My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 89

Episode Date: September 24, 2018

This week’s hometowns from North and South Carolina include a John List connection and a trivia night story.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. God, we're getting good at that. We are getting great after only 2,000 episodes. Solid gold. Look into my favorite murder. The mini-soad. Where we read you your shit. You love it. We read it. We like it too. Yeah, we have our own kind of fun. The subject line of this first email, I was going to say podcast, that's scary, is my dad was the last person to see John List, Jr. alive. So if you don't remember or if you're new or you only listen to the mini-soads. This is

your first episode. Have we ever talked to the people who only listen to mini-soads? It doesn't happen, does it? If you're mini-soads only, we'd love to hear from you. And why are you mad at us? Yeah, what the fuck's the problem? John List was the familiar side. I'm sure I'm not pronouncing that right. He's the guy that killed this whole family in their mansion because he had lost his job, but he couldn't tell anybody. And it's a very dark story that we did. It's like a classic dude who kills his family and starts a new life somewhere else because he's a piece of shit. Yes. And he had a very famous, they did a very famous reconstruction of his head on a Believe Unsolved Mysteries. Or America's Most Wanted. Or America's Most Wanted,

I think is what it was. And they found him. And they found him. And he saw himself. Living his new life, chilling out in Colorado. They always fucking run the Colorado. And there's a great, it's in one of our episodes that you do him and there's a great twist at the end about the money. Yes. I hope we won't tell you. We have to go listen to a real episode for once. Sorry mini-soad nerd. Go listen to a full episode. Okay, so this is the son who's named after his father who was sadly murdered with the rest of the family. Karen, Georgia, all furry friends. Big fan. Let's get to this. Great. This past weekend, I evacuated to my parents' house before Hurricane Florence hit. So these are, these are emails from North and South Carolina listeners, pre-Florence,

but right before. While I love all the stories my dad shares, this factoid about him is probably the craziest, which he delved a little further into this weekend. My dad was John List Jr.'s best friend. And the last one to see him alive before his father, also my dad's Boy Scout leader. And an extremely religious man, as my dad described him, took him home to kill the final member of his family. Oh my God. It's Soder. I know in episode 29, that's nice. Thank you. Good nice work. I would have never been. It's episode 29. You guys mentioned John Sr. went to his son's soccer game after killing his mother, wife, daughter, and other son. My dad had told me John Jr. and him would normally walk home from practices and games together. He remembers this

day because John Jr.'s dad pulled up in his car when they were walking on Clark Street and picked his son up, which never happened. But my dad thought nothing of it. It wouldn't be until a month later when nosy teachers and neighbors would discover the bodies in that ballroom, which my dad also played broom hockey in. So her dad was or I'm assuming it's a her it is. Her dad played broom hockey in that ballroom where he's where he laid out the bodies. Holy shit. So intense. He clearly remembers it as this giant room with this grand skylight and spoiler with absolutely no furniture in it. Fast forward a month and the detectives are picking my father up on his way to school. He told me he thought, oh shit, did I do something bad? My dad was definitely a total nerd. So no

way. And it got even more serious when they brought him to the principal's office where his parents were already waiting. They ended up asking him questions like if John Jr. had said anything to him before getting in the car or if John Sr. seemed off. I find this little tidbit of my dad's life so unique and sad, of course, since he lost his best friend in seventh grade. I look forward to seeing you ladies here in Charleston, South Carolina next week. Stay sexy and don't get murdered best, Isabel. Wow. Isn't that intense? That crazy story that you know, like you're one of your parents has. Yeah, that's yeah. Unbelievable. What a fucking sad story. And it's of all the stories. One of the like, to me, it's the one it just stays with you the most and has the it's so

baffling and insane. And it's just so unfair. It's like John List should have just fucking left and started doing a life without killing his family or just fucking killed himself because he is a piece of shit. Just unfair. He thinks that he deserves to live and go have a life somewhere else. Yeah, not his family. Yeah, like what an asshole. Yeah, I know it's more than that. But that's what I'm going to call it. It's let's simplify things in the many soaps. That's how we are. These are not going to be an hour and 50 minutes long. He's an asshole. Let's see. Okay, this one is called Cat Calling Arson. Okay. Hi, all. Let's just jump in. Yes, let's learn. So when I was 10 11 ish, my older cousin and I were at her parents house. It was mid afternoon

