My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 79

Episode Date: July 16, 2018

This week’s hometowns include a Son of Sam connection and a golf-club wielding nana.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! Welcome to the My Favorite Murder Mini Sode and the lights go off. It's a series of a clapping podcast. Learn to clap correctly. George is going on vacation tomorrow. That's right. In real time. So here's your mini-sode. So yeah, so here's your last final push of work before you get to go on vacation. You know, Vincent and I cannot stop singing that even though it's a Christmas fucking Hawaii song. It doesn't matter. It's the only one we know. And it feels good.

Does feel good. Okay, so I'll go first. Do it. This is a mini-sode where you send us your stories of misfits and mayhem. Wow. Yeah. Okay, so real quick back story. In 2007, I had just gone out of a bad relationship and I was at a desk job. It was boring. I hated it. The thing I did all day was read blogs and I fucking loved them and they inspired me to start my own blog and start writing and fucking rest is not history. It's just my life. But they helped me a lot. And one of my favorite blogs was called the blogus, This Girl Woman. Jenny Lawson wrote it and I just thought she was so fucking hilarious when she's also really open about her mental health issues and it just really helped me a lot. So now she's my fucking friend on Twitter and she fucking messaged me

and told me she wants to tell us for fucking hometown murder. And it's just, I got really excited. So here it is. Do it. Jenny Lawson, the blogist. She wrote the book called Theoriously Happy. Everyone should buy it. It's on top of my CPAP machine right now and I'm reading it. So she says, Hey, y'all, I love your show and have listened since the beginning. I didn't fucking know that. You are the sound, the weird soundtrack to my life. Please do not put this letter in between inspiring brave survival stories because it will make me sound even stupider than I am or do whatever. When I was 21, I bought a junkie ancient washing machine from this guy who scavenged broken appliances and refurbished them. It probably would have been

a really good deal if the washing machine didn't break every couple of months, but the repair guy was really nice. And when it would crap out, he'd come over to our house and fix it for beer money. He seemed nice enough. And I lost track of how many times he came to fix the washing machine, not a euphemism. This isn't porn. About a year into having a personal terrible washing machine butler, the washer broke a final time. But this time it still worked, but it would make these horrific noises whenever it was on. It sounded like someone getting murdered. Low groans that moved into a blood curdling scream and then started over again. It was super unsettling and once a neighbor came up to the door to ask if I'd check her mail while she was out of town and the

washing machine was screaming from the back of the house and I had to explain that it was not a serial killer, that I was not a serial killer and that my washer was the person screaming. I'm not sure if she believed me, but when I told her to come inside to see she declined, but I'm not sure if it's because she believed me or because she knew this is how you end up chained in a sex dungeon. Fair play to her really. I called the repair guy but he was MIA and so I had to live with the washer that was that screamed at me like a lunatic while I waited for him to return my call but turns out that he was not returning my call because someone else had called him to repair a wash his washer and murdered him. Apparently the girl he was dating had a jealous ex so the

murderer called in a fake washer emergency and stabbed him to death. Oh no. And then I got freaked out because my washer started screaming the same week he was murdered and I was convinced our washing machine was haunted by the soul of our murdered repairman. A friend who was Catholic stole a big gulp of holy water from her church and we dumped it in the rinse cycle to try to free his soul but it didn't work. My husband says that's because the sound was from a pipe going bad and not a ghost in the machine but I was pretty sure it was probably both of those things so I set a prayer for him and the washing machine and we traded in for a new washer that was less terrifying. To this day that possibly haunted washing machine is why I don't like to do laundry and also I'm

really lazy hugs Jenny Lawson. Whoa I totally thought it was going to be the repairman that was such a good mislead. A repairman who you give beer money to is like bound to be a murderer. Well and also somebody that's supposed to be a repairman but it keeps breaking. Right. It's like doing it on purpose. So he's doing it yeah to get into your house. That's awful. I know it's so sad so like it really was this nice repairman who just wanted beer money and he got murdered by this new love of his life's axe. Horrible. Yeah. All right the subject of this is the time I woke up to a cokehead watching me sleep. Hey guys very new listener but I've been vinging episodes for the entirety of my eight hour shifts and absorbing hours of murder each day. Thank you so much. When

