My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 49

Episode Date: December 11, 2017

Karen and Georgia read your hometown stories about finding stuff in walls! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is exactly right. 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. Welcome to my favorite murder, the mini soda. Well, really, your stuff back to you.

Don't worry about it. It's not a problem. Stop worrying. Stop acting like everything is a fucking problem that we do. We'll take care of you. We've always let you down before. You know that you can't rely on us. You can't count on us.

We don't know what we're talking about. Everything we say is false. So why are you panicking now? What's the problem now? You should have done it like six months ago. So here's what's amazing. Last time someone told a story, how did this happen, Steven? Someone?

How did this happen? But it was a minisode, right? A minisode. No. It was a full philisode. Philosophical-sode. It was a philisodiler-sode. Right, Steven?

Okay. It was a full episode and someone said something about something in the walls. Right. Was it me? It was me. We went on. Yes, you started it and then we began to discuss finding things in the walls. Right.

I told the story about Katie Nürburgris' house, things in the walls. Yes. And actually, Steven had this great idea to, wasn't it your idea, to ask for people to send us hometowns of stuff in walls? Right? It was yours, Steven. No, I feel like it was a group effort. I mean, I guess I should take the...

Good. Good move. The consummate politician. You should take credit? Was that the last thing I was going to say? That was the last thing I was going to say. I'm pretty sure... It was a huge mistake.

Yeah. Okay, fine. I'm deleting the text where you asked. And we're all... And it never happened. It was a team effort. We need to start doing more team building. I would like to do trust falls at the end of this episode, please.

Really let's get into the circle of trust. Surround yourself by a... Listen. I can't... Okay, so what happened? Oh, yeah. We don't know. Stuff in walls.

And we were like, why don't you tell... Everyone, do you have a weird story or photos? Tell us what you found in walls. Exactly. Because we love with that and it's our dream. And what was awesome is right after Steven posted the episode the next day, it started immediately and somebody said, and I have one here, but there are so many good ones that I would like to just say this quickly.

Somebody came and said, we opened a wall and there are tons of razor blades came out. And then someone else... This was a real-time thing that happened on Twitter and someone else came in and said in the 20s, that's how they used to dispose of razor blades. Your medicine cabinet that got set into the wall had a little hole where you were supposed to put the razor blade into this like a little spot, it was like dispose of razor blades here. Why? And it just went into the wall.

That doesn't make any sense. Steven has a photo? Yeah. But that was like... Holy shit. That's how they did shit back in the day. Oh my God. Just piles and piles of old razor blades laying there.

Creepy. So if you've ever had that happen to you, there's an explanation. And I just love that we have listeners that immediately are like, let me tell you a little something about medicine cabinets in the 20s. Okay. Fucking facts. I love pointless facts. We love them.

So credit to Kim M. Thanks, Kim M. Thanks for educating us on that. So I didn't mean to like, you know, that was a great one too, but that just kicked us off. And now Steven, he's got some stories. Do you want me to go first? You go first. Okay.

I'm all sitting up and ready. I know. Because I really did love this one. So it's, hi ladies, love you both and you're amazing, et cetera. Boom. We're in. Love you too for writing it that way. My grandfather bought an old Victorian hotel in Ireland in the 1970s.

Awesome. Attached is a picture of the hotel in its heyday. I see that picture. Yes. You can find these photos on Twitter and Instagram. It looks amazing. CP atoned. It's everything you want out of Ireland.

The hotel is CP atoned. Yeah. The whole, that whole neighborhood. They painted everything CP atoned. Um, just give you if this picture is from 2011, but it's CP atoned. So it feels old. Um, and that's not true. Okay.

So it had about 20 bedrooms and at the beginning before it opened, my dad's family lived in there, um, about six months after about six months, one of my uncles who was six or seven at the time was playing and slammed hard into a wall. Head injury. Uh, it broke. The wall broke revealing another room which had been sealed up. Once my grandfather broke the wall down, they found an empty room with only a trunk inside and when they opened the fucking, wait, I just want to save this moment.

Like where I'm so excited and I don't know yet. Okay. Okay. Go ahead. When they opened it, they, it had a fucking skeleton inside. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. And then the next sentence.

An actual human skeleton. What the fuck? An actual. It's an actual human skeleton. And the jaw was going, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, no, uh, granddad's photo was in the local paper and it was a really big deal in this rural Irish town. When the police looked into it, it turns out a doctor had lived there years before and it was his office problem.

