My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 109

Episode Date: February 11, 2019

This week’s hometowns include a scuba-themed funeral and a shower-based sex cult.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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Welcome to the mini-soad of my favorite murder, the mini-soad. The podcast mini-soad. That's mini Karen Kilgara. And that's tiny Georgia Heart Stark over there. Hi, I'm Little Baby. And a little pocket-sized Stephen Ray Morris. Stephen A. Ray Morris. Stephen A. Stephen Marie.

Stephen Ray. You sit down and engineer this show. Oh, guys, I was real late today to get to this recording. I'm very sorry. I mean, I got you done, man. Yeah, you did. Like, eating a fun-sized, quote, snicker bar. Was it fun?

It was the most fun I've ever had in my life. Was it hilarious? It was hilarious. Hey, you want to go first? Yep. But this was the thing where we'd shit to you. You know. The subject line of this is scuba funeral, light-hearted.

Great. I thought we'd start off light-hearted. Let's do it. Okay. Karen, Georgia, Stephen, and pets. My family has a long history of having small things go wrong during funerals. My mom's funeral procession got lost heading to the cemetery. No.

Half of my grandpa's ashes ended up in my uncle's mouth when they were spread. That happens a lot. No. That's very common, yes. Oh, my God. People standing on a rocky cliff, and a wind kicks up, and everyone. Sure. We've seen the big Lebowski.

Right. And one guy's really big, and he's got those yellow glasses on. Things we can look back on and laugh about now. But my aunt's boyfriend, Art, really said the bar for fucked-up funerals. Art was ill for some time, so we had time to plan his funeral. He was an avid scuba diver and arranged a funeral at sea, even selecting a company in Florida who could provide the services. When he passed, my aunt followed his directions to a tee.

He didn't think his through. She didn't know better, and I don't know what the fuck, the chaos-based mortuary was thinking. Chaos. Kansas. Kansas society. So my aunt and two of Art's buddies fly his casket to Florida. Must have been Kansas.

They fly his casket to Florida, and the funeral at sea company took it from there. A phrase, funeral at sea, is in quotes. They boarded a boat, had a small ceremony, and launched the casket into the ocean. Parentheses. They probably lowered it solemnly, but I like to picture some sort of catapult mechanism. Only problem was, Art's casket bobbed along in the water and wouldn't sing. I feel like I am not an engineer. I have never made a casket in my life.

I feel like I could have guessed that. Yes. Right? Yeah. It's just going to sit there on the top of the water if it's made of wood. Yeah. Okay. So, asterisk at the end of sink, and then asterisk underneath with this.

I did some research on this. Caskets are prepared for a funeral at sea by having holes drilled in them, and weights are added inside to help the casket sink. Not happening here. Oh, shit. A diver got in the water and tried to get the casket to take on water. My aunt said he ended up climbing on top of the casket, trying to push it underwater. Oh, my God.

I like to think he was jumping up and down in his flippers and wetsuit. It turns out Art had requested to be buried in a wetsuit as a final nod to his scuba hobby. So, instead of processing the body normally and potentially releasing chemicals into the ocean, the funeral home just shoved his lifeless body into a scuba suit and tucked him into a casket. What? Where he expanded like a neoprene balloon. What?

And that's why the casket wouldn't sink. He was, oh. Yes. So, in the end, the boat captain sold his anchor to my aunt. No shit. They wrapped that sucker around the casket and Art finally sunk. Looking forward to seeing your Kansas City in March. Stay sexy and just be cremated, Emily.

Holy shit. That's incredible. Rest in peace, Art. I loved, you know what? You tried to go for a concept. Lots of us do it. Yeah. We can't know.

He was already dead. He was probably laughing his ass off in heaven. Sure. You can't control everything. No. And who cares? It's for everyone else, not for you. It's for everyone else.

We're glad you liked scuba diving. Yeah. Let us just cry in like the safety of a nice mortuary and go home. How about, you know, we'll get a fish tank with a little scuba guys opening the treasure chest in your honor. How about symbolism and metaphor? Exactly. Art.

And how about that's not the last thought that person fucking has of you. Okay. This is called my grandma. Nope. We were just yelling at a dead man, by the way. Oh, good. I think Art would have appreciated it. Okay.

Yeah, I did too. He was kind of quirky. He was a nut. Yeah. My grandpa hijacked his spaghetti recipe from a murderer. Karen, Georgia. Wait. Georgia.

Karen, Stephen. Jesus, I can't read. Hi. Georgia, Karen, Stephen, Jesus. Yay. Hi. I grew up in a small Wisconsin town whose claim to fame is two maximum security state prisons.

Wow. That's a shit ton of local people, including members of my own family. One of my sweet grandfathers worked in the prison kitchen until his retirement. He's known in our family for his love of horse figurines and his amazing spaghetti. That sounds like two comedy suggestions that you could make. What does your grandpa love? I have an improv show. Look at him.

