My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 90

Episode Date: October 1, 2018

This week’s hometowns from New York City include a hand found in a canal and an attempted burglary. 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. Hello. And welcome to the mini-soad. It's where we read your stuff back to you. Sometimes it's hometown murders. Lately it's not. Of my favorite murder. This is how we do it. This is how we do it. So we're gonna be in New York and Brooklyn or Manhattan and Brooklyn and Boston-ish for a tour. So here's some hometowns from there. Thank you, Georgia. Take it away. This one made me laugh so hard. Okay. The subject line is

my husband found a hand in the Gowanus Canal on the 4th of July. Love it already. And parentheses light-hearted. Love it. Dear MFM family, a few years ago my husband and I were visiting friends in Brooklyn for the 4th of July. As my husband and his friend were walking over the Gowanus Canal on their way to get groceries, his friend started telling him about the cesspool that is the Gowanus Canal. I don't even know it. Our friend explained that it was the most polluted waterway in the country with numerous instances of waste, raw sewage, and human bodies being dumped in the canal. Holy shit. As they got about halfway across, my husband, an internal medicine doctor, that seems made up, said, dude, is that a hand? Oh my god. They looked down and into the bubbling,

yes, bubbling water. Ew. And they saw the fingertips from a hand bobbing in the water, looking like it was trying to climb out. Oh my god. Being the calm men that they were, they started freaking the fuck out and calling all the authorities they could think of, 9-1-1, Fire Department, local police precinct, Coast Guard. Being that it was the 4th of July, by the time the numerous authorities arrived, quite a crowd had gathered. The various departments roped off everything and then consulted with my husband and his friend and each other. Then the one who clearly was in charge, I picture him as Andy Sipwitz, said, yep, we got a hand right there. And then he turned to the department rookie, padded him on the back and

said, you my friend are suiting up. The rookie got into his wetsuit and slowly made his way into the canal, clearly not happy to be swimming in the water that had gonorrhea in it. He swam for a bit using a pole to try and retrieve the body. After a few minutes of poking and pulling, a mannequin arm shoots 20 feet in the air. All the officers groan and start to head on to more urgent crimes. Sipwitz pats my husband on the back and says, don't worry about it, we had nothing to do today anyway. The next day we found the rest of our Vic at the Brooklyn Free Monthly Market, where someone was selling a mannequin that was missing one arm. Picture attached. Steven was fucking with his thing, meaning I knew we had a photo, but before I knew it was a mannequin

and I was like, I don't want to see a hand in a fucking thing. Look at those two hot bitches holding that hand. Oh yeah, hi guys. Good job. I fully realize I'm throwing my husband under the bus with this story, but that's what you get when you think you found a dead body and you don't call your murderer and a wife to come and watch. That's hilarious. Stay sexy and don't go swimming in the Guana's Canal, Melissa. Oh my gosh. Let's go swimming in the Guana's Canal this weekend. That's amazing. That's a good one. Okay. This one's called NYC, found in wall slash murder closet. Yes, it says, this is how she opens it. You guys, that's great. All right. You guys, back in February of this year, I made some big girl moves and bought an apartment. It was,

it is tiny. It's built in the 1950s, hadn't been renovated since the late 1970s. Well, that sounds amazing. When I bought it, my family would joke either one of the previous owners had bodies hidden in the walls or as used as a shoot, it was used to shoot porn. They had covered all the walls in brick paneling. Oh, you guys. Random floor tile, wood paneling, and awful wallpaper. And it also covered the near perfect wood floors and beige carpeting. Yes. Needless to say, it needed a ton of work. Well, working on renovations in the apartment one weekend, my mother and I had gotten to work on the hall closets that had been lined with brick themed contact paper. Lord with parquet linoleum. No joke. My fucking style. What's parquet mean?

I think it's just shitty plastic. Like, you know, like, it's like, it's like tiles, but it's like plastic tiles. Yes. Yes. Yes. So it looks like tiles. Okay, got it. But it's not tiles. As I pulled some of the linoleum up in the closet, sorry to say, I was working and I saw something small and silver roll out from under the molding wall and into the middle of the closet. At first, I thought nothing of it and went to keep peeling, but then shortly realized all caps. It's a goddamn bullet casing that had just rolled out of my apartment wall. Fuck. Of course, I picked it up right away and then she writes, but why to show my mother and she just said, huh, that's weird. Throw it in the garbage. I don't know why she's from Wisconsin or something and continued peeling

the linoleum from her closet. I almost took her advice, but then noticed the big brown slash red stain on the floor where the bullet had rolled earlier. My mother still could not care less. So I took a picture to send to everyone I knew and asked their advice. They also, I should call the police not involve the super in case he was involved and sell the apartment immediately since it was probably haunted. In the end, I did not tell the super. I did not sell the apartment, but I left a non-emergency voicemail at my local NYPD precinct. They never called me back, but then I had a friend with a hookup look up my address and said there had been no crimes reported for my apartment during the past 10 years and the stain in the picture I had sent them probably

