My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 80

Episode Date: July 23, 2018

This week’s hometowns include a case of misplaced ashes and genetic testing gone wrong.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. The such thing where we read you stuff. Can you dig it? Yes, you can. Yeah, any topic. This is a free, this is a free range episode.

This is like interesting story time where like when you first get to a party, it's still a little bit rickety. You haven't had enough drinks yet. Things aren't flowing. So you have to stand to the group of people that you might not even find that interesting and get it going. And hear their stories. And so these are the kinds of things you want to share of interest, rarities, weirdness.

Hey, remember that one time you said the word house? Well, I have a story about a house. That's right. That kind of thing. And yeah, and any horrible thing you could find in a house. Exactly. Why are we re-explaining a thing we've been doing for two years? You guys should know this by now.

It's like every time we have to say it. You don't even listen to us. Even though you listen to us for three hours every week. Wouldn't it be crazy if I then projectile vomited coffee onto the microphone? That's what it felt like I was about to do. That would be amazing. Guys, it's summer. Okay.

Do I'm going to go first? Yes. The subject line, of course, Stephen grabbed this for me because it's more about bad blood from Stanford. Ooh. So this is off of the fucking hooray recommendation that I made. I believe it was last week's episode talking all about the scam company Theranos and their blood testing kits that never worked and yet they sold whatever the company was valuated

at billions of dollars. And the book, Bad Blood, you told us Audrey, it was really interesting. It's so good. Or listen to. That's what I did. Okay. So, Georgia, Karen, Stephen and furry friends. My ears immediately perked up when Karen started describing Bad Blood on episode 130.

I couldn't contain my excitement for Karen's excitement about the story of Theranos. I think that's how it's pronounced. I can't remember. I knew about it pretty early on as my good friend from Stanford ratted out Elizabeth Holmes and that's the 22-year-old startup mogul who basically got the whole thing off the ground. So here's the scoop. That was me.

Now we're back into the email. Here's the scoop. The summer after my senior year of undergrad at Stanford. Very difficult school to get into, by the way. You can't just walk up and say I go here now? No. I think they don't allow commoners on to the campus. It's like West Coast, the closest thing to Ivy League you can get.

Do they have this thing where when you try to push a shopping cart outside of the parking lot of a grocery store and it just goes, it stops working? Yes. Or it's snipers on the roof and they just fucking take you out and they bury your body in the forest up behind the football field. They have football? I don't know. I actually don't know that much about it.

Where are we going? Not to college. Here's the scoop. The summer after my senior year of undergrad at Stanford, I was living in a house with six people and then it says in parentheses, we squeezed a couple of miles off campus. Many of us studied human biology and undergrad, congratulations. So almost all of us were doing research except for my friend who started a job at Theranus. Even at that time, it was a big deal.

As you know from media stories since, Elizabeth Holmes garnered an insane amount of capital for her company and everyone thought that Theranus would revolutionize blood testing. I was interested to hear my friend's take on his new job. Every day, we'd all come home and debrief over dinner and every day, my friend would tell stories about how the testing he was doing on Theranus kits was statistically insignificant and that all the hype about the company was unwarranted. Such a weird feeling to be the science person that's like, yeah, this is bullshit at the center of a complete bullshit contest.

Although I trusted his judgment because he's a super smart guy, at first I thought his comments were just run of the mill, my boss sucks complaints, but as the summer wore on, he grew more and more anxious. He discovered that other coworkers were on the same page as he was and some of them quit as a result. He was thinking of quitting as well, but there were many conflicts of interest for him and he was terrified of being blackmailed, which was a thing they did. They fucking got into everybody's email and they got into people's lives.

They had endless amounts of money and lawyers. It is. It was a rich cult. Oh my God. Lawyer based cult. Okay. After that summer was over, we all parted ways and I didn't hear too much else about Theranus except for that my friend eventually left the company.

However, a few years later, Theranus was all over the news, lo and behold, my friend was the main whistleblower. Crazy to think of what would have happened if he never said anything and how brave he was for doing so. Update. He was doing really well and he's now dating one of my friends from the freshman door. Why do you find that hilarious? It's so like, oh my God, is he dating her?

It's a detail that clearly is thrilling and there's nothing better than someone who knows starts dating someone else. You know that they didn't know each other, but the idea that we can in some way connect it. Also, yeah. Oh, you mean from the door? He's dating Stacey? Holy shit.

She was such a stoner. I don't think people smoke hot at Stanford, do they? Oh, yeah. They get paid to do it. Thanks for reading my feet. My fianc and I can't wait to see you guys in LA on Halloween. Liz. Woo, Liz.

