My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 76

Episode Date: June 25, 2018

This week’s hometowns include a home invasion and a bomb squad investigation.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. Hello. You've reached my favorite murder podcast. You've reached 323. It'll be fun. Let's just see what happens. If you have memorized my phone number, I'd be greatly impressed with you. Wouldn't that be cool? Dude. I don't know my own phone number. I don't. I think I know your area code. Every time I have to put my phone number into like of any kind of a form that I'm filling out, I have to say it out loud and like picture it in my

mind. I did. Vince and I memorized each other's phone numbers way back when, just in case of emergency. For safety. Let's do each other's too. Okay. So in case my emergency. So my date. We'll memorize it better if it's on the show and everyone helps us. So we can just listen to it over and over again. This is my favorite murder when we talk about phone numbers. Guys. But seriously, Stephen, give your phone number on there. Stephen, you do it. You do it for everyone. Dinosaur. It's the dinosaur hotline. What if it's just podcast? P O D. Of people just reciting their phone numbers. Yes. Linda Berry, who's a great comic book artist and writer. I took a writing class of hers and she does this exercise giving example of how

if you draw a memory, if you write about memories from your childhood, they're much richer than adult. And then she goes, here's an example. What's your first phone number? And know it immediately, right? Everyone starts smiling and giggling and everybody can recite their first phone number. And then she's like, okay, how about two phone numbers ago? You have no fucking clue because who cares by that point in life? You're so dead inside that you just don't care. The phone isn't exciting anymore. No. Um, seven, six, two, three, two, two, one. Five, five, nine, five, eight, nine. Okay. Yes. Let's, uh, talk and think about hometown murders. Yeah. Let's really focus on what we were bringing to the people this week,

which is their own stories. Which is the people, bringing the people. Do you ever get offended that I go first all the time? I could not give a single shit if I tried. Do you get offended that you go first? Hold on. You care about this podcast though, right? Yeah. No, I always just do it. It feels like it's my first line. I'm not holding the papers because you're not expecting you to go first. She puts her stuff aside. I take it as a silent cue. Okay. Okay. The subject line of this is my mom would probably get arrested if she did this today. I love it. Hey, FM. Hey, MFM fam. When I was a teenager, I was obsessed with scary movies and my mom loved Halloween. My birthday is in October. So on my 13th or 14th birthday, I decided to have a sleepover.

Oh, no. Where we plan to watch a scary movie and just hang out. When my friends and I had settled in to watch Psycho in the living room, my mom left us there to go pick up pizza. I know what she's going to do. I'll set the scene. My parents' living room was a big open space that had a huge glass door out to the deck in one direction, connected to the kitchen in another direction and the foyer in the front door the other way. A while after my mom left, as we watched the movie in the dark, a large man began pounding on the back door. He was standing on the deck looking in. We, of course, jumped up and began running in all directions and began screaming. You're probably thinking, oh, no, then they called 911. No, we didn't. Why? I don't know.

Other than to say that teenagers are really fucking stupid sometimes. Just as we began to calm down and try to figure out what to do, a pounding came from the front door. As I moved toward the door, again, why you stupid, stupid girl. The same large man stuck his hand in the door and began waving it around yelling something I don't remember now. I slammed the door closed and locked it. Just moments later, and mind you, we were still running around screaming and not calling 911. We heard the garage door open and my mom walked in. As we hysterically tried to tell her what happened, she seemed not to believe us, holding it together only for a few moments and then dissolved into laughter. That's right. My own mother recruited our neighbor down the street to stage a motherfucking

break in just to scare us. Can you imagine if she pulled that shit today, she'd get arrested or the very least child services would be called? Oh my God. Surprisingly, I have no lasting damage from this incident and it did go down as a great sleepover, according to my friends. Yeah. Thanks so much for everything you do in this crazy awesome community that you've created because of MFM. I've met a group of women who are helping me achieve my wildest, craziest dream of writing a book. Yay. SSTGMK. That's awesome. That's so rad. I keep thinking about like, what if they had grabbed a knife? I would have stabbed at that hand. I mean, that is the worst. It's the worst idea. It's the worst idea and at the same time, that's like, and I can't remember if I told the story