Horse figurines. We'll use both. Let's go. This is great. I always suspected hit this quote secret family recipe originated within the walls of the prison since it makes roughly 20 gallons of sauce at a time. Jesus. I imagine that perhaps he got it from an old Italian ex mobster, if only.

This past Christmas, I learned that this recipe actually came from the horrific piece of shit Halloween killer who murdered sweet baby angel nine-year-old Lisa Am French in 1973. You know this one? This is one of the worst cases the state saw and essentially changed trick-or-treating laws in the area for the next 40 plus years. He says badass mom is still working to keep this fuck face behind bars since he's due for release this year. It won't happen.

No. The entire story is terrible enough, but now even the thought of eating that spaghetti makes me want a hurl and that shit is delicious. Smiley face. No, no, frowny face. Frowny face. Stay sexy and know that some secret family recipes are meant to be kept secret. All my love.

S. Oh, S. S. I like that story. Yeah. That's like that whole thing of like make sure if you're going to like go to the carnival, don't eat something you love because if you, if a ride makes you throw up, you'll never want to eat that thing again.

It's the same. When food is ruined, much like when bands are ruined, they're ruined forever. Yeah. They, they conjure up emotions and feelings and vomit. You can, I can't listen to Elvis Costello without hearing my theater major musical theater roommate singing along with Elvis Costello in a musical theater voice. She ruined it. She meant it.

Oh God. I love you. Okay. Subdigital line. Canadian folk dancing murder plot. Perfect. Dear Karen Georgia and all furry beings, Steven and his mustache included. Oh.

I'm from. That's cute. Oh. I'm from a city that's at the southernmost tip of Canada right across the river from Detroit. When I was younger, my parents enrolled my brother and I in folk dancing as an attempt to keep our Eastern European culture alive. Go for it.

Right. And through dancing, we met our core group of friends. And as we got older, our troop started traveling across North America for performances and festivals. Oh. Sexy. Well, other groups took their dancing seriously. We were just in it for the fun.

We had three dances that we recycled for years. I mean, who's going to be like, I've seen that one before. Oh, this old bullshit. Yeah, we know. We were more focused on hosting the after parties in our hotel room at the tender age of 15. Yes. That's what it's all about.

That's right. That's why you dance. That's the passion of the dance, is beer in the hotel room afterwards. It was so bad that our coach would have to bribe us by saying, OK, if you don't get drunk before your performance, I'll buy you guys alcohol afterwards to sell. This is what you said to me, basically, when you were like, don't drink before shows. I'll buy you drinks after. Just please.

Let's save them all up. It'll be more special. Fine. I'll wait. Fine. I'll let you buy it. Let me say something. That's a something.

OK. That's hilarious. This group was a guy named Petar, P-E-T-A-R, and he was sort of the outcast because he smelled a little funny, always had clammy hands and basically looked like his family enjoyed liver and onions for dinner multiple times a week. Oh, dear. What? He had beautiful skin and a luxurious coat.

Is that what you think? I'm not sure. I don't know what I think. As we hit college age, the group stopped dancing. I think that's good. Yeah. It's a good time to quit. But maintained our close friendship.

People accept Petar. Petar? We would see him from time to time, but no one really kept up with him until dot, dot, dot. One day we saw his name in the news and that he had been arrested for trying to kidnap and murder two sisters from our church. What? Petar sang in our church choir.

He was also the altar boy for like ever. The girl's father was the choir director and they would practice at his home. Petar used to memorize that used this time to memorize the girl's house and find out their schedule, like when they would be home alone or when the house would be empty. Then he went on the internet, maybe the dark web and found a forum of other would be murderers and asked them for fucking advice on how he could go about kidnapping and murdering these two sisters. Little did he know he was chatting with an undercover cop.

Of course. Of course. Ding dong. And thankfully. All of the dark web is just undercover cops. It's a bunch of pervy undercover cops who are like, I love this part of the job. Totally. Luckily, thankfully, sorry, he was arrested before he could do anything.

In his room, they found multiple shrines to the oldest sister, rope knives and other murderers paraphernalia. Petar was sent to prison and his sisters were and these sisters were shipped off to Europe by their parents and no one has heard from them since. I remember always telling myself to be nice to him in case he lost his shit and attacked us all. Because my 15 year old murdering herself was right, ssdgm meesh. Wow.

Yeah. That's a good one. That is how you hometown. That's right. This one is called BTK sisters, lighthearted. Oh, Jesus. Hi, everyone. When my little sister and I were growing up, we spent the summers with our dad in Wichita.

