My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 8

Episode Date: October 11, 2016

Karen and Georgia read a selection of your hometown murder emails and dole out a small serving of true crime to get you through your week.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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Oh, do I want to podcast right now? Yes. I'd love to too. This is a formal invitation to a Minnesota. I'm accepting your invitation. Oh, thank you. Oh my God. You don't have anything.

I didn't go to the store. I don't have any beverages. Oh, man. I'm not wearing shoes. Well, never mind. You guys, today, welcome to the Minnesota. This is my favorite murder. It's Minnesota.

It's Minnesota, but it's smaller and warmer. And this is Karen, and this is Georgia, and we switch seats just to change it up for our creativity. Freakin' me out, man. Is it hard? So far. Once I lay back and like completely lounge, I think I'll be cool. Okay.

Once my legs are like at a 90 degree angle. Yeah, you got to get them up above your head. Do you want to do the first ones? Sure. Okay. So these are your hometown murders that you guys send us. I'm actually doing one from our incredible Facebook group because I read this one the other night and I was like, well, I got to do this.

Okay, good. So this is Deb L. She says, my hometown murder is me, or rather would have been me if not for, well, let me explain. Oh. My profile picture is me in kindergarten in 1967 in Norwalk, California. I was a child on the spectrum before there was a spectrum to be on. Back then I was just weird Debbie and mostly I was a loner in a crowd of people and this is still true FYI.

One day I headed to a good friend's house across the alley. We lived in an area. There was a lot of apartment buildings and a few single family homes to get to my friend's apartment. We had to go through the carport as I approached the, I don't know, right as I approached the area. I saw a man with long surfer hair sitting in his car. I had a pass by this car, but something about him made me wary as I got closer.

He opened up his passenger door from the inside and gestured for me to get in. As I looked into the car, I could see he wasn't wearing pants and his stick shift was present and alert. Uh, she doesn't mean the car. She does not. Jesus. I ran back to my house while he was screaming for me to come back. And then I told my mom what I saw.

Let's just say my mom was not a kind woman and I was slapped for describing a man's penis and was told to never talk about that again. And she blamed me. Hey, 1967. Yeah. That was the exact before, uh, people understood how humanity worked. We talk about it a lot. Yeah.

Uh, let's see. And then moving ahead three more days, I was again walking to meet a friend on the other side of the same apartment building. I mean, her mom was just like, get out of here. Her mom's like, hmm, my young child just described a naked man in a car. Go back outside. That was her. That's her answer.

Uh, I avoided the carport and as I made it around the corner, I passed a car parked on the road. I couldn't see the driver as I got near the door of the car. He suddenly sat up, opened the door and grabbed my arm and started pulling me into the car. Fuck. I screamed, kicked, bit, hit, scratched and clawed my way away from him. Yes. Good girl.

A woman walking on the street heard the commotion and came running. That's right. And he drove off. What if it was like, and then she slapped me across the street. Another mean mom came from across the street to hit me in the face. Anyways, I'm in a psycho ward now because people are the worst. I didn't tell my mom about the second one because well, you know, and being four, I couldn't be sexy except to a fucking pervert.

Wait, wait. Four years old. Yeah. Wait. She said six. Originally. Wait. Um, no, she was four.

Fuck. What? Can you imagine a four-year-old walking around the street? No. Like, even a four-year-old out of a car seat these days makes people nervous, much less just fucking, oh, bye, mom. I'm going to go take the alley to my friend's house. I'll be back later when I feel like it.

Yeah. I'm Michael Bowling. I'm four. I got to live my life. Um, two years later, he would grab an eight-year-old off the street and take her to his Hollywood apartment and here's where it gets familiar, where he raped and beat her badly and then he'd, and then would begin his rapey murdery spree until he is finally caught. The man, Rodney Alcala, yes, I know it's difficult to believe being that I was four at the time

that I'd remember this. However, it wasn't until the late 90s when I saw a headline with his picture and I screamed because staring out at me from the computer screen was that face from 34 years ago that I finally had a name to put with the face. I hadn't even read the article to know what he'd done, but I knew he was the guy who tried to grab me twice. Also ever since this moment, I'm hype, my hypervigilance is always on high alert. People think it's funny to come up behind me and startle me.