or not. My crazy friend, Brian, who I used to work at the Gaplet, who one time told me a story that he thought was really funny where he broke into his friend's house wearing a pantyhose on his face with a knife in his hand. No. He crawled into her kitchen window. A female? Yes. What a dick. And she kicked him in the balls and beat the shit out of him. And then he got really mad at her. And then she and then she was like, I'm not talking anymore. And he's like, what? I thought it was funny. Oh my God. What an asshole. But you have to know. I love her. He's really hilarious. He just thought I was like, when he told me the story, I was laughing, but I was also like, Brian, what is wrong with you? You're, you're such like a guy. You don't understand why that is the scariest

possible thing. Right. And why this person would never want to speak to you again. Rightly so. Oh, Brian. Brian, also imagine having a 13 year old. You have to hate them so much at that point that you just want to fuck with them. So good for the mom. It's like her only sanity left. Let me get you, give you a little perspective of all the things you're, you're like crying and pouting about around the house. Yeah. Let's give you a little dose of hideous reality. Let mommy give you a dose of reality. Pick up a pizza. I'll get your fucking pizza. You know, your mom is bullshitting you if she goes to pick up a pizza in this, from 1979 on, whenever they invented dominoes. There's no picking up pizza. You know, no mother goes to pick up pizza. There's no such

thing. Why get pizza? Let's take out. Yeah. Take out pizza. Take out any food. Okay. Okay. We're done. We're done. I can't tell you the name of this because it's funny. Okay. It's, it's to reveal. Okay. It's a bit of a reveal. It's a reveal. Hello, ladies, Stephen, pets. Georgia turned and looked at Elvis to say pets to him. He did. Yes. You included Elvis in that. Like, conversationally. Hey, pets. I did. Hey, pets. I gestured to him. Yep. He wants to be included. He really does. He gets all over his face. He longs to be a part of this. Oh, okay. I am an army spouse living in Germany. You know, the Elvis and his Instagram account just got to 100,000 followers today. Congratulations, Elvis. He's really proud of himself. Stephen's doing a quite clap.

Yes. Thank you. That's all I've ever wanted is for this cat to be famous. And he's there. And there we are. Okay. I'm an army spouse living in Germany. Your show gets me through every time my husband is away. We're stationed in Bomb Holder. Funny coincidence. Jeffrey Dahmer was actually stationed at the same base and lived in the barracks here. Oh. Apparently he didn't, well, he didn't commit any murders that we know of. He did sexually assault his roommate and maybe a few others. Jesus. I had too much wine at an Easter dinner we hosted with friends we were still getting to know recently. I 100% over shared information about him and totally freaked everyone out. I also revealed to my neighbors that I thought

our neighbor was Bradford Bishop. I'm still convinced he is and talked about murder at my son's for third birthday party. This is just before I casually said about my son. Yeah, he was throwing up this morning, but I think he's fine now. Having already served my neighbor's cake, which my son sprayed spit all over while blowing his candles out. I really need to lay off the wine. Anyways. We've hit a whole new area of stories. Yeah. Which is just like stuff I fucked up this week. Right. Tell us how you horrified your neighbors or tell us neighbor stories. I love it. Anyways, my story is from a few years back when we were living in Richmond Hill, Georgia. My husband was deployed to Afghanistan. We lived in a one-story house and my dog Kayla

and I were asleep in the back bedroom. At 2am, Kayla started barking frantically. The hair on the back of her neck stood up. She ran into the living room, freaked the fuck out and ran back to me and stood in front of me like she was trying to protect me. I could hear noises coming from the front door. Naturally, the first person I called was as a fully grown adult woman was my mom. My family was vacationing in a lodge in North Carolina and my mom had to stand in a corner of a room to hear me because the reception was so bad. She advised me to call the police, which I did. I explained the situation to the operator who was very understanding and stayed on the line with me until the officers arrived at the door. I opened my front door to two officers