Oh, I mean, still how fucking rad, like, no, that whole experience, like what else do you want it to be? Nothing. Anything else is disappointing. No, you're right, but it's not as fun. It's, you don't want someone to have been terribly murdered and then sealed up into a secret room. Absolutely not.

Of course you don't want that, but, but, but we're trying to tell stories here. This is my favorite murder. Look. Uh, listen, I got, I was sure not. I was late. I was trying to hold for you and then I had to move on. Um, granddad was so disappointed. He's an old Irish murdering.

Oh my God. Granddad was so disappointed and always would tell the story to people when they would come to the hotel. Oh, I love it. They're like, oh, great. Oh, and then she wrote OG murdering. Oh my God. Nice.

SSTGM, Lara. Thanks, Lara. That's Laura. That's a good one. Okay. I'm not going to read you the title of this because it tells you what I found. Great. Um, let's see.

Hi friends. Easy. Hi. I have an abandoned creepy story for you. My sister lived in her apartment for 10 years in downtown Vacaville. Oh, more than California. Vacaville Spanish for cow town. That's up near where I'm from.

She had been having bad pest problems. I thought it was her crazy neighbors tried everything she could on her own and finally the landlord brought in an exterminator. He found nothing. Well, she told him to believe there was an actual pest problem, but he did find a crawl space under the foundation. Having the total opposite reaction I would, he crawled in. I would, would you?

It depends on how wide the crawl space was and how many flashlights and guns I had on me. Good, good call. Okay. It was a crawl staircase, which led him to a fully furnished kitchen. No, no. It even had cans, jars, plates, et cetera on the countertops and in the cabinets. What?

There was another room attached where it was empty. It was clear the living space had been abandoned for many years. My six. What the jars? My sister lived directly above for all caps, 10 years and had no idea. Oh my God. Oh my God. There's a fucking apartment below you.

An apartment with shit in it from when it got sealed. Why did they leave? Why did they seal it? Why don't you? Why is it accessible in a crawl space only? She moved out recently into a home without hidden rooms. We hope. Thanks.

Love you guys. Hope to see you in 2018. SSDGM, Audrey. Audrey fuck. That was so awesome. But also, do you remember, did you ever see that article when they discovered that French apartment that got sealed up during the war? No.

I just always assume I know what everyone's talking about. Well, there's lots. That's how we're same-sames. It's the best. That's right. I remember hearing. Oh my God. Some rich lady sealed up her apartment, got the F out of France.

Yeah. She's like, I'll be back. Why am I saying F now? The F out. Karen stopped cursing. I am a born-again Christian now. She's like, be right back. I'm going to get out of here during World War II.

Lay low. Some were fucking chill. Did not. Whatever happened to her, she never made it back. They unseal it, and it's as is from 1930s, maybe, or like crazy old, all her rich shit inside paintings, clothes, perfume bottles. Can I just, please let me go there. Please.

You know what I really want to do is go to the Tenement Museum in New York. The best. Have you been? Yes. Is it rad? It's amazing. It's a museum where you can walk. It's like they turned an old walkup, right, like apartment building into it, like preserved

tenements of what they were like at the, what, turn of the century, 20s, 10s? Yes. Tens, I think. Ten. Turn of the century is right. Okay. I think. And those were the tenements that my grandmother and her two sisters had to go to when she

emigrated here from Ireland, when she was 17 years old, and she, they got picked up at Ellis Island by their quote unquote sponsor, who was a man in a white suit in a Panama hat. And when they got dropped off at the tenement, they're in a room, and there's a full family in the other room, because it's like one apartment, separate rooms. They get dropped off into like a bedroom, filled, the whole apartment is filled with other families and other immigrants. And my grandmother turned to her sisters and said, I'm getting out of here. You can come with me or not.

And the next day they took a train to Chicago and then a train to San Francisco because they had always had a postcard at their house of what San Francisco looked like. And the streets were wide and clean. And she said, that's why she went to San Francisco. That's adorable. Isn't that amazing? I was the middle sister, but she was like, coming with me. I'm out.

We're not doing the plan. Middle sisters. Bossy bitches. That's right. Lee, my sister. I'm looking at you. That's right. She would have got you out of that tenement.

She would have. Okay. So this is not so. Are you ready? Okay. Okay. I'm not going to redo the subject line because it gives it away again. Hi all.