Sunday. And our parents had gone to church to work on some youth event. We live in a fairly safe small town southern community in North Carolina. My cousin's house had a large unfurnished basement with sheets hanging up everywhere to separate all the hoarded junk sitting around. That sounds creepy. Hiding their clutter as a good as good southern people do. Nice. Just hanging sheets to hide your hoarding. Just throw up a nice curtain mid room. It's like a wall. Don't worry about it. Don't even worry about it. I was helping my cousin finish her list of chores and follow her downstairs to take another load of laundry down and grab clothes out of the dryer. The washer and dryer located in the back of the basement in a large open room.

So I'm folding clothes out of the basket and she's at the washer putting another load and I hear this whistle. You know that. And then this part speaks to my heart because I can't whistle. So she says, you know that wheat, woot, guys do when they're calling a lady on the street. And I fucking whoot, that one. I can't whistle. So that's all I would be able to say. Can you? There you go. And it scared both the cats. I think it's way funnier and more attractive thing to just yell wheat, woot, woot. Just like when I saw the wheat, woot, like typed out, I was like, I know what you're talking about. My cousin is mid sentence. So I look at her and go, how did you do that? And she turns around and says, what? And I'm like, whistle mid sentence.

How did you do that? She didn't actually whistles and said, you clearly whistled not me to which I deny because I can't whistle. I still can't whistle 15 years later. And then says, I'm sitting on the couch fake whistling to confirm. And as we are looking at each other with our mouths, clearly not moving, we both hear the whistle again. Picture in your mind. This time it's so much creepier. Yeah, this time I drop the clothes and run tearing up the stairs with my cousin not far behind me. We run up the stairs shutting the basement door and locking it behind us. Oh, we carry I just put it together like I knew it factually, but I just put it together. They're in a fucking basement. They're in a basement and there's sheets hanging all over

hiding shit. And they hear we you set the whole scene. And then the second it was the cat calling you're like outside outside in front of like a scaffolding like New York City Street. They're home alone in a basement in a basement recording basement. Okay. I call her dad who laughs as often tell you here is a we're clearly in panic and comes home from church. He's back within 10 minutes with a crowbar and my dad and toe behind him and they go to investigate. Yeah, dad. Yes, my cousin and I sit upstairs frozen until they call us down to our horror. The basement door that leads to outside is open, which it clearly was not when we were down there. So someone was standing there in the dark behind one of those rooms curtained off by sheets whistling at two little

girls and high tailed out the door and we screamed and ran up the stairs. My cousin's house burned down twice after that over a period of seven years. What? Yeah. The first time, according to firefighters official reports, the fire started downstairs in the basement in the middle of a concrete floor how ruining all of downstairs and the majority of everything they owned. So they rebuilt and finished the basement. The second fire supposedly started upstairs in a bookshelf, no explanation of how or source no candles around nothing. Insurance later dropped them because they could not explain how the fire started in suspected arson. Whoa. Needless to say, my cousin and I can't help but feel like that creepy Sunday afternoon whistle had something to do with the

fires. Oh, and they're still living in that house. Stay sexy and if you hear a whistle, run or move Lauren. Holy shit. How creepy is that? Also, because if it say it just is worst case scenario, it's some sex offender that's like hiding. Yeah, that's the worst case scenario is a sex offender hiding in the basement where two little girls are fucking doing laundry. But then it would make sense horrible if that person continues to live and be in that house that he's a fire starter. Yeah, he's a fire starter. Wee woo. Mr. Wheat Woo. Oh, Jerry Wheat Woo. He got a jail six months ago. Okay, this subject line is from faking your own death in Mexico to owning a pizza place in South Carolina. Hello, ladies, Steven and animals. When my husband, then boyfriend