Nice one, Liz. I love any updates about that story. I can't get enough. Like that guy's dating Stacey? Oh, my God, because Stacey, sorry, was a slut. She was a bitch. She was a... Okay.

Well, this one's from my story from last week of the Romanovs. This one's called Romanov Diaries and My Friend's Grandma. Holy... And I actually meant to say Romanov Diamonds and My Friend's Grandma. Let me set it wrong. It's not like the Princess Diaries. No. There's...

And Halfway's not in this email. No. I love being rich. Okay. My friend's grandma, now deceased, was an old Russian woman who escaped the West with her family... Escape to the West. Right.

With her family. She escaped to Russia. She ran into Russia. She hated all the cowboys. That's right. She escaped to the West with her family as the communist regime took over. She would never talk about her childhood, so my friend and her family never really knew much of anything.

Man, tell us everything. The only thing they knew was that she was... She had a handful of diamonds that were handed down to her from her mother. One day they were watching a TV special on the uncovering of the Winter Palace, home of the Romanovs. Yes. The Soviets had covered up certain rooms, and after the fall of the Soviet Union, they, and then it says in parenthesis, you know, they, recovered, recorded the reveal of the

historic Romanov décor. As they uncovered a green marble fireplace, my grandmother's... My friend's grandmother began to cry because she remembers this fireplace from her childhood. She sat at the fireplace on the regular when she was little. It was learned that her mother, my friend's great-grandmother, was a teacher for the Romanov, the children of the Romanov family. The grandmother, as a child in the palace, grew up alongside Anastasia. No!

Then the other royal children. On a regular basis, the mother would tell stories to all of the children in front of the fireplace before they went to bed at night. When the family was slaughtered, everyone in the household was in danger, so she and her mother fled for their lives. Fuck! Because remember, they killed, like, the doctor and one of the... My friend and her grandmother, my friend had her grandmother's jewels appraised, and the

jeweler was somehow able to trace them back to old-timey Russia. We think that as they fled, they either swiped a handful of jewels or were given them by the Romanov. They were, like, in candy dishes or was like, grab a couple diamonds on your way out. We love that you came to visit us at the Winter Palace. Thanks for coming. My favorite behind-the-walls and degrees of separation story, stay sexy and swipe some jewels, Jeremy.

Hell yes, Jeremy. I will swipe jewels at any given opportunity. Wipe that candy dish of diamonds. What's better than a terrible war story, but then somebody getting a hold of, like, a raw diamond and sewing it into their clothes? That's just so, like, yeah. It's like, it's so, like, fairytale, except the dying part. Like, what in your house are you going to be able to smuggle that's going to get you

anywhere? And, like, get anything? It can get you anything when everything falls apart? Oh, well, my rare diamonds collection. Let's start buying raw diamonds, as I'm saying. How about the silver coins my dad gave me in this for our wedding, because he says that when the end days come, paper money's going to be worthless, silver. It's going to be all about them nickels that Marty got you.

Thank you. What have you just got as a roll of nickels? But they're all from 1967. It's good luck. Um, yeah, it's my family. It's like, there's a joy of cooking cookbook I could probably get. There's some good ass recipes in there that might be worth something. Hell yeah.

Beef stroganoff. You know what you do? You put some fucking sour cream in that, baby. You put some stroganoff in the fucking beef. You put some tang on that beef. And you put some noodles in it. They're like, you know what, you no longer have to go to the prison. Thank you.

What do you have to trade for your life? I have pockets full of hot stroganoff. Thank God. Where are we going? Not sure. Okay. Well, here's the subject line of my next email. Okay.

Ash is in the trunk. Okay. Hey, everyone. My name is Mary Lou, and I'm a semi-frequent emailer, very heavy listener. Thank you for declaring yourself, Mary Lou, so clearly and accurately. Yesterday, I went to go see the dead in Co. and then in parentheses, the Grateful Dead minus Jerry Garcia plus John Meyers. Oh, right.

John Meyers. Mayor? The one that invented the lemons at the Gorge in Washington. So before I went in, I ate three grams of mushrooms and started tripping almost instantly. They love drug stories. Don't do drugs, send us your drugs. Don't do drugs, but then again, if you go ahead and eat some mushrooms in the out of doors because you're going to enjoy some trip out music where every other person there

is on drugs. It's including the entire band. And the roadies. And the roadies. And the concession. Exactly. Every single person is just going to be the chillest of the chill. Okay.

