My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 405

Episode Date: October 14, 2024

This week’s hometowns include safe deposit box contents and a ghost story from Halifax, Nova Scotia. 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

This is exactly right. It's super important to be safe around transit. Super important. Because you never know who's following your lead. You never know. So at a train crossing, wait until the lights stop flashing and the arms lift before you cross. Before you cross. Trains move really fast. Like, way faster than you.

Way faster than you. See? Safe riding sets an example. An example for me. Because safety is learned. Safety is learned. OK, stop that. Stop that. Seriously.

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Terms and conditions apply read you your stories. It's the same every time. But it's fun to have things explained to you. You want to go first? Sure. This one's funny. I'm not going to read you the title. Hey, ladies. Hope you are well. Thank you for your podcast. It's great. And I love it. Nice. So I used to live in a small town right outside of Toledo, Ohio. I lived in the same house since

birth and nothing really crazy would happen in this town. Here and there, you'd get a drunk wandering soul from one of the four bars in town coming to knock on your door because they are confused that you aren't their mistress looking for a one-night stand. Or the carnival workers that came into town once a year that would fist fight in your front yard. But that's no harm. When I was 12, my parents started to let me walk the town with friends and ride my bike wherever. We had a 7-Eleven down the block from us and I would almost daily go and get myself a half and half Arnold Palmer after school.

That's mature for a 12-year-old, right? Yeah, it's very, very refined tastes. Yeah, it was cheap and my parents had me on a tight budget of no dollars a week. So that 99 cent tea changed my life. So I'm trottin' my happy 12-year-old ass to 7-Eleven after school one day. When I get to the door, I didn't fuck politeness because let's be for real, I'm 12. I held

the door open for this man who walked in, but he had more important things to do than say thank you. I won't lie, I was a little offended that he didn't say thank you or anything. But that wasn't going to screw up my attitude because I go and grab my tea and go to the counter to pay for my drink. Of course, I pay in quarters and dimes. I had my money ready to go and counted it out. I noticed the guy I let in was pacing the store and looking like he didn't know what he needed.

But I didn't care because I had one thing on my mind, my tea. I paid, I said my thank you, and headed out. Sure enough, on my little walk home, I hear sirens and I see police rushing down the road. The guy who was in the 7-Eleven with me robbed the place at gunpoint after I left. And then he decided to run. So when the story hit the news, the only picture they had of this man was him entering the store, which conveniently had me in the background holding the door for the suspect at hand. Yes, just a surveillance picture of me and a robber was plastered on a six o'clock news. They ended up finding the guy and arresting him.

I won't lie. It traumatized me just a little bit, but not too much. Yeah, just a little. It would. That's how you get funny. It's just a little bit, but not too much. Keep making a change like you do on a daily. Xoxo, the girl who held the door for the 7-Eleven robber. Yeah, you'd be so excited to see yourself on TV and then it looks like you're an accomplice. Yeah, you're like the most popular kid at school

for fucking sure, right? Until people are like, wait a second, I can't trust you because you're an accomplice. They should have blurred their face out, but they didn't. I mean, you would think also, cause it's a minor. Yeah. No, no, just this polite child will also be featured. Okay, so the subject line of this email

is that classic hometown. And it says, hello, Karen, Georgia, pets and producers. I've been a listener since my cousin told me about you guys in 2016. Hey, Shelby. Shelby. My next album will be called Hey Shelby! I love listening to you guys when I need a good pick-me-up from my boring everyday life

or when I'm trying to lull my five-month-old daughter to sleep. She's truly a day one murderino. Oh yeah, from her life. Your mini-sodes contain so many fun stories, but I have a classic hometown for you guys. All names have been changed for privacy. Sometime in the 1980s, in a very small west Texas town, my dad was in high school and had his group of guy friends. One of his friends, we'll call him Sam, went on a ski trip with his parents to Colorado, where they had their own cottage in the mountains. Down the street,