I graduated high school I almost immediately moved out of my parents house and was living with a roommate right outside the bad part of town. My street was relatively calm in fact all of the police presence in the neighborhood was caused directly by my next-door neighbor. He was a drug dealer. He and I had very few interactions saying hi at the mailbox waving if we got home from work at the same time him offering me free coke if I come to one of his parties. I never took him up on it not because I'm one to turn down free drugs but because something always seemed a little off with him. Yeah. I grew up as a murderer now so I've always been very careful to lock the doors and windows at night. Very good. One night after double checking all the doors I take two sleeping pills and go

to bed. Night night. A few hours later I start to wake up which was weird because when I take sleeping pills I'm usually conked until morning. Because you take two. Yeah Jesus. When I woke up I rolled over to check my phone. I looked down on the floor and my neighbor is sitting on my floor watching me sleep. Oh my god. After taking a minute to process what was going on I push him out of my room and downstairs to the door which is still locked. Since I was foggy from the sleeping pills it took me a solid 30 minutes to remember that I should call the police. By the time they arrive his car is long gone and his driveway oh from his driveway the police arrive and immediately notice that the garage door has been pried open. Since he was long gone the officers said they'd

keep an eye out for him and keep a patrol car stationed at the house. They never found him. Needless to say my roommate and I moved out of that place the very next day. Yeah. I later found out that he had just previously been arrested for sexual assault and had several warrants out for his arrest. As as it turns he fled to Colorado after he broke into my house. A few months later he was in a horrible car accident and broke his pelvis. So even though he hadn't been charged for breaking into my house I felt like I got a little bit of cosmic justice. I'm so lucky that for whatever reason my cheap sleeping pills decided not to work that night. Yeah. Or God knows what would have happened. Remember to lock your doors at night and know that having a garage is basically a death wish

so you can SSDGM Phoebe. Oh no I don't want to worry about garages now too. That's not it's not true. Yeah plus you just lock the door to the garage. Exactly right. And put one of those things under the doorknob that they sell you know. A chair. No the ones that look like a crutch it's like and you stuff it under the doorknob. Yeah there's plenty of ways to get all get all up in your house. The best is to get a pit bull. Yes I highly recommend several dogs. Yes okay let's do okay the son of Sam tried to kill my aunt. Shit. We get a lot of that my mom almost got picked up by Ted Bundy's. Yeah. But this is the first son of Sam when I read. So in the 70s in Yonkers no intro. Oh it just gets right in. 100%. Not even a greeting. No in Yonkers New York my aunt was

almost shot by David Berkowitz. My aunt Patty was blonde was a blonde beautiful teenager from Yonkers. Well I don't know why like you love that. Yonkers is a place and then blonde beautiful teenagers live there. I imagine Patty was too was the type of person who would chew gum and smoke at the same time. Oh my god. Loudly both. One day during the summer my aunt and her friends were hanging out in a stoop. My aunt was sitting and her friend was standing right next to her. They were just hanging out probably chain smoking. When all of a sudden her friend gets shot right in the kneecap. Fuck. No one saw anyone or knew why her friend would get shot not very long after David Berkowitz was found in police guests that he was going to shoot my aunt but missed and hit

her friend's knee that was right next to her head. Shit. I only found this out because my dog Zilla a six month old Mastiff Yon and it sounded like she said hello. I made a son of Sam joke which just like what I read that I was like I love you. Yes. She said I made a son of Sam joke as one does and my dad just plainly said he almost killed Aunt Patty. This is why I'm reading this one because this person Mikaela is sitting at home with her dad and her fucking dog the dog Yon sounds like it says hello and her joke is about son of Sam with her dad and her dad like that's just who we it's who we are and who what I want our listeners to be and also that that there's this is clearly not a family story. Yeah. Her dad's like oh now that you mentioned it. Yeah.

But nobody cares. We're going to talk about son of Sam. I forgot. Oh yeah. Oh he almost killed Aunt Patty. Hey. Aunt Patty. I meant to tell you. You know you're Aunt Patty. I lost my shit and had to know everything. Well I immediately thought of you guys when I heard it. Thanks for reading and making my commute a million times better SSGM Mikaela. That's amazing. Yeah. Talking Mastiff would be the best thing ever. I mean shit. All I want is a dog that you know. I love you. I love you. You have to get a husky. Apparently they're the ones that do it. Huskies are the ones. Yeah. I love you. They speak English. Dude send us your husky saying I love you. I say that Elvis all the time. I wrote like trying to get him to say it. To say it back to you. I won't. Okay. The subject