and I first moved to Columbia, South Carolina over 12 years ago, we found a group of friends to play bar trivia with. I was mostly along to write the answers on the paper to keep score and occasionally It's a very important job. That's right. You it has to be clear writing. Yeah. Occasionally answer a very recent bullshit pop culture question. Amen. As this friend group was freaky smart. Over the course of four years, we won $1,000 in bar tabs and cash, including two $1,000 summer tournaments. That's amazing. Oh my God, I want to go with them. They're smart. Every Thursday, we would go to this bar called Bayes and play and win. It turns out Bayes was named after the owner Bay Rutherford. He was around a lot. I met him on several occasions and was known for being kind

of a creep hiring and hitting on young college girls. He was probably in his late 40s, shorting his workers on their pay and tips and overall just being a douche. Thanks to an article in a local independent newspaper, we learned that Baye had been convicted of faking his own death by burning a body in his car along with some of his personal effects, Michael Clayton style in Mexico in the 90s. He lost a bunch of money in the stock market and he wanted a way out. So he grabbed a grave in Mexico, burned the body in the car, threw in his medical alert bracelet and watch, which is dead on Michael Clayton and not medical alert bracelet. Michael Clayton is like, I'm allergic to nuts. Do not resuscitate me. And he even went so far as to take a tooth from the dead guy and give it

to his wife to give to investigators if they came around. So she knew. And she was like, here's my DNA and I'm like, this is rotten. Holy shit. Also forensic dentistry doesn't work that way where they're like, yes, ma'am, do you have any of your husband's teeth? We need to take them in. That's the only way we can get it. It's the only way. He had $7 million out in life insurance on himself. Too much life insurance. That's seven red flags. And he was hoping to cash it in later when his wife claimed it. Luckily, a bone expert noticed some inconsistencies from the burned body and figured out it wasn't Baye. He was caught in NYC convicted and served five years, which is the max. That's it. She says the max, I think. Okay. Before we heard about this, we almost felt bad

for going to Bayes almost every Thursday for over a year and a half and never spending an actual dime of our own money. But fuck that guy. The faking his death part of the story can be watched on forensic files season eight, episode 31. That's good. Or collection for episode 14 on Netflix. Love it. Love your specific sorrow. You should fucking, you should play trivia trivia about Netflix and forensic. Love your show. Can't wait to see you in Charleston next month, which is pretty soon. Stay sexy. Don't feel bad about winning money from a felon, Lauren. That's good. That's a good one. Yeah, that's two Lawrence so far. Yeah, that's right. Wow. I mean, it sounds like a victimless crime because you're just fucking over a fucking life insurance

corporation, but the body who they stole from belonged to a family and that's got to just be traumatizing all over again. Someone's father or uncle or relative brother. It's, well, also just the idea that you would be enough of a creep to be like, oh, I want to keep my money. I'm in a, I'm in a dig up a body. Yeah. And take a tooth from it. Come on, guys. Let's not. Don't have some accountability. Please stop it. 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

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and use code murder20. Goodbye. What makes a person a murderer? Are they born to kill? Or are they made to kill? I'm Candace 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. This is called, I'm not going to tell you the name of it, but it's light-hearted. Okay. Okay. All right, no introduction. Straight to the post. Yes. To the point, they said. My mom and I used to have a summer home in North Carolina. One summer, roughly 15 years ago when I was about eight, our Jack Russell terrier, Jill, started going insane. Jack and Jill, because she was a Jack Russell. Jack and Jill. That's cute. Started going insane. She would run around barking, staring at the

walls and ceilings. During this time, some of our stuff went missing. Just a few small things that weren't important enough to worry about. One night, my mom came into my room to check if I was asleep only to find a tiny furry creature with huge eyes staring at her while drinking out of my glass of water. What? Turns out there was a family of flying squirrels living in our tiny attic. This is a finding things in the wall story, by the way. Why? How cute would that be? Over the door, and there's this little tiny tongue. Looking into it. Oh, it's so cute. Unless it's rabbit. Yes. And next to your child. Yep. My mom watched as a squirrel flew through the air right next to her face and dashed into