Great. You talked about wanting to hear any stories about finding things in the walls in your last podcast and I have quite a good one. When I was about eight, my parents decided to renovate the garage that was attached to the house in a downstairs, into a downstairs bedroom for my sister. When the builders were digging up the concrete floor to replace with something more bedroomy, they hit rotting wood on closer inspection. They were two coffins with human remains inside.

Needless to say, they were freaked out and told my parents they contacted the city council about info about the house and the police got involved to investigate why the bodies were there. Turns out the house used to be a small church and the bodies were basically a small graveyard. A while later, the gardener even found children's tombstones in the garden. What in the fucking fuck? Weirdly, my parents were very chill about this. They decided to leave the bodies where they were and put a metal cage around them.

My sister slept directly about those bodies for about 10 years until we moved. I don't understand. Thanks for reading this, Daniel. The way he actually said until we moved house and he used a couple other phrases that makes me think he's British. I think, hold on one second. Are there pictures of this? Because I remember a story about this and seeing pictures online.

Oh shit. Okay. First of all, that was the worst Google search that I could have done on the show because I then just, there was coffins found on a New York City street. There is, and this one, the one I'm talking about is a 145 year old coffin with girl found under a San Francisco home. That's right. Did you see that one?

And the coffin has a window in it. Right. And she's super preserved. Yes. Yeah. You can see her. For some reason they were like. She's blonde.

You can see her like she's, it's so creepy. Really old child's grave. Yes. Coffin. The red rose is still visible between the hands. Can you imagine? I cannot. Because if you dug that up, you'd be like, I'm cursed for eternity?

No. Yes. Good luck. I think it's good luck. I want to buy a house just so I have a yard to fucking, and I'm just going to dig in the yard, dig everything up. My neighbor's going to be like, what the fuck? And then I told you about when I dug in the yard and what I found, right?

Change? No. That's not an every story. Tell me what you found. It was, did I tell this already? When I was out in the backyard and I saw a little piece of white porcelain sticking out of the lawn. Tell me.

And I went over there and I started to pull it up. It was the lid to the butter dish that had disappeared. George had stolen. She had undone the butter dish. Oh my God. She had eaten, licked all the butter clean. Good girl. In my home, it was just the bottom part of the butter dish, licked clean, and the top

was gone. And that was fucking like three months ago or more. And she had buried the lid in the yard and it was like, it looked like I was pulling up some kind of weird antique and I was like, that's where, and that's when she acts guilty. I walk in the house and she'll do this thing where she, she crawls like I'm screaming at her and trying to beat her. You're not. You don't even know what happened yet.

And I'm just going, what do you do? What happened? And then it's just a long play until I uncover what she did. That's kind of fun. Did you laugh out loud when you saw that? I couldn't. Yes. I immediately, of course, put it on Twitter because it was like, this is genius.

That went a good sweet baby. She's a good girl that loves butter and can, she loves it so much that she can eat it in a way where I don't notice. She doesn't make a big deal about it. Butter. Entire sticks of butter. Okay. But that's not the same as a full coffin under your room for 10 years.

No. All right. I'm going to read. Okay. This one's creepy. Okay. So, hello. Karen.

Georgia. Steven. An animal company. I have a weird finding things in the wall story. I thought you'd be interested. When I was in high school, my then boyfriend moved into an older house in a small farming town near my slightly less small, but still really small central Illinois town. My house was fairly, my house was fairly small and was raised up on cinder blocks with flimsy

sheet metal skirting the house, being an old house. I had plumbing issues, so my boyfriend decided to crawl under the house and then it says gross to see if the pipes ran underneath. When he emerged from the under the house, covered in leaves and probably the dust of a thousand dead mouse corpses, he had a small red notebook in his hand. By the looks of the faux leather cover, it was from the fifties or sixties, but most of the pages were intact and being at the history nerd, I was stoked. However, when we opened it up, there was only one thing written in the book over and over

again. Oh, Leslie. Oh, no. The entire of this probably, the entirety, this probably 50 page notebook front and back in uniform handwriting was the name Leslie. It was really unsettling to imagine what headspace someone had been in to take the time to do that. Not one word looked different from other, from another.

They were so perfect in uniform. There had to be a thousand Leslie's. Oh. I think he took the notebook and I never found out what happened to it after that. The most I've found in the walls of my house was a lot of money from the meth dealer that lived here before me. Yes. Not very mysterious, but hey, money is money.