wasn't blood. Yeah, right. I'm not 100% sure I believe them, but I haven't been able to find any proof that something violent did happen in my tiny apartment and I have lovingly named the ghost who mysteriously moved a can of coconut oil across my kitchen counter, Salvatore. I still have the bullet and people have suggested making either a nice wall plaque for it or to make it make a piece of jewelry. I can't wait to see you guys in Brooklyn on the 5th. Love you all, SSDGM and stay out of the murder closet, Chelsea. Chelsea, you've made a terrible error. I can't believe, first of all, saying there's no overt evidence of something violent happening, but and yet you already named it. There's 17 layers of shit wallpaper and paneling and stuff

all over the walls. Like how would you know until you pull some stuff down? Here's the thing, there's still a blood stain in the shell casing. That means they never told the cops about the violent crazy thing that happened there. It doesn't, you know what I mean? There would be no report. There is no record of it because they put vinyl fucking signing on it. It's a closet secret. What are you doing? Move out. I bet you could sell it for so much more now. But you know, it's very funny about both of those stories is like the the NYC police are just like, you know that they that call comes and they're just like, yeah, delete. You know, every morning they get in there's 500 voicemails. Men's and some of them are just screaming. Okay, I like this one. It's

the subject line is murders and treasure. You're Karen, Georgia and Stephen. I've lived in Green Point, Brooklyn for 30 years. Oh, shit. It's been it's always been pretty safe. The worst things ever to happen here are usually accidents with the exceptions being homeless guys getting attacked and one guy being found buried under a pile of Christmas trees and leaves with an I missing one year. That's horrifying. Jesus. I did find lots of treasure though, since the neighborhood is so old. Apparently, even the entirety of McGinnis Boulevard, which connects us to Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn, was once a row of houses that were demolished and just built over. So all of the basements are still intact under the roads. Thousands of rats would live down there for

decades and eventually started hanging out in the trees in the park by my house at night. Rat trees. Rat trees. Like rat trees. You're just strolling along, whistling because you're always whistling in the park at night. And then boom, there's a rat just hits your shoulder. I don't want rats to live in trees. I mean, it's just a reality that we have to face as new New Yorkers. People finally wanted to get rid of them once they started showing up in the park. I forget how, but they finally got rid of them somehow in the 30s. I bet it wasn't clean. I bet it wasn't a good one. I bet it had to do with bats that had nails taped to the end of the bat. I bet it was a bloody mafia hit. Yeah. I also found massive trash bags full of misty brand cigarettes and a chain link

enclosure in the park when I was 11 or 12. Nice. Fine. Maybe it was a drop off. I still have no idea, but my friend and I each dragged an entire trash bag through the park into the playground and presented our discoveries to our parents. My mother scolded us and told me to put it back. My friend's mom yelled at him to quickly fetch his brother and they promptly left the park for two weeks with both bags in their possession. Get those cigarettes. Get them down into the basement. Get them. Your uncles will sell these. I found an old sword once. I used it as a baseball bat. I used it as a baseball bat to strike a volleyball and the blade flew off the hilt and whizzed right by my past, my friend's fate. Oh my God. Nothing found in any walls, but my fire escape does have

a sign that reads, anyone placing an encumbrance shall be fined $10. Very cute. And the original hallway door said no beggars or peddlers allowed until it was replaced a week ago. Not sure if any of these stories are interesting enough, but I'm a big fan and MFM is the one podcast I replay over and over once I've listened to everything that week. Michael. Michael, what a great, no, that's exactly the kind of story we want. I fuck bags of cigarettes bags of cigarettes. Sign me up. Dude, I love it. Where, what, all of it. I want to know everything. Also, I want to, I wonder if this, I am fascinated. There was a neighborhood and I don't know where I was. I just know that it was six AM one morning and I was on my way to the airport. I've probably told you the story already,

but I was on my way to O'Hare and the cab driver didn't want to get on the freeway because I'm sure it was Monday morning or Sunday morning. So he was trying to avoid the traffic. So he took surface streets a lot of the way there. They do that. It's, you see the coolest fucking houses. You see the coolest neighborhoods and at one point we drove down the street and I was looking up the side streets and as I was looking and the, and the neighborhood was getting kind of worse and worse and the houses were getting more run down and looked, some of these streets looked maybe abandoned or we didn't, I couldn't tell what was going on. And as we passed one street, a pack of like 30 stray dogs came around the corner and was running up the street and it was, but it was like a five

second movie. Like I saw it and then we were past it and the view was blocked. Man, New York's the coolest fucking place. It's the coolest fucking place you can go. I just, even the houses are, I just, from every time that happens to me, I'm just like staring out the window because it's so New York. Yes. It's like exactly what you picture New York to be like as a kid. Yes. And it's exactly what it's like. It's, the funniest thing is California is so, you know, comparatively really spread out and like houses are very new. Everything's new. Everything's new. It's separate. It's set away from the road. New York, you walk down the street and can look into people's apartment windows. Yeah. It's my favorite. It's the best. Okay. I'm not going to tell you the name of this one.