Sam's aunt and uncle had their own cottage. One night while on their trip, Sam went to his cousin's cabin to hang out and play games with the family. It started to get late, so Sam said he would just walk back home to his cabin with his dog. That night, Sam's mom calls Sam's aunt and asks if he's going to stay the night over there since it was almost midnight and he hadn't returned. His aunt told them that he had left hours ago. Sam was missing. A search party was underway, but all they found was Sam's dog who was alive. The family never gave up hope and continued to hold search parties for Sam every other month. Two years after searching, they found the body of a

boy who had been beaten to death that resembled the age Sam was when he went missing. They sent the body in for forensics, sure that this was Sam, but the dental records came back and showed that it was another boy who had gone missing around the same time. To this day, the family still holds search parties every two months, looking for anything that could possibly give insight

to what really happened to Sam. My dad still really hasn't gotten over losing one of his closest friends so suddenly. Thank you for reading my true hometown. I love everything y'all do for the mental health community and for allowing hometowns like my own to have their stories be heard. SSDGM, Bella, she her. Oh my God. Why can't they find the person who did that? That's like bananas. Well, can't find even any evidence. It reminds me, even though it's a movie, not true, but it reminds me of the lovely bones

where she just gets taken and in this way where there's nothing to find. Totally. So horrible. When it comes to gift giving, we all know it's the thought that counts. But you know what counts for double? Jewelry.

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I've enjoyed the podcast for a long while now. Thank you for providing great entertainment, storytelling, and the laughs. On a fairly recent episode I heard, I recall you asking, what do people put in their safe deposit boxes? So I thought I I recall you asking, what do people put in their safe deposit boxes? So I thought I would give you some insight. I've worked in the branch banking industry for two decades. I'm sorry to say that most safety deposit boxes contents are very boring. Think deeds of trust for properties, car titles, et cetera. Employees at the bank are not supposed to know or get involved with clients safe box contents. However,

that does not always stop the rare client from showing employees some of their treasures. I've seen a collection of large colored diamonds a client would buy from Switzerland. That's just like someone putting them away and being like, I want, I need to show these to someone. Hey, bank employee who's got your back to me, come fucking look at this. You have to come because I can't keep them in my house. They're making me paranoid. It's totally like the trap of greed or whatever. I need to have them, but I have to hide them, but you need to know they're here. But I need someone to acknowledge their beauty. They would fly the diamond over to the USA, and an armored car would deliver them to his house.

My favorite was the yellow diamond. Another client kept her historical candelabras in her box. Like, can I hang out with that fucking person, please? How did they fit in there? That's insane. I don't know. There's probably like PO boxes where

you can get different sizes. Oh, yeah. I'm always only thinking of the little slidey one with the teeth in it. Listen to this. And would retrieve them for dinner parties and return them the next day. Fucking Bach and all, and you know it. So smart. Craziest fucking parties.

Some folks put rare coins or silver dollars, expensive jewelry they do not wear often, and sometimes it's a way to hide tangible assets from family. I can imagine that the banks in large banking cities have safe boxes that contain large amounts of diamonds and gold, but that's not usually found on Main Street banks. Cash, ammunition, and weapons are not permitted in safe boxes, but like how would they fucking know, right? Well, they're there when they put them in. Yeah, but they can't watch them put anything in there. They would have, they couldn't bring a weapon into a bank. I don't know. We need more answers, clearly.

Yeah. Well, also, I think it's like, here's the rule. Are you going to break the rule at this place that has security guards and probably cops on the, like, everywhere possible? But the thing that they said about, we're not supposed to know or get involved with the client's safe contents, like then so that they'd leave them alone with it, right? So you could just fucking stick it.

I don't know. It sounds like I'm planning something, but I'm not. Although we suspect a fair amount of people do store some cash in them. Most people do not realize that safe boxes and their contents are not insured by the bank. A storm could flood the bank and your box and ruin your cash. Ooh, I know. If a safe box goes five years without payment of rent, we are required by law to drill the box with two people watching, inventory

the box and then guess what they do with them? This is like, you'd want it to be storage wars. Throw it in the air, just throw it as high as they can. And then whoever catches it gets it. Yeah, that's right. And send the contents to the state. I believe it remains in the state's possession for a certain time before it's liquidated and turned into cash for the state. Pay your safety deposit box rent.