shining a mag light on my chubby cat Phoebe. Phoebe had a habit of looking at our glass storm door at the moths on our porch. For some reason that night, I didn't notice her and shut my front door, wedging her between the storm door and the front door. Poor baby must have been stuck there for several hours before she freaked out and tried to move herself. It must have been quite the size for the cops. One cop was very concerned about her well-being. The other was clearly very annoyed with me. She was totally fine. I tried to snuggle her, but she swatted me away as she is fiercely private and I think was a little embarrassed. SSDGM, Alyssa. PS, here's a picture of Kayla and Phoebe. That's hilarious. There is nothing scarier than a dog barking in the middle

of the night. It is... That's the time George did that the first time she... Oh, there they are. What? There's Phoebe. They're cuddling. They're cuddling. It's pet friends. That's the sweetest thing I've ever... The cats... I don't know if they're cuddling or the cat is trying to smother the dog, but they're sleeping about it. It still looks like fun pet friend stuff. Does. Looking for a better cooking routine? With meal planning, shopping, and prepping handled, Hello Fresh has you covered. Hello Fresh makes home cooking easy and affordable so you can stay on track and on budget in the new year. Hello Fresh meals are convenient, seasonal, and delicious. Stay cozy all winter long with classic comfort foods available weekly.

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Goodbye. Hey, I'm Mike Corey, the host of Wondery'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 podcasts. You can listen ad free on the Amazon music or Wondery app. Karen, Georgia, Stephen and all. When I was 17, I attended a small K through 12 laboratory school on the local university's campus. Have you ever heard of a

laboratory school? No, they must specialize in doing stuff in the laboratory. Smart kids probably. Smarties, homework style kids. Yeah. How do you do homework? Fuck, I never figured it out. I couldn't do it. No. No. Patience. Never. No. Congratulations all you laboratories school kids that could do homework. This school was built back in the like 1920s. So much for our teachers this May, students would often discover some of the building's old quirks, like the secret entrances to the university's underground tunnel system. What? Cool. And mysterious passageways hidden beneath or behind gates in the auditorium. But other than the occasional discovery or pass down myth, the school was just about as boring as any other, except that it was a laboratory school. Until one

morning, we got a weird PA announcement that we were to evacuate the school immediately. There were no fire alarms and the teachers ushered us into another campus building. So we were immediately tipped off that something weird was going on. And then the bomb squad showed up. Shut up. It turns out that one of the teachers was cleaning out an old unorganized chemical closet when they found crystallized picric acid in parentheses TNP. Don't know it. It's a vert mode. I didn't go to a lab school, so you're gonna have to explain this to me. Yeah, I've never heard of picric acid in my life. Okay, that they estimated had been sitting there for over 50 years with no one knowing about it. The night before, my favorite Tim and Science teacher was dragged into the situation to

help identify the substance, so she filled me in the next day. I definitely noped out of studying science, but from what she explained, picric acid was an explosive that was used in bombs and grenades in World War One, but was later replaced by TNT, which was less powerful, but safer to manufacture. Perfect. In its liquid state, it's apparently safe enough to let high schoolers experiment with. No. But basically, once it's crystallized, it can explode from rapid heating, a big enough impact, or reacting with metal. And the teacher from the 50s that tucked the sucker away, you guessed it, put a metal lid on the container. The teachers called the university in the proper channels that night, but apparently it was chilled to let us come to school the next

day while the professionals came in to check it out down the hall. Luckily, the bomb squad got it out via pulley system from the second story window, and no one was injured. But just the thought of attending school for over 10 years, where there was a bomb in the upstairs closet gives me the chills. Anyway, stay sexy and clean out your damn closet, Lizzie. That's amazing. That's a safety lesson for today. Don't put your pickric acid with metal. Pickric acid. Pickric acid. All right. That's a good one. I like it. All right. You never know. Tell me, tell me things. Okay, this one's called. Well, I don't know which one to read. All right. Okay, here we go. This one's called, I laughed at my

