My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 56

Episode Date: February 5, 2018

Karen and Georgia read your hometown stories including a few sinkholes, a childhood sister rivalry, the most intense first day of work ever, and more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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And welcome. To my favorite murder. The mini-soad. Where we read you back your things. Isn't it fun to do it the same thing every week, every time? You know how it goes. Come on. You go, Georgia.

You go first. Okay. This one's called Hometown. Man falls to his death. When sinkhole opens, I'm not going to read the rest because it'll give it away. Okay. Hi, Karen and Georgia. I'm writing with a hometown sinkhole for Karen.

Hometown sinkhole story for Karen. I grew up in the golden mining town of Grass Valley located in northern California. Hell yeah. This area of the Sierra Nevada foothold that Hills was heavily mined for gold in the late 1800s to early 1900s. There are hundreds of old abandoned underground mines, shafts and tunnels everywhere throughout the area. Oh, creepy.

There were a few in the woods of my house that we would always go explore, drink and smoke pot in back in high school. So safe. I even had a friend with a mine shaft opening right by the front door of their house that they turned into a part of their landscaping. What the fuck? That's lovely. Super awesome, but also creepy.

On a side note, I always thought this would be a great place to hide a dead body because I've seen some that dropped hundreds of feet straight down. What? Oh my God, no. My story takes place in 2006 when around 9.30 p.m. a new, a young newlywed man was reportedly sitting in his living room when he heard a creaking noise coming from the kitchen. He went to investigate when suddenly an old underground mine collapsed and a giant sinkhole opened up right beneath him in the middle of the house.

Fuck. He plummeted 10 feet and was covered by the rubble. His pregnant wife was asleep upstairs and was awoken by the crash. She got out of the house safely and called 911. From the outside of the house, everything still looked normal, but when he looked inside there was an enormous sinkhole in the middle of it. It took rescuers a couple days to recover his body because the ground continued to shift and the sinkhole grew beyond the load bearing walls of the house.

Fuck. They decided it was best to demolish the condemned home before going back in for fear of collapse on top of them during the recovery effort. The sinkhole had doubled in size by then to 30 feet wide and 20 feet deep. A second sinkhole also opened up about 50 feet from the home. Such a sad and crazy story, there is often no ground evidence that an old mine could be just five feet below the surface. Oh my God.

Love you ladies so much, Stephanie. Sorry, did the guy die? Yeah. Oh shit. Yeah. That's, I mean, in the middle of your house. Yeah. Your safe house.

What's that noise? Yeah. Your front door's locked. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Your wearing slippers. Yeah. Everything's regs. The, the ground opens up in a circle.

Did you see, this is a big fear of mine in Orange County, a fucking helicopter crashed into someone's house. Yes. And that helicopter was the helicopter factory that we were touring yesterday. What? That's what I was doing yesterday. During the same day that you were touring a helicopter factory, one of their helicopters. Yes.

The R-44. Did they freak out? I think so. They're trying to, still trying to figure out if it's operator error because they make all their own, like all their own parts. So it's not like they, except for the engine, which is a Rolls-Royce engine. So everything they make, they make there and they test it in like nine different ways. Wow.

We just kept walking down these things and it would be a guy standing there going, so I checked this and I put it through this and then we put it, we put dye on it. If any dye leaks through, we know you could throw that part out. You didn't get to go up in a helicopter. No fuck no. Would you? I would never have done that. So were that you wanted to tour a helicopter factory but wouldn't go up in a helicopter?

Yes. Me and Scotty Landis got this idea where we were going to start trying to learn things actively instead of like just being like, did you read an article? Like go do it in person. And we have been trying to do this for six months and we finally, it would be like we'd figure out a place and then one of us would flake or we would call maybe like, oh you need like a JPL or like, I was like JPL tour, that's amazing. You have to get like top government clearance and it takes six months.

It's some crazy shit. I have a murder podcast. Yeah. I mean, every, yeah exactly. They're like, no, we don't like your kind here. So anyway. That's crazy. Yeah.

That's scary. It was, I mean, what a day. Yeah. Okay. Well, I have, it's, Stephen has gone, he's themed us out because I also have a sinkhole. And this one actually sounds familiar so you can tell me whether or not you've told me this story or if we've done it, but it's a creepy neighborhood sinkhole. I was listening to this week's episode, Proclensity, and I was so excited to hear about Karen's

passion for sinkholes. I live in Orlando, Florida, where sinkholes are fairly, fairly common currents. While the thought of a sinkhole opening up under your house is terrifying, I've never heard of a sinkhole being as creepy as the one in my neighborhood. At the end of the street, there is a sinkhole called Emerald Springs, also known by a way cooler name, Mystery Sink. The sinkhole itself is very old and most likely first opened up around 200 years ago. What?

Mm-hmm. It's approximately four to 500 feet deep, has an hourglass shape, making it very difficult to explore. It basically looks like a prehistoric watering hole. And in fact, the current owners had it landscaped by the same people who did Jurassic Park at Universal Studios. Oh, Stephen, that's so you. So Stephen, do you, do you enter the word Jurassic Park and then do a search that way?