point of this is surprise party with my friend and a fugitive. Hi ladies and gentlemen. I spent my formative years growing up in a suburban part of Austin Texas known as Westlake Hills. In 2000 I had just graduated from high school and my friends and I were going to throw a surprise party at my parents house from my friend Colin who happened to live across the street from me. As part of the party preparation a friend was supposed to take Colin out for ice cream and then stop by my house to see if I was home to hang out. All of our cars had car pulled and parked way down the street so he wouldn't see familiar cars outside my house. About five or six friends and I were hanging out at my house waiting for the last party guest Clay who was arriving late. We were just chilling

watching TV when a special news report came on saying that someone had just been stabbed in the parking lot of the mall that happened to be about maybe two miles away from my house. The assailant had fled the scene and police were currently on a manhunt for a guy wearing a gray t-shirt and black shorts. Oh my god. I went to lock the front door because I'm not a goddamn moron and right then Clay pulled up in his very conspicuous classic car and started to come to the door. I yelled park down the street dumbass this is a surprise party. It's the Austin me. Clay got the message and drove off and I locked the door and got back to the news. We realized about 15 minutes later that Clay hadn't come back yet. Parking down the street should have taken five minutes at the most. We

joked that the fugitive had found him and Clay had been inducted then 20 minutes passed and we were realized that um that might actually have happened and we were being dicks and so we started to worry about 25 minutes after leaving to park his car a very sweaty clay rang the doorbell and we asked him what the hell happened. He explained that because he's batshit crazy he decided to park nearly a mile away in an undeveloped part of the subdivision and then run home. Another sign of batshit craziness running for fun. Since he had been at work he had no idea that there was a fugitive stabber on the loose in my neighborhood and that running to my house might not be the best idea then he proceeded to tell us that the weirdest thing happened. Oh my god. When he was

running in the completely underdeveloped undeveloped wooded part of the road a random dude just jumped out of the bushes and started running away. Clay being the obscenely pleasant person that he is said hi to him and the creepy bush dude kind of waved and said hey and then sprinted away. When we asked him what the guy was wearing without prompting he said a gray shirt and black shorts why and that's when we told him that he had just exchanged pleasantries with a guy who was on the run from the police for stabbing someone half an hour before. Oh my god. Once Colin arrived I think he enjoyed the story of Clay's brush with death even better than the surprise party we planned for him. Later that night they did catch Mr. Stabber and the woman from the mall survived with minor

injuries. Oh good. He apparently wasn't even good at stabbing. I have more stories from my time as a prosecutor. Yes. But I'll save those for another email. Can't wait to see you guys in LA on Halloween. Yeah stay sexy don't run alone at night Kim. That's a massively great story. Twist and turns I thought Clay was going to be the murderer. Right. You heard that and then your friend knocked on the door wearing gray shirt and black pants. Exactly. And then you're like but we invited him so should he still come to the party. Yeah. 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.

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that's up to 20 free meals plus free shipping on your first box when you go to hello fresh dot ca slash murder 20 and use code murder 20. Hey I'm Arisha and I'm Brooke and we're the hosts of Wondery's podcast even the rich where we bring you absolutely true and absolutely shocking stories about the most famous families and biggest celebrities the world has ever seen. Our newest series is all about the incomparable diva Whitney Houston. Whitney's voice defined a generation and even after her death her talent remains unmatched but her incredible success hit a deeply private pain. In our series Whitney Houston destiny of a diva will tell you how she hit her true self to make everyone around her happy and how the pressure to be all things to all people

let her down a dark path. Follow even the rich wherever you get your podcasts you can listen ad free on the amazon music or Wondery app. Okay this is called sometimes things hidden in walls come out on their own. Oh blood um hi hi when my brother and I were younger we had a lot of pets my brother had a number of snakes over the years but only one was actually memorable the snakes never had names for some reason but this one was a corn snake that was about 12 inches long when we got it and had a brown gray coloring anyway one day my brother notices that the snake isn't in its cage anymore this had happened before with other snakes and they would turn up a few days later maybe it's because you're using a cage uh so everyone kind of met it met it off and

figured it would turn up uh or get out of the house we never see it again this sounds like the fucking definition of the 80s yes like well corn snake whatever right fast forward a few years now and my brother and I at our at home with our 70 something year old uh 70 something old lady babysitter we're sitting in the living room watching tv the living room has a fireplace which covers an entire wall it's fucking 1970 yeah that's nice from floor to ceiling with gray brown brick coloring colored brick mm-hmm so we're watching tv and i get bored so i'm staring off into space and notice the fireplace bricks are moving i think it's just my imagination so i snap out of my day dreaming stands and it's the snake it's a whole lot bigger now like four feet long so he must have