It wasn't. Who? So that's how you earn the right to grow up and stay sexy and not getting murdered. Way to go, Deb. Hell yeah. Jesus. Rodney Alcala, if I'm pronouncing it correctly, Alcala. Alcala.

Alcala. Alcala. He's the one that was on the dating game. Yeah. That is the, that's one of my favorite. When that one comes on of all those crime shows, I always have to watch that one because first of all, he's such a creep. Yeah.

Overtly. And he was also the photographer, right? Yeah. So he'd go to these like open call, like photo shoots at the beach with like women and bikinis who were like, I want to be a model and the photographer was like, I'm a photographer because I have a camera. Yeah. Come back to my place and I'll take some photos of you.

Sounds great. Let me grab my four-year-old child. Oh my God. I wonder how many like, how many murders are, can be attributed to him that were never, haven't been. Right. I mean, if he's doing shit like that. And I know he went from like California to Florida and, I mean, monster.

He's, he needs to get, we need to go in depth on that guy. Let's do it. Let's do it right now. Let's do it right now. Give me yours. Okay. This one is from Elizabeth and the subject line is, Swingers, homeschoolers, armadillos and murder.

Oh my hometown murder. Who said it all? She's doing it. I'm really, I'm from a really small town in central Louisiana that is notoriously shit tastic. I was homeschooled K through 12 and somehow ended up not being a serial killer. And when I was 20-ish, one of the members of our homeschool group died of a gunshot wound. The story went that he went outside to shoot an armadillo in his backyard with a fucking

rifle, and somehow shot himself in the abdomen according to the 911 call. Sounds fake, but okay. We were all like suspicious as fuck. Especially when it turns out he was shot twice in the stomach. Turns out the police started investigating the assistant district attorney because he was having an affair with the dead dude's wife, but it got better because it turns out they were part of a Swingers group in this super tiny town, less than 3000 people. And the wife and the assistant DA got a little too close.

The local paper released the sex that were super gross. Long story short, without any real explanation, the ADA somehow got off without being accused of actual murder despite a fuck ton of suspicious shit and icky sex messages and the case is still unsolved. He left behind or the guy that got murdered left behind three kids and an armadillo. That's just one of my fucking hometown murders. We're also home to the one of the most controversial death penalty cases because the guy had an IQ below 70.

I'm going to say this to you, Elizabeth. What I love is you got it. It was no ass kissing. It was straight to business. It was almost like she was in a hurry to even send this email. We don't know what town it is in Louisiana. I mean, we know it's central. I just, I love everything about this email and she didn't sign it.

There's no signature. It's just like the end. I'm not I'm not spending any more time with you people. I'm out of time. I've like thought over how to end an email for real. Best sounds bitchy, but yeah, you're not Catherine Hepburn, right? But thank you. Sounds like cloying.

Thank you. Yeah. Fuck. Okay. I always write you change my life. Do you really? It's fun. I love that.

That's amazing. Only for business. Okay. Love it. So this other one is also from, uh, well, okay, so it's also from the Facebook group, but this is another chick that survived and I just like this story a lot. Yes. So this is a girl named Dale and she says, I just want to say that hearing Georgia and

Karen say over and over again in my head, fuck being polite, just listen to your intuition and apologize later may have saved my life two weeks ago. Okay. Sorry. My sister, I was talking to my sister as I drove over here and my sister was telling me this story. The same one? She went on the, my sister now likes this podcast, which is a miracle.

And now she's on the Facebook page, but she's a total, um, what do you call that? She never participates. She just like peeps. She's a peeping Tom of the Facebook page. I do that too until it's really late at night and then I start writing, I love this in comments for years. Every once in a while, there'll be one that just like gets me and I'll be like, I like this.

Um, but go ahead. Sorry. It's just that my sister was so excited by this story that she had to tell me herself. That's why I'm running because I am too. I think we can track your sister's like slow acceptance of this podcast through the past 36 episodes. Yes. Yeah.