Okay. I'm also on mushrooms, so I lost my place and I immediately started tripping. Thank you. While I was watching the show and going through an intense roller coaster of emotions as one does who is tripping on mushrooms, I realized my mom's ashes have been in the trunk of my car for an entire year. Oh my God. You put your mom in your trunk and you left her there for a year.

They have an explanation, I should say. Oh no, it's Mary Lou. Mary Lou has an explanation. Last year on Mother's Day, my mom died in her sleep of mysterious causes at the age of 50. Oh, that's awful. I'm sorry, Mary Lou. I was 19 and had the plan, pay for and organize my mom's entire funeral and such.

So honey. It was really shitty. It was a lot for a 19 year old to deal with, but I got it done and it all worked out. Fuck yes, Mary Lou. Well done. Your mom would be proud of you. That sucks so much at 19 and that's the thing about when people die is the people closest to the person who are the most affected also have to start making a shit ton of decision.

This is why you want to do it before you die, make all your plans and shit, right? Yeah, you want to, but no one does. No one does. Okay. All right. We're with you, Mary Lou. After spending most of the summer in Wisconsin where I'm from, I realized I needed to change so I uprooted my life, put my dog and all my belongings in my car and moved to Portland.

It was actually a great idea. I had planned on bringing my mom's ashes with me and as I made this long trip, I would stop in beautiful places and scatter her throughout the country where she would be whisked away over pretty landscapes. Only problem. I left home without the fucking ashes. By the time I realized this, I was already in Northern Colorado, so I made my dad Fed X them to the Airstream I was staying on on a farm in Fort Collins.

That sounds amazing. So good right now. Yeah. Okay. When they showed up, they were in an Amazon box that my dad had just reduct taped and scribbled my dress on in purple Sharpie. I threw the box in the trunk and kept on driving, but for whatever reason, it never felt like the right time or place to scatter her.

That makes sense. I moved to Portland and became a preschool teacher and have been living here ever since. I kept forgetting that Sue was indeed in the trunk of my car and that eventually I was going to have to do something with her until I ate a bunch of mushrooms at the gourd. Oh my God. Oh, Mary Blue. This story is when you're on mushrooms, don't think about your dead mom's ashes. That's the worst thing to think about.

But it's also like she's saying because these crazy drugs, psilocybin and mushrooms are an emotional roller coaster. You go emotionally crazy. So it's perfect just like this email is an emotional roller coaster. Okay. I realized a year is way too long to have my mom in the trunk of the car and that it's not ha ha funny anymore. It's just fucking weird.

So today I went to my car and pulled out the box where I opened it in my apartment only to realize some of the ashes had spilled out from the plastic urn into the cardboard box. I go to dump it out of my window to try to dust off the box, but the wind blew it into my apartment at that blew into my apartment at that exact moment. And pieces of my fucking mom's ashes blew into my house and into my face lesson learned. If you keep your mom's ashes in the trunk for a year, she will retaliate when you finally move her. My mom is the reason I'm a murdering out and she would have loved your podcast.

So on both of our be halves, SSDGM, Mary Lou, it's so good if fuck it's like you can't do death correctly. It always is fucked up. It's of course you're avoiding spreading your mother's ashes. It's like to have your mom die sucks so bad. She is traumatized by this terrible event and then she tries to like make it right. Do the right thing. Of course.

It's just so typical. That's amazing. It's just so good. That's a great story. Thank you for that very personal and very awful story, Mary Lou. Good job, Mary Lou. I'm sorry, it got me. No, I love it.

It got me good. It's beautiful. It got me good. Good. This one's called, let's see. I have one more. Okay. It's short.

Okay. This is called 23andme gone wrong slash I might be an alien. Shit. And then the opening is just, hi, perfect. Back in January, I sent my adorable little bottle of spit to 23andme after a bunch of us got the kit for Christmas. A few months later, everyone else had their results except me. And finally, I received an email saying that the genome analysis had been unsuccessful

because they hadn't been able to collect enough DNA from my saliva. They sent me a new kit and told me to try again. Naturally, I assumed some lab tech had just dropped my sample on the floor, so I did it again and didn't think much of it. Another few months passed and I finally received another email saying that I was incompatible with the analysis. They were unable to extract DNA and that they would not try to perform the analysis again. In fact, they asked me to check a box online saying I would not try to submit my sample

ever again. What? I looked all over the Reddit world and only found one other person that's happened to. I'm completely healthy and can think of no reason why my DNA didn't work. So I guess I can spit all over a crime scene and they'd never know it was me. Who knows, but they sent me a refund and I bought an air conditioner with it, so I guess it was worth it. Yours may be an alien Robin.