Okay. Hi, Karen, Georgia, Stephen and Petz. First off, love you all and love the podcast and the mental health work you do. Thank you. Recently, I was having dinner with my parents and I was talking about my obsession with true crime. My mom blurted out, haven't you heard about the time your dad slept in blanks bed? I'm not going to tell you. Okay. Now, my dad is a small town military Republican. Insert eye roll here. Man, so you can only imagine the look on my face when she said this. My dad explained that in the early 80s, he was stationed in Germany working as a medic for the US Army. When he got to his bunk, his bunkmates started to tell him about how weird the guy was that used to stay in that bed. The overall vibe with the

guy was a complete weirdo. And let's just say no one was sad that he moved out. A few years later, my dad comes home and with comes home and him and mom get married. One day he was watching the news and he sees a familiar face. One of the commanders he worked with in Germany talking about Jeffrey Dahmer. Oh, turns out my dad replaced Jeffrey Dahmer as a medic when he was discharged and took over his bunk. Oh, no. Can you fucking believe that? Wish I was going to see you in Medford, but unfortunately, my sister bought tickets for her and her friend and didn't include me before you sold out. Sisters, am I right? SSTGM, Mel. Oh my God. That's so good. That's, I mean, first of all, I was trying to guess and I thought it was going to be the guy that in Chicago that

Richard's back that killed all those nursing students. But this is the 80s. So then did he, when did he kill people? He went home and killed people after this. Yeah. I think it was in the 90s. Yeah. I think it was like 10 years later or so. But just that idea that he, that was his bunk too. And they were all like the guy that just left was so fucking creepy, like everyone knew. Of course they did. Yeah. 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 the new year. HelloFresh meals are convenient, seasonal, and delicious. Stay cozy all winter long with classic comfort foods available weekly.

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20. 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. All right, the subject line of this is mid 90s. Hello funny humans slash adorable pets. I grew up in the not so scary suburbs of Long Island in the mid 1990s. My sister got a college

internship working at Disney World in Orlando, Florida. And we took alternating trips down to visit her. My father and then 13 year old brother were away visiting her and my mother and I age 16 were home alone for the first time. To preface, we lived on a block designed with all the same ranch style homes. But in the late 80s, my incredibly talented father spent his evenings building a 700 square foot extension on our home, which was which really made it stand out on the block. It was targeted for burglars at least three times that I was aware of while we weren't home. They typically break in through the sliding glass door. And one time they broke a window. My father was super into the newest technology. So the house was always secured with the best alarm services

offered at the time. And the burglar would normally trip the alarm and bail before getting away with anything. The extension was basically one great room, which we called the big room with huge lovely windows, a sliding glass door and huge skylights on the pitched roof. It was a dream of natural light during the day. But left you feeling quite vulnerable at night. So my brother and a father had been out of town for a couple days. When my mom and I thought it would be a good idea to settle in for the night and watch the movie seven together in the big room. The alarm wasn't set since we were at home. And around halfway through the movie, there was a strange knock at the door. Can you imagine? It had to be around 10 p.m. We both

looked at each other like, this isn't right. And together walked upstairs to the front door. Sadly, it was one of those doors with no window so we couldn't see who was on the stoop from the other windows of the house. So my mother cracked the door and was greeted by two large middle-aged men. One guy said, is your husband home? And my mother very wisely said, he's just up picking up our son. I'll be right back. Can I help you with something? And they said they'd wait to speak to him and just kind of stood there. My mom closed the door, locked it, ran downstairs to the nearest silent panic button provided by the alarm company. And by the time the police got there, they were gone. What? The next day, our neighbor who delivered our

newspaper came to the door to collect the weekly fee. And we told her about the odd visit. She asked what they looked like. And she said that she had seen them for at least two nights, sitting in their car on the block while she was delivering the papers at 4 a.m. So creepy. They clearly noticed that my father's car had been missing from the driveway for a couple of days and we're staking out the house for who knows what. Very home alone, if you ask me. Yeah, that's exactly home alone. That was in the email. I'm so glad my mother, one tough lady, born and raised in the Brooklyn Projects, had the right instinct to only open the door crack, lie about his whereabouts and press that silent panic button. We called the police to

relay what our newspaper lady said. They sent a patrol car to patrol the block for the next two nights while my father was still out of town. The men never came back, but I could never finish watching that movie and still did this day. Haven't seen it all the way through. I'm so good. You have to watch it. There's a twist. You have to watch it with an armed policeman sitting next to you. That's right. Ever since then, I've also had a hard time being in that room alone at night, I bet. And after moving out when I was 20, I have been forced to sleep there on numerous occasions while visiting. It just gives me the creeps. SSDGM set your house alarms and get a front door with a window sues. Yeah, but if you have a window, then

they can break it and just un and then open the door knob. Not if there's bars. That's right. Or a peephole, something. Uh, yeah, peepholes are probably better. Peepholes. Let's go peepholes. Peepholes, peepholes, peepholes. That's the one. And there it is. And that's the tagline that we end on. Send us your stories at my favorite murder at Gmail, any fucking weird ghost. We haven't had a lot of good ghost stories lately, I feel like. I know. We love them all. Let's get some ghost stories. Some ghost stories going. All right. Um, stay sexy and don't get murdered. Goodbye Elvis. Do you want a cookie?