flew over not far above us,

and every time I fly home over that hill, I remember that moment. Oh. Stay sexy, Wendy. Wow. Twist and turns. Lots going on up in the Yukon. My god.

I always think someone's watching me, like, at all times, no matter what. So I don't think I'd be brave enough to do that. And I recently found out that that's actually a symptom of ADHD is that you think you're being constantly observed. Yeah, that makes sense. I'm not fucking outside. So I can barely fuck inside.

I think someone's watching, Jesus. Also, I don't want the criticism. Everyone's got notes for everything. That's right. Well, thanks for listening. Send us whatever the fuck your story happens to be. I mean, clearly, we just want human experiences to be related to us at this point. Yours is valid.

We want to hear it. Definitely. Also, stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie? Ah! This has been an Exactly Right production. Our senior producer is Alejandra Keck. Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo.

This episode was mixed by Liana Squillace. Email your hometowns to MyFavoriteMurder at gmail.com. And follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at My Favorite Murder and on Twitter at MyFaveMurder at gmail.com. And follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at MyFavoriteMurder and on Twitter at MyFaveMurder. Goodbye.