Yeah, maybe really happy. You're like, don't attack me. Not for this. I'm proud of it. As the area was opened to the public as a cave diving spot until tragedy struck twice. In August 1970, a local scuba diving instructor named Hal Watts decided to give Mystery Sink with, decided to dive Mystery Sink with 16-year-old diver Fred Schmidt. At some point during the dive, Hal became tangled in the safety line.

They were following into the cave. After freeing himself, he turned to check on Fred, but this 16-year-old was gone. A sweeping search revealed Fred's dive light had sunk about 50 feet deeper in the cave. Hal attempted to follow the light, but blacked out before reaching it and floated back to the top. Unfortunately, Fred never resurfaced. A few days later, a rescue dive team was called in to recover Fred's body. During the rescue search, another diver, Bud Sims, became tangled in the safety line.

The team attempted to help Sims, but he became more, but he became panicked, floated rapidly to the top of the sinkhole, hit his head on the bottom of the boat, then sunk to the bottom of the cave and disappeared. Neither diver has ever been found, and their remains still lie at the bottom of Mystery Sink. That's the creepiest thing I've ever heard. Isn't that insane? The land has since been sold, and the owners closed Mystery Sink to the public.

That's a great fucking idea. I was lucky enough to be granted a tour of the land by the current owner that you can stand at the fence and look down the sinkhole from the edge of the property. It gives me the creeps to think about the diver's bones floating around the cave. Who knows what other mysteries or people lie beneath the surface. Thank you, ladies, for all you do. I'm a social worker for children, and your podcast has given me so much joy and laughter at the end of many dark days.

Lots of love, Ashley. Oh my gosh. Yeah. It's been there for 200 years, and there's definitely other fucking bodies down there. And treasure. And treasure. So much treasure. So many bodies.

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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 Mike Corey, the host of Wanderer's podcast against the odds. In our next season, three masked men hijack a school bus full of children in the sleepy farm town of Chowchilla, California. They bury the children and their bus driver deep underground, planning to hold them for ransom.

Local police and the FBI marshal a search effort, but the trail quickly runs dry. As the air supply for the trapped children dwindles, a pair of unlikely heroes emerges. Follow against the odds wherever you get your podcast. You can listen ad free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. Okay, I think this is a little more lighthearted, but it's called two attempted murders. I ran my sister over with a Barbie Jeep plus a stabbing. Yes. Okay.

Hi, Steven, because I know you'll be reading this first. Georgia Karen and all lovely fur babies. First of all, let me say that my sister and I are now in our twenties and have a great relationship. Uh-oh. Yeah. What's coming down the pipe? We even have matching tattoos now.

She was the one that introduced me to this podcast and I thought she might get a kick out of hearing this story if it gets to you guys. I started from the very beginning and I'm on episode 72 now and I've benched it all in a month. Oh God. So sorry. My little sister Kimberly is three and a half years younger than me. She was brought home from the hospital on Halloween.

I was no longer the only child and my world was all caps wrecked. I was a giant brat and as a result was grounded from going trick or treating in my snow white outfit and my three and a half year old brain decided it was her fault. Oh no. I spent the next seven or so years subtly trying to kill her. The most memorable of the attempts was with a Barbie Jeep. I was probably about five years old and had gotten it for Christmas and it was one of those that little kids can drive.

God, I wanted one of those so bad. It's just for rich kids. I know. That summer Kimberly and I were riding around in it outside. I was driving. When I ran over a bump and she went flying out, unfortunately for her, she landed in the path of the Barbie Jeep and I ran her over on purpose. My five year old brain decided this would be the perfect opportunity and I threw the

Jeep in reverse and backed over her. At that point, my mother came out of the house screaming at me and alas, Kimberly was saved and my plan was foiled. Anyway, the stabbing stay with me here. My step sister's mother's husband was brutally beaten and stabbed almost to death during a home invasion. We're going to go call the mom Alison and the husband Jack. The story goes that Alison and Jack were home one evening when a treaters came into their

home to rob it. I'm not sure if they thought the couple wasn't home, but Jack fought back and was beaten and stabbed so badly medical professionals had to put him in a medically induced coma. The crazy part about all of this is that Alison was home the entire time and said she had no idea this was going on. Holy shit. She was upstairs in the bathroom taking a bath while her husband was on the main floor fighting for his life.

What the fuck? That's horrifying. What was she listening to? Sting fields of gold. Oh my God. Why? Very little was printed in the newspapers about this. There was a mention of the home invasion several months later, but a little else.

My theory is that Alison hired these guys to kill Jack. He's about 20 years older than she is and very well off. So far Alison and Jack are still married and living together, but if I were Jack, I would be hella suspicious. SSGM Ashley. Jesus Ashley. You're fucking starting some shit. Yeah, she is stirring it up.

I mean fuck. Yeah. She's accusing someone of getting, of having a murder plot foiled. Casting. Uh. Highest version. Highest versions. The highest dispersion.

