My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 111

Episode Date: February 25, 2019

This week’s hometowns include a stairwell survival story and a murder cult.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 and welcome to my favorite murder. The Minusode. Ooh, Regie, you're shit. It's things like emails with stories inside of them. That's it. Yeah. There's not a list. That's literally it. Would you like to go first this week? I wouldn't. Okay. I don't want to break tradition. Tradition. Yeah, what for?

Okay, then the subject line of this is I won't read it. Great. Do you want to go, let me go first so you can go last for once? Whatever you want. No, don't put it on me. I have a good lastie. Okay, maybe. Do you have a good lastie? Not like specifically for, no. Yeah, no. Mine, I have a last, a feel good lastie that's about grandparents. I'm going first. Let's break tradition. Maybe we should have these conversations off my. Guys, this is the kind of solid gold content you can expect from us. That's right. Week after week. Do you like decisions? Listen up. Do you like live decisions as they're being

made? Hot breaking decisions, people discussing things. This is called my close encounter with a murder cult. Hi guys. You guys are my favorite. I started listening after my girlfriend recommended your podcast. She also reminded me that I have an interesting story to share. So I thought I'd share. Great. I was born in Venezuela. When I was seven, my family had been making arrangements to move to the US. One day I was hanging out with my cousin who lived two or three miles from my grandparents' house in a rural town in the middle of nowhere, Venezuela. They wrote it like it. It was dark. My aunt reluctantly let me ride back to my grandma's house. This was a usually fun ride, just a dirt road with nothing, the vegetation on either side. I was enjoying the night noises,

God being outside alone as a kid at night. The best. If you're far away from the city, if you're in nowhere, Venezuela, those stars are pretty rad. I was enjoying the night noises when all of a sudden there was complete silence. I could feel the tension in the air. I looked around me and noticed I was being surrounded by a group of people holding candles. What? They were chanting something I couldn't understand. When they got close enough to touch me, I wrote as fast as I could all the way to my grandma's house. Once I got there, I jumped off my bike, ran to my grandma, held her tight and just cried. She saw the fear in my eyes and just held me. That morning, a girl that was close to my same age was found dead in close proximity to where I had been that

night. No. Next to her body, there were candles, black feathers and animal blood. This was the first in a series of child murders that happened in similar fashion with candles and all the other items near the bodies. No one was ever charged for these murders. It still scares me to think of how close I was to being a sacrifice of a creepy cult that may still be in operation almost 20 years later. Holy shit. I would ask you guys to avoid riding a bike at night in the middle of nowhere, but let's be honest, there's no way you do that. You're too smart for that. So instead, stay sexy and don't get murdered. Thanks, Leo. Wow. I know. Oh, that's so creepy. It's creepy and so sad. And now I want to read all about it. But I would like to say this. Thank you, Leo,

because the important point of that, it's like when we talk about being aware of your surroundings, you're enjoying the night noises. It means something when all the crickets stop making noises. Totally. Like, trust your weird little instincts. Yes. If the hair is going up on the back of your neck, it doesn't matter how normal people look or how normal the situation is, get the fuck out of there. Even like, yeah, just trust it. Totally. Oh, creepy. So close. Okay, so pretend this is new. I'm not going to tell you the subject line of this. Okay, great. Oh, yeah. Okay. It starts. After hearing the SWAT team story on a recent mini-sode, I decided y'all needed to hear this story. Okay, good. When I was 16, my mom asked me if I wanted to fly out to Arizona and Colorado

to visit her side of the family, aunt's uncles and cousins my same age, that we hardly ever saw. I was nervous but stoked because I was clearly an adult and traveling alone for the first time. Oh, shit. So I flew to Colorado, spent a week with my family, and then my aunt was taking me to the airport to fly to Arizona to spend another week with my family there and then home. My aunt took me as far as she could in the airport and then I told her I was fine. I grabbed a seat at my gate, took out my book and put on my headphones. A random man mid-40s looking came to my empty gate and decided the seat he should take was the one directly next to me. No, no, no. Immediately, I was creeped out. I kept reading until he, of course, tapped me on the shoulder. Wait,

how old is this person? 16. Oh, got it. She's 16. He's mid-40s. Got it, got it, got it. He started asking me about myself and where I was going. No. I was so sketched out, I started lying. Good. Made up a name, made up the school I went to, made up the town I was from. I was totally freaked. His questions felt so personal and unnecessary. They are. I kept putting my headphones back on but he kept tapping my shoulder. No. Final straw, after about three attempts to ignore him, he pulls out his ticket and says, where are you sitting? I look at his ticket, knowing my own seat number and start to absolutely panic. This dude is next to me on the plane. I tell him I have to get some food, get up and go straight to the airline desk. I tell them the