Cause it's been like, when you, someone likes your podcast and then it's like, now it's like, I love your podcast. I know she finally had to get, you know what happened is that her best friend, Adrienne and our, all of our friends, Audrey, everybody started and Carol Kraft, of course, everybody started listening to it and talking about, and then she was like, well, I'm not going to get left out. Yeah. Good.

Yes. Get on board for once. Laura. You've had 40 goddamn years. Yeah. Plus, you know what? We should make your sister have to do a lip sync to the song she may choose to make you do.

Pat Benatar. She can't, she can't listen to an episode until she calls us with FaceTime and does a Pat Benatar lip sync to it. She'd be like, no, I'll never do it. I'll never do it. Fine. Never mind. Okay.

Might have saved my life two weeks ago. Yes. I was getting in my car. Sorry. Her name's Dale. Uh, Dale, but I don't, but that's such a weird name. I don't want to out her. Oh, I see.

I don't know. Whatever. Okay. I was getting in my car and had a bad feeling about this guy. He was walking toward me on the sidewalk, but not at me. I was parked in a back in angle parking. I threw my bag in the passenger side of the door to get out of his line of fire more quickly and walked around to the front of my car to the driver's side door to avoid

getting in, getting any closer to him. I got in the car, immediately locked the door, texted my husband that was on my way home. Don't do that, everyone. Don't text while you're sitting in the car. Right? What do you mean? So when you get in your car, you should leave.

When you're waiting in your car. Yeah. So don't take the time. Yeah. You can text at a stoplight when you're away from the area. Pull over or down the street and text, but don't fucking sit in your car when you, like someone who's following you, you know, through the car park. Well, it's anyways, yeah, but I'm still happy for her.

Yes. Um, texted my husband, I was on my way home and got settled in for the drive. I pulled forward and my front right passenger tire thumped over something violently. I almost jumped out of the car to see what I drove over and whether or not it popped my tire. I decided against it because I heard Georgia and Karen's voices in my head. I was in all caps. I'm not just screaming.

And I pulled forward. I decided to roll my window down and look back at the parking spot instead, but guess what I saw? The guy I had a bad feeling about was crouching where my passenger door had been. Oh my God. He was turning away from me, covering his face with his hands and started to run. He had clearly placed something under my tire. So I would get out of the car while it was running and he could either a steal my fucking

car or B hurt me and throw me in my own fucking car to murder me at a creepier location like a goddamn abandoned hospital or C totally murder me and forgotten entirely about the car. Needless to say, I sped off in tears and made my husband examine the car for a GPS tracker. I was convinced he'd follow me. Luckily, we didn't find anything. So these ladies know what's up. I'm eternally grateful.

Oh my God. Amazing. That's the best. I'm so proud. Way to go. This is just like the Radis podcast. It wants people to not get murdered. What more could we be doing?

What more do you want from us like a cooking podcast and we told people how to make pie. It wouldn't like it wouldn't be like I almost died because I well, the pie wrong. But the weird thing is that was never the intention. It just stuff that came out of these stories that you hear over and over like four year olds walking to their goddamn friend's house, which luckily, you know, human evolutionists changed that since 1980 or whenever it happened. What makes a person a murderer? Are they born to kill or are they made to kill?

I'm Candice DeLong and on my new podcast, Killer Psyche Daily, I share a quick 10 minute rundown every weekday on the motivations and behaviors of the criminal masterminds, psychopaths and cold-blooded killers you hear about in the news. I have decades of experience as a psychiatric nurse, FBI agent and criminal profiler. On Killer Psyche Daily, I'll give you insight into cases like Ryan Grantham and the newly arrested Stockton serial killer. I'll also bring on expert guests to dive deeper into the details, share what it's like to work with a behavioral assessment unit at Quantico, answer some killer trivia and even

host virtual Q&As where I'll answer your burning questions. Hey Prime members, listen to the Amazon Music Exclusive Podcast, Killer Psyche Daily, in the Amazon Music app. Download the app today. All right. You ready for this one? Yeah. This is from Garrett.