my bathroom. And then it says, flying squirrels could fly very well, even though it's actually just gliding. Not knowing what else to do, she shut the door and covered the crack at the bottom with a towel. Then she went to grab a butterfly net. Not sure that would have helped much. When she went back into my bathroom net in hand, she saw this squirrel in my bathtub, and this is all caps, and it kills me playing with my bath toys. Let it live there. Startle the squirrel made its way to a slightly a jar cabinet and through the tiniest and through the tiniest hole in the wall. My mom realized that the butterfly net would not be sufficient in catching the creature and call the pest control or some other animal removal company

the following day. I was playing with her bath. That's like I'm a baby. So cute. It's so cute. They came within a day or so and found that they had made our attic their new home. They removed the family flying squirrels and released them outside. I'm not sure where, but far enough way that they couldn't come back. Once they were gone, we got to see everything they had stashed up there because all that tiny shit was going missing. Sure enough, all the things that have been going missing were there, including several of my bath toys and my favorite eye pillow. They were just taking shit and running off. Basically, that bathroom had become like their FAO Schwartz. They were just like, check out this sponge that's shaped like an ice cream cone.

I am freaking out. I just love like the idea that a squirrel who you think is just like a boring thing was like this toy is the best. I'm taking it. And I'm going to go back for more. That's right. It was good to find our stuff as well as to know that our dog was not actually crazy about that issue, although she still was not pun intended. I get it. Stay sexy. Remember your crazy dog might actually have a point, Natalie. Oh, Natalie. That's a good one. Yeah. That's so cute. Flying squirrel drinking out of a glass. That's quick, quick, quick, quick. Pardon me. Okay. The subject line of this is my literal job is finding stuff in walls. This is slightly long, but it's really worth it. I am here for it. Hi, Karen and Georgia. Imagine my delight

when I realized your obsession with finding shit in walls was very real. Clearly you were operating on my level of obsession, which is basically the doctoral level of finding shit in walls. I am director of museums for historic Charleston Foundation in Charleston, South Carolina. Charleston, that's a whole sentence. As a historian and preservationist in charge of two sites in the historic district, we find all caps, a lot of shit in walls. Here's the latest and greatest story. One of the house museums I oversee is called the Nathaniel Russell House. It was built by, hey, you guessed it, Nathaniel Russell in 1808. The original house consisted of an enormous three-story federal mansion, kitchen house, carriage house, work yard and garden.

Russell moved into the house in the spring of 1808 with his wife, two daughters, aged 19 and 17, and 18 enslaved men and women. We have owned the Russell House since 1955, and since 1989, much time, funding and effort has been poured into the study and restoration of the main house. As such, it is a pristine example of the towering wealth of slave owners in the early 19th century, whereas the areas inhabited by those 18 enslaved people were used for offices or storage and were not considered essential to the telling of the full history of the house. Needless to say, that line of thinking has evolved, and last year we began an intensive study of the kitchen house to learn more about the lives of those living and working in the kitchen, laundry,

and living quarters between 1808 and 1865. I should add that since very little about the daily lives of the enslaved survives in written record. It's only through forensic evidence and archaeology that we were able to piece together what life was like. Even microscopic traces of paint can tell us volumes about a room from 200 years ago. We began our study of the kitchen house by assessing the structure and realized that the upstairs living quarters were drywalled in the early 20th century, and we could hear voids behind it when we tapped along the walls. A contractor on our team used a very small reciprocating straw to cut a small hole in the drywall, and we were astounded by what we found underneath. Behind the drywall, perfectly encapsulated was the original

plaster walls of the first period slave quarters, complete with original lime wash. We were amazed since features like this don't survive 200 years of renovation, but as we removed drywall, we realized that practically everything in the room was original to the period of enslavement. Plaster woodwork, paint finishes, window sashes, doors, everything. As the drywall came down, the room transformed, and we were looking at the same walls from the early 1800s. It was an incredibly emotional day, thinking about how everything we could see was built by the enslaved from the bricks and mortar to the plaster and paint, and these surfaces hadn't been seen for at least 100 years. This was a living space for enslaved people, and probably the only place in the house