That's right girl. That's awesome. We're going. Anyway, that's my creepy things in the wall story, SSDGM, Devin. Devin, that's really, we're going good. What makes me think of, I saw they had an art installation at the Hammer Museum one time and part of it was art from a mental hospital from a long time ago. I want to see that.

One of the things, and I stood there for so long staring at it. It was this big piece of paper and every piece of art had the card of talking about the patient that did it. Oh my God. Like what they were in for. Dream. Devin had written on a piece of paper, just like in the same way, except for not. It wasn't neat and uniform.

As if she had written on the paper and then gone back over and then written again and written again, and it was just the phrase, sweetheart come. It was one of those things where her husband dropped her off at the mental institution and she just sat there writing, sweetheart come. On top of it. On a piece of paper, wrote it all on both sides and then did it over again and it is like I couldn't take my eyes off it. Oh my God.

That's so creepy and sad. It's so sad. Sweetheart comes. Sweetheart. That's your tattoo. I think I'm going to start crying. You're going to cry. That's your tattoo, Karen.

Sweetheart, come. And then people will be like, is that sex show? Oh yeah. Get it right. Never mind. I'm not going there. We're there. We're already there.

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The subject line is, my friends wish they could find whatever is hidden in their house. Okay. Hello, MFM fam, especially Frank and George. Oh, that is, I mean, that's pharatism. Congrats on being so close to episode 100. It really matters to some people. I know. We can't skip it.

We can't skip it. I was at 100. All right. Good times. Come on. Okay. I've been listening to, oh, since episode 12. Wow.

Hi. And I'm so thankful for the community you've created. We didn't do it. You guys fucking created it. Thank you. We're thankful too. Yeah. Thank you so much.

I wanted to send a hidden item story as per your discussion in episode 97. The story belongs to a friend of mine and is about an unfound item in their house. My dear friend bought a house in a gentrified neighborhood in our home city of Indianapolis. Her and her husband poured their life savings into an old craftsman and created their dream home. Oh, I bet that's amazing. After living there for over a year, one winter night, they received a knock on the door from a man they did not know.

Being the idiots that they are, they answered the door. The man told them he had recently been released from prison and used to live in their house. Without being too specific, he told my friend and her husband he had hidden something in their home before going to jail and he was now coming back for his hidden item. And I'm moving out immediately. Of course, my friends had no idea what to do. This isn't exactly something you can plan for and they told him they were not okay with letting him inside their home.

The stranger quickly became angry and tried to force his way into the house. My friends called the police and the man left. Unfortunately, the man returned many times until eventually he was arrested for literally trying to break into their home. The arrest was a violation of his parole. Of course, they sent him back to prison. My friends have spent days scouring their entire home and even had the police come and search their house as well.

They have found literally nothing of interest. The issue now is that the man will eventually be released from prison again and will most likely return for whatever he thinks is still hidden inside their home. Everythings is in there is either hidden incredibly well or is no longer there. We have spent many parties posted up in their kitchen speculating what could be hidden in their house. My guess is a massive brick of coke or a weapon connected to another crime. I hope this story piques your interest, so it has.

And it definitely has got me thinking about the crazy shit that can happen when you buy a house. SSDGM Nicole. Oh my. Crazy. That's like a horror movie. But it's also the movie Out of Sight where they go and they're trying to find the diamonds that are hidden in the house.

And spoiler alert, they're hidden in the fish tank. They just look like rocks, which is the best thing ever. And I wonder if it's something like that, because I would think you wouldn't, if it's hidden and it's a weapon, you'd just be like, it's hidden and don't worry about it. But I bet you it's some kind of money or jewels or cash, something that's, he needs money. He just got out of jail. Why would he have hidden it though? Because like, if they just read at their house, then they probably put new flooring

in, let's say maybe, or, you know, knocked a wall out or like, replaced them. But I bet they didn't knock every wall out. Shit, man. Yeah. And you're right, because cops know all those hidden places. Like, you know, a weird vent or. Yeah. I just feel like, come in.

We're going to get out. You go inside. Seriously. You have five minutes. Listen. Honor system. Yeah. We love our shit.

Please don't steal it. Please don't steal it. And then you get your stolen shit. And then never come back again. And just don't come back. Yeah. Look. If you not, look and listen.

If you knock a hole in the wall to get whatever's in there. It's okay. Then, then peel off a thousand dollar bill and leave it. Right. From the. Yeah. Fair is fair. Fair is fair.

Okay. We've got systems in place. Listen, we are, we are a go. Okay. Okay. This is the last one. Okay. The best thing I ever found under a floor.