However, you know, you can blast fields of gold, but I mean, but I don't think home invasion robberies are like regular, you know what I mean? Like you don't break into someone's house if you're going out just to rob the house when they're home. Also, usually home invasion robberies and I could be totally wrong, but first off the dome is they do that with guns. Like stabbing and beating isn't usually they come in with guns, steal the shit, maybe pistol whip people, whatever, but like they say stabbing is a much more personal attack.

Yeah. And it's like the gun is easy to control people so you don't even have to come near them to let them try to hit you or whatever. I mean, not to say that home invaders are nice or that we know anything about it or that we know anything about it, but listen, but if Ashley can say what she wants, so can we. Yeah, it's our podcast. What the fuck, Ashley?

Stop trying to kill your sister. I love that she, or at least the way you told it, it was like she relished that story of running your sister over. My sister definitely tried to kill my ton of time. Yeah. I think that's the way it is. Okay, so this email starts, my dad was almost assassinated on his first day of work, parentheses lighthearted.

The right Reverend Karen Kilgariff and Sir Georgia Hardstark. Wow. Weird. Just coming in from kind of a night to the round table, weird. Weird angle. Oh, this is from George R. R. Martin. Okay, here's a hometown almost murder for you. I come from a Midwestern college town, corn, soybeans, basketball, football, astrophysicists,

Nobel Prize winners. You get the gist. I wasn't going to guess those last couple of ones, but okay. That's not usually on that list that starts with corn. Let's start turning it into, what do you think corn into? Hydrogen? Corn syrup? Okay.

Popcorn? Sure. Maze. My parents moved there from the East Coast and in the 80s because my mom had gotten a job as an art history professor. She spent the whole plane ride out to effectively accept the job prepping for her talk and only looked out the window on the return flight, at which point she found squares of flat frozen farmland as far as they could see and she was like, what have I done?

But she dragged her born and bred Baltimore husband out there anyway. He's a smart guy, he made the decision early in their marriage to follow her career. My dad didn't have a job lined up when they rolled into the corn maze intellectual capital, but after a lot of time spent pounding pavement and not getting hired, he somehow charmed his way into a position as a college counselor at the local community college. His first day he shows up, meets his secretary and then settles down at his desk. Within like five minutes, his phone rings. Hello?

He says, hi, says a man's voice. I have a gun and I'm coming to campus to kill you. What? So my dad, I'm sorry, but guns aren't allowed on campus. There's a silence on the other end of the phone and the man says, what are the borders of the campus? And so my dad spends five solid minutes on the phone with this guy explaining which intersections connect to which parking lots or whatever that make up the campus map.

And meanwhile, he's throwing little scraps of paper at his secretary through the door to try to get her attention. When she finally comes in, he hands her a post-it note that essentially says, a man with a gun will soon be getting in his car at ex-location, send the police, please, and thank you. She runs off and eventually the guy on the phone says, okay, I'll wait off campus until you get off work and then I'll kill you. And hangs up. Oh my God.

Dad just sits in his office and waits and I guess fills out the first day HR paperwork. Sometime that afternoon, police call him and break the news that, yes, there was a man with a gun patiently waiting on the edge of campus to kill him. Obviously, the guy actually wanted to kill dad's predecessor, which is comforting information to think about as long as, think about as I hang out on the job market. When mom asked dad how his first day went that night, he was like, well, they can only improve. He's an optimistic dude. Oh my God.

The gun guy got released from police custody, but happily did not go on to murder my father. Hopefully he got his life together. He did die eventually, which was obviously ultimately and probably not a happy story. And I kind of feel for him, even though he did briefly want to kill my dad, he clearly had his shit going on. Thanks you guys so much for this podcast, which has got me through a lot of dark nights of the soul and which has only once caused me to pull over my car in a busy highway because I thought I was about to pass out.

I would have been at your show in Kansas City, but instead I was in my parents' basement at a Frank Sinatra party. Regrets. I've had a few. Exo Jackie. Jackie, you're a good writer. Jackie, that was the best. That was so hilarious to react in that situation of just like, okay, yeah, let's talk about

the borders of the campus. Right. Let me go over this with you. Yeah. The person does not expect that. They expect you to panic. Yeah. Beg.

Yeah. No, it's like, let's do this correctly. Yeah. If you're coming to campus to kill me, you have to wait and really abide by the rules. Don't get in trouble for having a gun on campus. No, no, no. Save that for the murder. In addition to being, yeah, you're going to add an additional five years to your sentence.

Yeah. Keep it low. Yeah. Keep it low. Keep it low and loose. All right. Well, that's that, right? Yeah.

You guys send your, you know, very loose term hometown murders to us at my favorite murder at Gmail. I mean, now it's almost, we could start calling you as listener mail. Listener mail. We're going all into so many other. Yeah. I mean, there's apparently a lot of sinkhole stories, right, Steven? Sinkhole stuff found in walls.

First responders and I first responders in a while. Yeah. We're going to get a really cool one of those, please. Please. Please. Listener mail. It doesn't have the same ring though as hometown. It's got to be hometown.

Yeah. All right. Stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Bye. Thank you. Bye. Bye.