they could have a moment peace, if any. It was like a sacred place to say the least. So then it gets better. Oh my god. As we rounded the corner and continued to remove drywall, we discovered tons of debris packed in between the studs and baseboards. Well, all that shit ended up being the remains of several undisturbed rats nests. Before you freak out, finding a rat's nest is like Christmas morning for preservationists. Oh, because they take it and run. Yeah, we were literally jumping for joy. Holy shit. Rats tend to gather items from a 50 foot radius, pack it in there, and then pee all over it. And thankfully, rat pee is a preservative. Holy shit. So even if a nest is hundreds of years old, the things in it tend to stay intact over many years. Oh my god. They're

like tiny time capsules. If time capsules were full of nod bones, mummified rat poop and a shitload of sweet artifacts. Fun. We wasted no time pulling all that shit literally out of the walls. I'll attach a photo of us coming through one night rat, one of eight rat nests. Oh my god. So you can see how much debris we are talking about. We spent several days painstakingly combing through the debris and removing artifacts. We uncovered hundreds of artifacts. These fucking rats had straight up stolen from the people living in the kitchen house. We found buttons, stockings, marbles, straight pins, a portion of a waistcoat, a veil from a bonnet, hundreds of bones from butchered animals. They were likely stealing these from the kitchen one floor down. We found a small

littered paper box containing a cake of makeup. Oh my god. The most exciting finds, however, were two fragments of paper. One was a minuscule bit of newspaper with the name Crookshank on it. My colleague was quickly able to search the historic newspaper database and match it with the digitized original, which dated from November 1833. Holy shit. It was incredible to know that everything we were looking at was from such an early period. However, it gets better. The most intriguing artifact retrieved from the nest was a tiny fragment of a reading primer. This one made us all tear up. When we realized what it was, you see reading and writing was illegal for enslaved people in South Carolina in 1833. Despite this, someone living above the kitchen

at the Russell House got their hands on a reading primer and were possibly learning to read and write. Holding the physical evidence of potential resistance was one of the most powerful moments of my career. So that's my touching story of finding shit in walls. The kitchen house restoration is still ongoing. You can come see it when you come to Charleston in September. Dude. And we are in the fundraising period now, hoping to fund a full restoration of the kitchen house so it can be put on public view along with the artifacts we pulled out of the walls. Telling the story, the full story of Charleston and its complicated and painful past is basically my reason for living at this point. So it is important, especially in this political climate. Thank you so much for

keeping me company during long hours of cataloging museum objects. You guys are the best. Cannot wait to see you in September. SSDGM Lauren. Lauren number three. Look, really? Yeah. That's crazy. Holy shit. That is incredible. Isn't that amazing? So incredible story. If you, the, she's the director of museums for the historic Charleston foundation. So whenever the historic Charleston foundation starts that fun fundraising campaign, there's nothing I'd love more than to see that happen. Me too. Well, we're actually, so we're recording this early because we're going this weekend to our tour. So we just, let's just go knock on that fucking door. We'll go there, but we'll be wearing gloves and masks and booties on our shoes. Totally. Steven has the photos. Oh, oh, we'll put

them up on Instagram and Twitter and shit. Oh my God. Facebook. That's so much stuff. Oh, that is creepy and looks so much fun. Wow. That's like, that's very, it's like American Indiana Jones. Um, can people who are, who work in museums, I know like a lot of museums have their like, their shit that they, that they just store that they don't have out, like send us the weirdest thing you have or the creepiest thing you have or your favorite thing that you've have in there. It sounds like you're trying to rip off Don Wildman's mysteries of the music. Please essentially Don Wildman us. We want to get bite that Don Wildman style. That's right. We want you to mysteries at the museum email us. Well, because there's nothing more fascinating

than real, the real stuff, the real, the real, which is by the way, you should watch the show. It's a great show. Yes. However, we want the ones that Don Wildman does. They can't tell every story. It's right. Listen, uh, send us a whistle. Send us a wee woo. We woo us at my favorite murder Gmail and, uh, send us a whistle. Send us a whistle. We at us and stay sexy. Don't get rid of it. Goodbye. Elvis, you want a cookie? That's right. Yeah. We won't. He just, we won't. He wittled. Wittled.