In the summer of 2004, the city was in a panic because BTK had suddenly reappeared. I remember there were lots of theories being thrown around at the time like that he'd been in jail for some other crime and that's why he'd been quiet for so long. One theory claimed that he targeted houses with multiples of three in the address, which freaked me and my sister the fuck out because we lived in a house with lots of threes, sixes and nines. Oh shit. Oh my God.

Number 369. 33696. Nine. Street. One night, it was way past our bedtime. We were hanging out in my sister's room and somehow convinced ourselves that BTK was going to come in our house, so we had to arm ourselves. There were a bunch of old boxes in the room because we didn't live there most of the year,

so we started digging around for a weapon and eventually found an old can of mace. Uh-oh. Well, my sister was examining the mace to see if it still worked. Guess where this is going. Guess, guess. Just spray their soap in the mace. She accidentally sprayed herself in the face. Like her own grizzly bear.

Holy shit. Oh girl. Like your own grizzly bear. Oh, that's awful. We were hanging out, but we're too scared to wake anybody up because we weren't supposed to be up so late. I definitely weren't supposed to be playing around with weapons. And weren't supposed to be spraying yourselves in the face with the mace.

You were not. This is not a cartoon. No. We tried to flush her eyes out with water as quietly as we could. She was in a lot of pain and I was secretly terrified that she was going to go blind. Thankfully that mace must have been very old because my sister was fine in the morning and we didn't have to tell our dad what we'd been up to the night before. They didn't, they got away with that.

They just fucking went with it. I mean, the sister, the mace face, I got to give her props. I mean, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger girl. That's right. Like I would have run screaming into my parents room, save me. I'm dying. Help me. Help me.

And she was like, you're my sister. I fucking trust you. We're powering through this. I'll go to bed. Hope I see you in the morning. Literally. Literally. What if now she has a vision like a fly where she can see in eight different directions.

I love it. Yeah. The BTK is his fault. My sister is the one who got me hooked on your podcast and the fact that we can share it together and compare our favorite murders with each other is one of the reasons why I love it so much. SSDGM hope. Oh, hope.

Oh, hope. Jesus. I mean, truly. Just kind of laying in bed that night with like your eyes swallowing shut. Hoping. Okay. It's okay. I'm working.

I'm going to be fine. I'm going to do it. We won't get in trouble. And then what if the BTK had broken in at that moment? And then he looks to be like, oh, this is really screwed up. I forgot it. This is terrible. You guys got your own shit.

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So get up to 20 free meals with purchase plus free shipping on your first box at HelloFresh. That's up to 20 free meals plus free shipping on your first box when you go to HelloFresh.ca slash murder20 and use code murder20. Goodbye. 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. The subject line of this is my fabulous Aunt Eleanor sent John List to jail. What? Yeah. Say my favorites and then a smiley face with a semi-colon and a line and a paragraph closer. Don't know what those are supposed to be. Parentheses, close parentheses.

Okay. It's just the winky smiley face with a weird nose that looks like Bert from Sesame Street. I don't like that one. Okay. I just want colon, close parentheses. Exactly. Standard smiley face. I don't need a nose.

No. We're on the computer. No. There's no time. Like the nose doesn't convey any message. No except for it reminds me a little bit of Bert from Sesame Street, which is, this is not the time or place. Let's talk about that.

It looks like a dick. Oh. Got it. Children are listening. Children. Oh, is this the children's hour? Yes. Hey, my favorites.

Let's pretend there's nothing after that. I was on the phone with my dad today telling him about the Conan, the secret murder, you know, episode. When I got to the part about Conan sitting in the John List trial, my dad cuts in with, you know, your Aunt Eleanor prosecuted John List, don't you? And then silence, line, silence, line. Oh my God. Wait, what?

Just like you said, my Aunt Eleanor is a bit of a legend in my East Coast Irish family, but not for what you'd think. She'd arrived to business casual Christmas at my grandma's in her fur full coat. Business casual Christmas. Fur full coat, jet black hair, freshly dyed. She'd glance up at you with piercing blue eyes. Yes, darling. But then quickly get back to her book.

Everything was fabulous. I'd bring her rum soaked strawberry dessert that was upsetting to some and exciting to others and a house full of children and alcoholics. It was everything you wanted to eat. And just when you thought she wasn't paying attention, she'd cut in with a hard North Jersey accent and say something hilarious. She was extremely intimidating. She was totally delightful.

She was a fucking badass. My Aunt Eleanor worked as a real estate agent, a writer, and in the mid 70s, she co-founded an anti-domestic violence nonprofit. She didn't go to law school until later in life, but as with all things Aunt Eleanor, she really went for it when she did. I was seven years old in 1990. And now I know that while I enjoyed her during Christmas, earlier that year, she led the prosecution that resulted in John List receiving five consecutive life sentences.