And then it just says, Ali. I mean, thank you so much Ali for giving us, that's insight, anything. I just Ali for giving us that's insight. Anything. I just want to know anything that's going on in there. Because also the idea, the story that begins to tell itself of like you're hiding cash and not depositing cash. You're choosing the way less safe choice to be secretive.

What is this cash from? What are you doing? Because you don't want your ex-husband to get his fucking grimy paws on it. Because you're a bank robber, then you robbed that very bank and you brought the cash back and... That's weird. They can tell it was theirs. They like, they know their own cash.

They get the vibe, the cash vibe. Okay, the subject line of this email is Halifax explosion ghost story slash classic hometown. Ooh. Hi, Karen and Georgia. I was embarrassingly excited when I heard my hometown of Halifax, Nova Scotia mentioned on a recent mini episode covering the Halifax explosion. You were so excited that you didn't realize it was a main episode that I had covered the

Halifax explosion. Yeah. But that's okay. Nearly every Haligonian, as we're referred to, it's either Halajonian or Haligonian, but I think it's Haligonian. Haligonian sounds better. Haligonian does sound better. Has their own ghost story to tell.

Perhaps a sighting of two Victorian ladies wandering the staircase of the now restaurant which once served as the Titanic's morgue. Or that of the great lady whose spirit roams the Halifax Citadel, a former British military fort, mourning her lost love. As you can imagine, there's also a fair share of folklore surrounding the tragic Halifax explosion. Some tales are much too outrageous to be true, but the story I have today, which takes place in one of Halifax's oldest buildings, bears the scars to prove it. This is the mysterious story of the face in the window at St. Paul's Church.

Despite being several miles away from the Narrows, the windows of the church were blown out at the time of the explosion. To this day, a piece of original window frame remains in the entryway with a plaque that reads, A Relic of the explosion. The most curious relic though, is the profile of a man's face that appears in the window. As the story goes, at the exact moment of the explosion, the deacon was standing parallel to a window facing the narrows. The intense heat of the explosion etched his profile on the glass to be seen for all of time.

There's no earthly reason for why, despite several attempts at replacing and cleaning the glass, this shadowy silhouette reappears time and time again, almost as if the old building refuses to allow the city to forget the tragic events of that day. There are many photos online where the mysterious profile can clearly be seen. I actually saw it. I looked it up. It's big. It's weird.

Or if you take a walk down Argyle Street, it's very likely you'll catch a glimpse of the figure staring down at you from the upper window of this national historic site. And that's from Ali She Her. That's creepy. I'm going to look it up. Have you ever wished you had a mentor guiding you through life? And how great would it be if that mentor was a beloved celebrity? With Masterclass, you can learn from the best to be your best. Masterclass is the only streaming platform

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Hi ladies, I've been a listener since 2018, written in before, no avail, love you both, let's get into it. Half of my life growing up was spent with my dad a few hours outside of Portland, Oregon, yay, divorced parents. Every autumn, he'd take me and my siblings to this farm stand and pumpkin patch called Lone Pine Farms.

They had everything, livestock, petting zoos, playgrounds, pumpkin patches, apple picking, et cetera. One of our favorite parts of this event as children was the playground, of course, particularly the little dinky merry-go-round. One particular day, there were a bunch of older kids on the merry-go-round,

but they couldn't get it going as fast as they wanted. My dad stepped up. He was just a silly guy who wanted to be liked by the kids. They all climbed on and my dad, the guy that he is, pushed it with all his might until they were spinning uncontrollably. It was all good and innocent fun until I decided I wanted to join in. I was probably five or six at the time and stepped up beside my dad with pride at how popular he had become among the other kids. It all looked like so much fun.