home invaders too. Oh, hello, Georgia and Karen and company. I like that. After listening to episode 124, hearing Georgia assume she'd laugh if she were going about her business in her home and saw an intruder. I thought, Hey, I did that. I'd like to tell you the story that how I woke up, I woke up too sexy and somehow didn't get murdered. One night in 2015, when I was, when I lived with a few roommates in Pittsburgh, I woke up to a man telling me to get the fuck up. Now, I was very soundly sleeping commando in, in a nightie. Don't ask why I don't know. Air it out girl. Sure. I was very confused and figured it was one of my roommates drunk friends coming to harass me to wake up and drink. I politely told them to fuck off and get out of

my room at which point they started shouting at me to give them my phone and tell me where the money is. Oh, well, I have a gun to my head. This is where things started to become more clear. Oh shit. I was being robbed. I don't know what came over me. Maybe it was the fact that I had no wonder on and I was terrified of being raped, but I started cursing at these masked intruders. And I gave them my phone. I laughed in their face when they asked where the money is because I was 25, living with four other people and completely broke. They had my three roommates face down on a bed on the lower floor. I had an attic room, attic room, and they were trying to get me to come with them. So I would be with the rest of them. In total, there were four intruders.

It took three of them to get me five, three and 125 pounds to come downstairs. I demanded that I grabbed a hoodie to wrap around my waist that I knew had a stabby cat in it just in case they got physical. Wow. Oh my God. So brave? Question mark. They forced me down the steps while I yelled at them not to hurt my cat. That was just lying there next to my bed, totally chill. For the next 20 minutes or so, they, four men took turns laughing, pushing guns in our heads and our backs while they ransacked our home. I continue to call them stupid idiots, fucking assholes, pieces of shit, etc. My roommates begged me to shut up. Yeah, you should have shut up. You should have shut up. That's insane. I don't know what came over me. I'm the kindest piece, most peaceful person in

every situation, but I guess my fight or flight kicked in. Yeah. To wrap things up, the dudes left. My one roommate phoned someone on Skype to call the cops. I threw on clothes and ran to the gas station to phone the cops too. But the time I got back, the cops were there. They didn't catch anyone that night. And the next day around 2pm, one of the idiot robbers came back for my roommate's car and sped off with it. Luckily, my friend was there with a cell phone, so I could call the cops immediately. They got the car, but the robber bailed and ran. All four roommates left the house immediately after the robbery. However, I stuck around and checked the locks on every single door and window a few times a night for a few weeks. You know the usual. After a few years of therapy

and sweet medication, I am finally ready to move into my own studio apartment next month, and it helps to have a dog who now barks at literally anything. Yes. Thanks for all you do and helping ladies like me to stay sexy and not get murdered. Love ya, Amanda. Wow. Well, yeah, she was in a mode where she was just like her mouth was going. Yeah. She was that was her panic thing. Plucky. Yeah. Of fighting. That is. Yeah, not when there's a gun at your head. No, three people with guns. No, no, no. She got lucky. Well, I'm glad that she like can live alone now. Yeah. That's a really hard thing to go through. I think the dog thing is essential. Dogs don't they kill it. I mean, whether it's a fat cat stuck in a doorway or a true killer, they will

let you know. Yeah, Elvis, you have never done anything like that. Or like Frank, where he just sometimes barks at the ceiling. Okay. Is he wrong? Sealing is probably being a dick. Did I tell you the horrible story about Frank barking? And then and I was like shut up and I was yelling at him because he never normally barks in like, when we're all laying down in the TV room, chillin out. No, he the next morning I got up, there was a dead bird. Did I tell you that dead bird on the dog bed? George was laying on it and Frank was barking because he wanted to go lick it and lay on it. When I walked in the room, all the lights were out and I'd been gone all day. So it just looked, you know, I didn't like flick the lights on and inspect everything. So I never saw the bird.