She called him, quote, a hideous angel of death, weighing the options right up until the night before killing his family, end quote. I never saw my Aunt Eleanor angry, but I can only imagine her delivery of these words in the courtroom to be righteous and chilling. She retired in 2005 and did a lot of traveling with my wonderful uncle. She was a grandma to two really cute kids. She read everything. Now I'm typing this to you.

And I guess I don't know what I would rather have seen, a young Conan O'Brien watching my Aunt Eleanor from the back of the courtroom or John List shitting his pants while my Aunt Eleanor convinced the jury in her words that, quote, justice should not be denied because of the delay. End quote. I go with both. Yes. And strawberry dessert.

Stay sexy and send murderers to jail. See. Uh, uh, how do I follow that up? It's so good. We'll never do it with my Aunt Eleanor again. All minisids are canceled because of Aunt Eleanor. Aunt Eleanor? Badass.

Holy shit. So awesome. All right. Well, I'll end on a light hearted. I'll do it. I worked for a sex cult man. Mm-hmm. Light hearted.

And listen. Okay. A dude named Steven wrote this in. Steven. Steven. Bay Morris. Steven Ray Marie Morris. Instead of Marie Ray Morris.

And listen, I didn't pick it because of how he, how he did the introduction, but it helped. Oh, I love you, Georgia. I love you so much. Hi, Mimi. Oh. Can you deal with that? And then cut to Mimi with her tiny mouth going like, mm, I'm fine. Why do you want to know?

Get off my leg. That's the best one. Mimi, you feed on the bed three times while we were out of fucking town doing live shows this past weekend. Mimi, who will not have any of it ever. Yes. Say hi to her first and only. Only.

Hi, Mimi. Hi, Mimi. I used to do tree work for a small family run, our, our obi, our, our breast. Arbrio culture company in Texas. They have to be fancy about it. If you're not hip to tree work and I'm not, whenever you see a bunch of dudes wearing high visibility shirts tied to the top of a tree and totally wailing on that tree with chainsaws, those are tree workers.

Hey. They are all hungover. No. Yes. It was okay work, but I had to quit because I hate the winter and kept almost cutting parts of my hands off. My boss was a gregarious middle-aged man with a few quirks like how he was always drinking, but we're rarely drunk.

I think that one's just called having a sweet ass time. He claimed to be friends with the guys in Bauhaus. Oh. He wouldn't let his wife have a career. Uh-oh. He spelled. So he's very German. Yeah.

He spelled his name backwards for no reason. Don't get that. His name was Bob. No. And he kept encouraging the guys on the crew to take showers back at the shop afterwards. Work. Okay. I see.

Here we are. Here we go. Like he brought up taking showers all the time. The warehouse wasn't even supposed to have showers in it, but my boss personally built them. No. He liked showers so much. No.

I asked my foreman about the showers thing and he told me that under no circumstances should I ever take a shower at the warehouse because my boss was in a sex cult. What? I did a little snooping and the sex cult my boss was in was called Zendik Farm. It was started by Errol and Wolf, both fucking German names, right? Yeah. Zendik in the 60s as a hippy, hippified cultural revolution that mostly just sold bumper stickers at farmers markets and played psychedelic jam music.

Okay. Their version of free love was to enforce a round robin style roster of sex partners so that by the end of the season, everyone was fucking everyone. I don't know why. No, I see it. I see the thinking. Yeah, yeah. And then fuck that person.

Just yeah, fuck him. Yeah, do it. Just fuck. The compound my boss had lived in was in Bastroop, Texas, kind of by Austin. It was supposed to have disbanded in 2013, but I went to a Labor Day party at my boss's house and all the sex cult guys were totally there and they were totally still on board with the whole sex cult thing. My boss got a few sodas in him and he started loudly insisting that everyone come out to

the backyard and take a bath in a custom hot tub he had built. My wife and I went home, but one of my coworkers took him up on it. He said it was nice, but not a very good hot tub. Yeah, don't make a hot tub. Because it sounds like it was probably a bath tub. Yeah. I work at a record store now. Store?

The store. I work at a record store. I work at a record store. No. And sometimes people send us old Zendak farm or Augustra records. They're actually pretty fucking groovy. Stay sexy and don't take a bath with your boss. Stephen in Texas.

Stephen. In Texas. Oh, I loved anything but learning about the inner lives of an arborist. Come on. Sex cult arborist. Why couldn't I pronounce? I mean, why am I asking that? It's not really an art.

In our nomenclature. Oh. Bing, bing, bing, bing. Hi, Mimi. Hi, Mimi. Fox, send us your shit to my favorite murder at Gmail. Great batch, everybody. Great work.

Good job. Thank you so much. These are the best. The best. You write them and we read them. The best. The best. The best.

Thank you so much. Thanks. Stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, you want a cookie? Go make a cookie.