Woman murdered with a banjo hometown murder. Oh fuck. Right? Hello ladies. First of all, I'd like to say how much I love you guys in your podcast. Finally. Thank you. Finally.

The ass-kissing I'm always looking for. Right at home when I hear your voices, a few months ago I made a photo of Karen's Bob Burgers and wine, Bob's Burgers and wine quote, and you guys reposted it. Oh yeah, that was awesome. That was good. I was having a tough day and when I saw that notification pop up on my phone, all my troubles just went away. That's how I feel about Twitter.

It's just, that's what I'm constantly staring at my phone. Instagram for me. Is that your drug of choice? Always. I just wanted to send in my hometown murder along with my favorite murder that I think you guys would find interesting. In my hometown, a woman was murdered with not one but two banjos. What?

I'm sorry I started kind of laughing at that, but that's, it's, if that was in a script, I'd be like, take that out. Yeah. That's crazy. I've never even seen more than one banjo in one place. Much less. Um, so this is in West Milton, Ohio in 1991. Edward Benson, 63, was a banjo player in a bluegrass band.

On the morning of May 22nd, 1991, Benson woke up, made himself a cup of coffee, waited for his wife to get up around 430 a.m. His wife, Katie woke up, made herself a cup of coffee and joined her. This might be too many details. Sleep in everyone for fuck's sake. No, it's really fun to get up and drink coffee before the sun comes up. No. Yeah, I love it.

Yeah. It's insane. Every morning during my paper route. Um, okay, so Katie joins her husband at the table. They're drinking coffee. This later, Edward got up, grabbed a banjo and decided to beat his wife half to death with it. The banjo broke.

So he decided, so he decided to grab a second one and finish the job after he, I don't know. And also this started so nice. I thought they were just drinking coffee together. I was like, I'm waiting for my wife to get up and I'll make her breakfast. I wonder if it's like she was super critical of his banjo playing the same thing. Yeah. Yeah, over and over again. She was in the right.

I love the mermaid like that. I get it. A banjo player. No, she was just play this. She was a bass player and she'd sing and play the same song, like practice the same song. I wish it was. It was the song moon shadows and now I fucking want to murder that song. Moon shadow by Van Morrison.

Oh, over and over. She was a cook. Whatever. Go on. The banjo broke. So he decided to grab a second one, finish the job. Now I'm thinking that they lived in a banjo shop because also who has to besides besides the cast.

I just love them eating breakfast, having coffee at 430 in the morning in a banjo shop. You got to open that banjo shop at 5am because people are beaten down the door. Banjo players are fucking early risers. Okay. After he contacted the police, he said his wife was murdered, then he waited on the front porch for the sheriff to arrive playing the banjo. The broken one, like the smash, just middle-eens when he's pretending to play. His hands are bleeding.

The officer arrived and he confessed to the whole thing. This story made national news. We're a very small town with a majority of the population being senior citizens. It blows my mind that the only thing we are known for is the banjo murders and the 30 middle-schoolers hospitalized for eating ghost peppers at lunch. Oh my god, I have so many questions about that one. I'm so sorry for the woman who got killed at the banjo, but I'm so sorry. That's terrible and sad, but then this left turn of middle-schoolers, ghost peppers are

insane. No, no, no. That's serious business. I'm moving there. Bye. Yep, that was from Garrett. That was awesome. That was great.

Well done. That was a great double Z's because it was like a really fun murder. Oh my god, not fun, but it was an interesting murder. Interesting. The ending was just out of left field. It was amazing. Also, it was satisfying in that way that he did it, obviously he just snapped, then he admitted it.

Which I think is great. No one went down for his banjo murder. He even tried to shoot the cops or anything like that. Yes, it all kind of went as good as a double banjo murder could go. But RIP to the sweet woman. Just wanted a fucking cup of coffee and a moment of peace. A moment of silence in the banjo shop. This has been our Minnesota.

I hope you liked it. I hope it's going to get you through. Yeah, good luck with that. And stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Bye. I don't know where all this is. I don't know where all this is.