How hard could it be? Just hold on and don't let go, right? But that's not how it went because I was six and my dad was a little bit imperceptive, so the communication aspect of it was a little bit skewed. Daddy, can I get on too? I asked hopefully. My dad laughed like it was the funniest joke

he'd ever heard from his baby daughter. Ha, yeah, sure thing. Just grab right on. hopefully. My dad laughed like it was the funniest joke he'd ever heard from his baby daughter. Ha, yeah, sure thing. Just grab right on. Not sure if it was obvious to you guys, but sarcasm isn't best used on first graders. No, it doesn't work. I did not find this to be a joke, believe it or not. Without a second thought, I reached out and grabbed the first bar on the insanely fast moving merry--go-round which all the other kids had secured their position on before it started moving, I did not have this luxury. One way or another, my grip must have been pretty strong because one second I was on the ground and the next

I had flown at least 10 to 15 feet, according to my dad. Oh. I ended up being fine and I think I just had some scrapes and bruises on my knees and elbows. I don't have much memory of this, thankfully, and mostly just associate it with a funny story my dad tells sometimes. Truly, I'm the one who always brings it up because he still feels terrible to this day. I love my dad and he has learned a lot since this time when he was undoubtedly very stoned and in his late 20s.

So funny to think that, yeah, your parents were stone sometimes. Yeah, oftentimes they were like, just had stopped being teenagers and suddenly were parents. Totally. Stay sexy and don't expect your six-year-old to understand sarcasm, Lucy. Lucy, I have done that multiple times with children.

Where it's just like, there's no adjustment from me to like making sure that this child understands what I'm talking about. I think maybe we should ask for like sarcasm stories when like sarcasm went wrong. Absolutely. All right. My last story is, I won't read you the subject line. It just starts, this is the part where Karen or Georgia says, I'm not going gonna read this subject line That's hilarious. Yeah, I actually didn't pre read that just so everybody knows that was Matt That was maximum impact on a road trip from Western Canada to my home on the prairies with my grandma

We were on a classic grandma quote-unquote shortcut We were hours behind schedule and I fell asleep in the back seat. I woke up in the dark. There was a strange man driving the car and dear old Grams was not moving with her head against the window in the passenger seat. My grandma was an original spiritual guru who led our family of strong women down a spiritual path in a time where everyone called her crazy for believing in crystals, incense, manifesting. You get the picture. She danced to her own tune and taught it to all of us. Her loving and trusting nature made it impossible for her to leave a person on the

side of the road. And then in parentheses, it says, besides her ex, but that's a story for another time. There are many bad-ass stories I could share about this woman, like her love story that was sabotaged by her first cousin, or how she picked up her life over and over, but you'll have to wait for the book. Back to the story of our chauffeur, Gary. I started screaming and crying because I'm nine and I watch CSI like a religion. So of course I thought she was dead. My grandma woke up and had to get Gary to pull over so she could console me. We got back in the car and Gary continued to drive up to Saskatoon, Saskatoon SK, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

He gets out and says, lady, please don't pick up hitchhikers and definitely don't let them drive your car. Wise words indeed. Oh my God. Right. We often teased my grandma about that. And even through losing her through dementia, she usually remembered Gary and that adventure. Stay sexy and just embrace your grandma's antics before she's gone. Stay even sexier and don't pick up high hitchhikers and definitely don't let them drive. Love, love, love, Kate. I love that, that even the hitchhiker himself was like,

why did you do this? Even nine-year-old in the back seat and then you fell asleep and let me drive? Like what the fuck? Yeah, everything about this was the wrong decision and also I'm fully benefiting from it, okay. Right, it just so happens that I'm not a murderer, or at least not tonight. So I'm going to give you this advice in case someone is. That'd be incredible if it was so ridiculous that she actually got a murderer to say that to her. Or it's like, you know what? This is so out of pocket. Yeah. And then years later we saw his face flash on TV. It was Gary Ridgeway or something

like that. Yes. Yeah. What other? Some other horrible Gary. If you have a hitchhiking story, shame on you, but you better fucking send it in. That's the only thing you can do with it at this point is tell us. And thanks everybody for sharing your stories and stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. 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 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.

Goodbye!