You're just like hugging George. I touched both of those dogs and they're dumb. I mean, it was so disgusting. And Frank's like, get up. That's my fucking bird. Next time Frank does just like, like consistent barking, I'm going to pay attention to him because it was so disgusting. Also just like birds. Yeah. They have so many bugs on them. Oh, it's filthy. It's horrifying. They licked it like a goddamn lollipop. All right. My grandmother escaped a POW camp. Wow. Since there have been a whole mess of World War Two stories lately, I figure I might as well throw my grandmother's story into the ring. Do it. My Oma grew up in Yugoslavia on a farm with her parents who were raised in Germany and relocated before my grandmother was born. They stayed in Yugoslavia until the war

broke out. Russian soldiers eventually overtook the village they lived in and ripped my grandmother and her parents from their home and put them in a prisoner of war camp. After working in the camp for several months, my Oma was alone. She had been separated from her father and mother and had been killed. She had been separated from her father and her mother had been killed by one of the guards. She said one day that just happened to be her birthday, her 13th birthday. She was digging in the dirt near one of the border gates trying to pass the time, I guess. Where she was digging, a guard was walking the perimeter of the fence back and forth to keep an eye on her and anyone else who's with within close proximity. She said that as she continued to dig, she noticed that at

one point, the guard had turned his back to her and kept walking in the opposite direction. Instead of turning around, he just kept on walking away from my Oma. Without thinking, she got up and walked over to the fence, slid her skinny, malnourished body through the bars, and ran. The camp was in the middle of nowhere. There weren't any trees and the nearest town was miles away. To this day, she doesn't know if the guard saw her and spared her life or if he just never turned back around. She has no idea how no one saw her since there was nowhere for her to hide. She just kept running until she ended up in the nearest town where she stayed with a distant relative. After the war, she was reunited with her father, met my grandfather, and they all eventually moved to Michigan.

I'm 26 and I hadn't heard the story until recently. My aunt asked my Oma how she got out of the camp and my Oma looked at her and very matter-of-factly said, I slid through the bars. I thought she was kidding and started laughing and immediately felt like an asshole. When I realized she was serious, I should have known that a woman as strong as she is would manage to escape from such a horrible situation in such a bad-ass way. Today, she lives a quiet life, reading her German novels, nagging my grandfather, and feeding everyone schnitzel. Stay sexy and hug your Oma, Rachel. Isn't that the best? Oh my god. Wow. I feel like we should end on that one. Yeah, that's a goodie. That's a goodie. The one I have ended on was depressing, so let's not do that. Okay. Let's

save it for next week. Nice. Listen. We'll kick it off. Look. Look and listen for next week. God, that's beautiful. I mean, at this point, I think we might need to start calling them any so it's like just random stories that you decide we should hear. Right. Because it's everything. Crazy shit that people have found in your laboratory school. Oh. How about just an email explaining laboratory school? Never. How about, yeah, I like finding crazy old things, stories. Those are good. Yeah. I think the razor blade in the medicine cabinet whole is like- Legendary. ... changed my life. Legendary. And it's to this day, we still get photos of-

Still get photos? Well, because it's the kind of thing, nobody sees it until they see it, and then they go, holy shit, there's one in my medicine cabinet. Do we need to tell the new group of listeners that there's a little, you don't know this, but if you look at your old medicine cabinet, there's like a little slit that says like, it's for you to put your men to put their old razor blades in there. And the, but all they're doing is dropping them into the wall. Yeah. It's- All that DNA.

It's so 1932. It is. I wonder if you ever get DNA evidence on someone like from those. Well, if your DNA has ever been pulled off a razor blade that's in a wall, please send us an email and tell us all about how you're in jail because some contractor knocked down a wall where your razor blade, or whatever. You know, we'll take any story. Yeah, some version of that. That's right. Thanks for listening, you guys. So send it to my favorite murderer, Gino.

Yes. And stay sexy. I'm sorry, and don't get murdered. Bye. Bye. Elvis, you want cookie? Wow. Yes.

Good boy.