What the fuck? Robin! Because they would have told her if she, because I know a girl who is a non-secreter. Right. So she didn't, she should try to maybe prick her, I think the girl ended up like pricking her thumb and putting like a drop of blood in the saliva thing and it worked. But they would have told her if she is like couldn't get enough DNA. Well also that's just so fascinating, I mean if it wasn't a technical issue but it's

just like yeah there's nothing showing up. Something working and promise you'll never do this again. Yes, exactly. It's so weird. We don't want your fucking area 51 shit coming into our, oh my god. Looking for a better cooking routine? With meal planning, shopping and prepping handled, HelloFresh has you covered. HelloFresh makes home cooking easy and affordable so you can stay on track and on budget in

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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. What do you think, Stephen? How long was that? That's been like 18 minutes. Because I can do one to one. You want to do one more? A shorty. Well, actually there's this.

Karen, do one more. Okay. I'm going to work quickly. Okay. Because I'm sweating so much. A creepy man with children's pictures on his wall. Perfect. Hello, Karen, Georgia, Stephen, Elvis, Mimi, Dottie, Frank, and George.

Love it. Well done. Penny. Penny? Penny Lynn, Stephen's cat. Oh, that's right. Let's just start fucking folding in every animal we know. You forgot one.

There's also every animal we've ever been. Okay, go. I just finished binge listening to all the episodes you guys have. I'm not the best writer, so bear with me on spelling and all grammatical errors. No. This story is kind of short, but as I think about what happened and how old I was, I thought I should share it. My twin sister who got me hooked on this podcast and I were around eight years old, and we

were living with my mom at the time in our small town near St. Louis, Missouri. We walked to and from school every day. On our way home from school, almost always we would stop at this 60 to 70 year old man's house. His name was Terry. I remember him looking like an average grandpa with kind of crooked teeth. We would talk to him for up to an hour before actually going home. I believe that it was because of friends or neighbor kids that we knew that we could stop

by his house. Anyways, this creeper would give everyone candy and sodas. At the beginning of every school year, this man would ask for current school photos. If we didn't have any, he would have us sit down on one of the steps of his front porch so he could take his own photo. No, no, no, no. Once he got them developed, he would put them up along the wall of at least 100 other kids photos in his garage.

Why did we ever think this was okay? We were so dumb. Well, you were children. As I'm remembering everything, there were days when his garage door was closed or his wife's car was in the driveway and we weren't allowed to stop by. Also our visits would be cut short on days his wife came home earlier than he expected. There were days when we wouldn't stop by because it was raining or we just wanted to get home. On those days, he would walk himself to our house.

My very own mother would let him in the house and sit on our couch. She just let us sit there and talk to this crazy man for hours. I always thought he was kind of weird, but I'm eight years old and my brain just told me to shut up. I remember my sister and I going to this man's house until the summer that we ended up moving to my dad's house. I want to thank you girls for welcoming my inner crime-loving self into this awesome community.

You two make my midnight shift way more enjoyable and eases my wandering mind when I'm walking around an almost empty hospital online cleaning just as empty rooms. Please keep doing what you do because you do it so well. Stay sexy and don't stop by creepy old men's houses on your way home from school. Lacey and Melanie Ann. Oh my God. So, it's just basically a story of a man who loves to visit children. The photo part is the creepiest.

The photo part is not good. No. And also that the wife, it's not like the wife is like, oh, who's here, high girls or whatever. Yeah. That it's some weird like- The wife knows something's going, something's weird happening, so don't tell her that you come over here.

Well, I mean, does the wife not go into the garage? Maybe not. The fuck's the deal? Maybe the wife hates children. Oh, and this is his only like, he's like, I really love children. She really wanted children. She refused to give him children. Give him children.

She refused to have children. Give him children. Give him a child. Give him, give more, Randolph a child. I feel like you could definitely go that old man's crazy. It could be a tragic story. It could be, there's so many things in between, but the picture's on the wall and it being a hundred other children.

Why? Yeah. What? Yeah. Yeah. Send us your shit at my favorite murder at Gmail. Wow, guys. That was a real good round.

That was a fun one. That was real fun. Lots of laughs. And of course, lots of tears. Lots of love. Lots of love. So much love. Lots of laughs.

We laughed. We loved. We cried. We cried. We lived. And we stayed sexy. And we didn't get murdered. And you should too.

Goodbye. Goodbye. Elvis, you want a cookie? Ah. Good job. Good job. Thank you.