been eating good all those years hiding in the wall he's been living in there how terrifying well so this has been his worst night you know he can't even like if we're watching tv and a snake comes on he he can't look away you know he says tell me what's over um so i casually pointed out like oh there's a snake and the babysitter loses her shit and starts running around saying she's gonna call the fire department or whatever my brother and i are still like meh and just tucked our feet up and kept watching tv the babysitter called my mom and she comes home my mom walks in like a boss-ass bitch and grabs a snake with her bare hands this thing is freaking me now so it's trying to bite her when she grabs it of course my mom is in a professional snake grabber

so she grabbed it in the middle of the body instead of behind the head so it could twist around and try to bite a lot easier no my mom wrangles this thing into a kitchen pot and puts the lid on it and then they write it could get it could get air like for any of the pita people yeah anyway she taped the lid on the pot and my brother wrote corn snake bites corn snake bites on the tape the next day we took it to a local pet store and sold that fucker for like 500 bucks yeah anyway keep what keep up what you're doing alexandra that might be the best things in the wall story we've had so far and it doesn't even really count don't sometimes don't judge your story just send it to us sometimes things hidden in walls come out on their own like how could steven not open

that email it's so good yeah but also the idea that the snake gets out of its aquarium or whatever hopefully glass walled container and then just is like i'm staying in this house there's that fruit bowl over there i'm sure they have corn somewhere in the house nice and then it's just like a mouse somewhere now and then right some kind of bugs or whatever yeah but then just like makes a whole camouflage i bet it lived in that fucking brick wall for years but i mean like they stared at it yeah i love that snake i love that snake too have you seen i've sent you that gift of the that insane huge snake and the woman catches it and it's like girls in australia yeah and she's just like cash near it's like they're next to a lake yeah they're like camping crazy snake right

steven comes at her from the water right yes it's look up that like lady catches snake gift unless your vince who doesn't listen to this fucking podcast anyway so he's not gonna do it he doesn't like anything about this podcast all right we're gonna end on a on a self-proclaimed uh lighthearted okay uh light heart if you put lighthearted in your email that's always helpful too because then we know how to end on something yeah exactly or in your subject line okay uh so it's the subject line is golf wielding grandmother lighthearted great um hi karen georgia steven and animals i stumbled upon your show recently and it has made my commute to work in law school so much more enjoyable i did them um i did make the mistake of listening to your episode about the leaf man too

close to bedtime and ended up sleeping with the lights on because obviously murderers wait until you turn them off but otherwise i'm so impressed with your wonderful mix of humor and tragedy with these dark and fascinating stories thanks thanks my hometown isn't about a murder but an attempted robbery one day my grandma phoned to say that she was in the hospital for a broken arm which on its face seems rather ordinary however the story comes out that my grandma woke up in the middle of the night to noises coming from down the hall she lives alone and doesn't have any pets so she knew something was up naturally she grabs one of my grandpa's old golf club sneaks out of her room to investigate and finds a large man rifling through her things in the living room at this point

most people would call for help but apparently my badass grandma thought that she would handle the situation on her own after all she had lived through world war two in latvia before my family's from is that right yes fuck yeah so uh she was forced to flee to the u.s as a teenager after some of her family were killed yes she doesn't suck around she's not fucking she's she doesn't scare easy so she looked around her house to make sure the man was alone smart popped out her with her golf club raised and started beating the thief over the head while shouting at him in latvian good girl he was so startled and probably concussed that he dropped what he grabbed resisted the grandma attack very briefly which is when my grandma's arm was broken and then fled into the night

he was never caught by the police but thankfully he also never returned afterwards my mom gave my grandma a lecture about the importance of calling the cops the risks of attacking intruders without knowing if they are armed or not and how she could have made an escape instead my grandma promised that she would be more responsible but when we visited her next we discovered that she had placed a golf club in every room of her house oh grandma anyways you're awesome so make sure you stay sexy and always carry a golf club love erica oh my god fuck yeah latvian grandma doesn't take shit she couldn't have hit that hard with that right like i mean i just surprised the shit out of this dude yeah well it probably hurt and maybe like knocked him a little senseless but yeah and then also this

woman screaming at you in a foreign language yeah wow that's so good incredible and i like that one yeah i did too those were all amazing those were great and listen any story you have that's fucking crazy just send them to us my favorite murder at gmail and stay sexy and don't get murdered goodbye yeah Elvis do you want a cookie won't cookie