Hey all. Thanks so much for the rad podcast. You asked for stories of things inside walls, et cetera. And while this isn't creepy or weird, I had to tell you about it. My dad's best friend Roger died of cancer about 10 years ago. Recently his widow was remodeling their kitchen and they had to rip up the old floor. They found a board on the bottom side of which Roger had painted. I love you always.

Oh, there's a photo. No. Let me see. Okay. I can't see that far away. Oh my God. No. It's just the kind of man he was, the most selfless and caring person you could ever

meet. Needless to say. Oh, I love you. It says I love you always. There was a photo on our Instagram and Twitter. Needless to say, it was a super emotional when they found it. It still makes me tear up to see the photo. I've attached a picture for you.

Can't wait to see you in Columbus. Lindsay in Indiana. Oh my God. I'm totally crying. You're crying. Well, that's so fun. That's a good one to end it on. If you guys have them, man, we'll keep them in.

If they're good. That's the best. Yeah. A delay. I have to say, I'm not going to lose my shit, but I have to say that I have a junk drawer and I just telling you earlier how I cleaned it out this morning, but the first time I cleaned it out, not the first time, but one time I cleaned it out and I found a card from my mom because she was big into sending cards and she would do it all the time and it was

like not that big of a deal, but I found this one in this drawer and it was like she was being very self-reflective and it is the loveliest fucking card and it's just all about I can't tell you how much you and your sister mean to me and it's this whole thing that's like new again. It's like getting a letter from your mom when I got it. It was like 1994 or something and I was like, yeah, yeah, I'll talk to you later. And it was the best, so that I think that put me right and that's like the same thing, but yeah, something like that.

She never knew she had it in the first place. And she might have never known. Yeah. If they hadn't looked the floor up, they might have never known it. So he just did it just to be on a sweetheart. It's like the reverse of sweetheart come. Yeah. Oh, I'm glad we ended it on a good note.

I know. Oh shit. Can I read one more? Yeah. It's good. Okay. Hello, Karen, George, Steven and animals. You mentioned in your last podcast that you were looking for people who found cool things

in their walls. I didn't find anything murder related, but I did find a random assortment of objects. My fiance and I were renovating our basement about a year or two ago and the basement had a horrible decor. Wood shingles on most walls, ooh, inside. Inside shingles, a large native mural of a bird, wooden arrow on one wall, shag carpet, stucco. That's amazing.

Yeah. And then on the following items in the walls during demolition, a black sharpie message quote, we hope the world is better for you because it sure is fucked up in our time. Ron and Brian, December, 1976. Oh my God, and there's a photo. And there's a photo. Oh my God, sorry, Ron and Brian. Brian and Brian, we got bad news.

Yeah. I guess what you baby boomers are probably the Republicans now. So it peaked 76, it may have been at the top. Oh my God, that's so good. Let me see. That's the other one. So. Oh my God.

So that message, then a blank postcard of a man and a bright pink speedo chest hair and all. There's that picture. So good. He's amazing. A deck of playing cards featuring naked women from the 70s. Awesome. A pipe with weed stuffed in it.

Okay. A wooden dildo that was clearly homemade. Wow. Woodshop. A small Batman figurine. And an ABBA greatest hits volume two vinyl record. Wow. Anyway, thanks for the laughs.

It was great seeing you at the Toronto Live Show Renee. Oh my God. That's good. I like that. I like not ending on crying sad stuff. I just love that list of shit. Yeah. It's so good.

Live your life. And then stuff it into a wall. I remember when I was little, my, and we were latchkey kids. And one of my neighbors was like, my mom, we're paying a kitchen number, so my mom said I can draw on the wall if I want. Come over. Let's do it. And we all fucking did it.

And we got in huge trouble because like we weren't supposed to. She was like, you, I bet you could write your name on the wall, but we had like Sharpie drew all over so they had to put like extra paint down so like that pay extra. Hey mom, clarify. Clarify and don't leave me alone as a seven year old to do whatever the fuck I want. That's hilarious. Yeah. Thanks for listening.

Send your hometown murder stories and you're in the wall stories and fucking whatever to my favorite murder at Gmail. Yeah. We want to hear. Yeah. We want to hear about you. Thanks guys. And in the meantime, stay sexy.

And don't get murdered. Bye. Elvis. Is Elvis going to leave this podcast? I don't know. Do it. Elvis. Oh.

Hi guys. I didn't mean to ask you. You want a cookie? Wow.