whole thing that I'm super creeped out and tell them I will sit anywhere else. The airline says they cannot help me or move my seat. What? Uh-huh. So I go to the pay phones. This was in 2001 and I didn't have a cell phone. Ha-ha. And I called my aunt. She could tell I was scared but couldn't come back to the airport. She was headed to pick up her own kids from school. So she told me to go to the ladies room and stay there. So at least I didn't have to be near him until it was time for my flight. I went to the ladies room to hyperventilate for a bit and eventually decided I needed to leave and go back to my gate. Yeah. Oh no. As I left, there were two men in police uniforms at the bathroom door. They asked if I was Tara and I said yes. They escorted me to my gate and we walked

past the man being searched and his luggage emptied all over the airport floor. They took me to the gate where they told me I had a change seat and I'd be seated first in first class. Yeah. That's what I was hoping for. Yeah. I asked what was going on and they said your uncle dispatched us. Guys, my uncle was the chief of the Denver SWAT. How fucking yeah he was. This was a thing I knew but being the first time seeing them in person in years and whatnot, I just hadn't put two and two together. Side note, my uncle was the first person in the library after Columbine. Oh my gosh. She said that's a whole other story and a terrible downer, of course. Anyway, back to the airport. I was escorted to first class and sat at the window seat of my row while the SWAT team officer

stood at the aisle seat until the entire plane was loaded. Then I flew to Arizona where I was met with an escort from Phoenix SWAT to get me to my family for the record. This guy may have just been, may have a very different account of the story and I could have just been a hyper anxious 16-year-old that humiliated a rando, whatever. That's it. Stay sexy and always have your uncle send the entire SWAT team to protect you when you're creeped out in an airport, Tara. But here's the thing, no, you're right. That man was talking, that 40-year-old man was talking to it repeatedly talking to a young teenager, not a college age girl, a high schooler. And why was he sitting next to her? Like that, I don't believe that he didn't know he was sitting next to her.

That's very weird. It really freaks me out. No. And yeah, that's exactly it. And it's like, even if maybe he was the nice guy who was being polite, don't fucking talk, men don't talk to women unless they invite you to. But here's the thing, normal men know that. Right, exactly. It's the thing of telling little kids, adults don't need your help. If an adult is asking for your help, there's something wrong. It's the exact same thing. And he's not reading fucking cues of her putting her fucking earphones back in her head. No one that tells you on the shoulder. There's a boundaries issue. There's an information issue. Totally. Anyone that walks up and starts asking your name, where you live, anything, that's a person with an agenda. Yes. Fuck that person

outright. Totally. No way. And I love, it's like, and don't be, if your uncle sent the entire SWAT and they were shooting up the ceiling. Totally. Good. Because that means you're safe on that plane and nothing happened to you. And like fucking shame on that airline representative who didn't, I thought that immediately she was going to like, I got you and put her in first. Yes. But no, they had to take you to the fucking SWAT. All the way to the SWAT. All the way to the SWAT. But I mean, like, that's, yeah, I feel like she was saying this was 2001. It's probably different now. I don't think a teenage girl that would go to them and say, this is a problem, would be like, sorry, I just don't think that's the world we live in anymore.

It was on the person, I feel like. I think because of Twitter and social media, like they can't afford that shit anymore. Blow it, blow it all up. Blow it all up. I'm so glad it worked out that way. Because one time, I'll just say this, and I'm still mad at myself, even though it's not even anywhere near it. I was at LAX one time waiting for a flight, and a guy came up and sat in the seat right next to me and started trying to sell me tickets to a pancake breakfast. And he was in my space and he was in my face and he wouldn't leave me alone. And the implicit message from him was, you have to buy these tickets for me to get away from you. And I did it. Well, you had, you followed your instincts too, which is don't piss this guy,

like somewhere in your mind. It's don't like, yeah, I write it in the book of the fuck politeness chapter where it's like, sometimes you can only fuck politeness to a certain level and feel safe. Yes. Sometimes you go along to get along and end the situation that's around you. Yeah. But I'm still mad because. What if it had gone really poorly if you had told him to fuck off? That's true. But and also how did this person, how was a person like just wandering around an airport? It was preen, it must have been preen on 11. So how are the pancakes? They were so good. And it was, I met such a great church community there. Oh, my God. Motherfucker. Fuck everything. Fuck it all. Fuck everybody talking to you. Oh, God. Okay. Well, here's a good story. Actually for this,

my almost murder in the stairwell. I care in Georgia, Stephen and furry friends. I work at an office building. You would normally need a key card for access. However, our floor was undergoing construction. So the security was lax and there was a number of extra people coming and going for a few weeks. I should mention my mother has been embedding safety tips into my head since I was a teen. Don't take drinks from strangers. Be aware of your surroundings and parking lots. Don't wear a lanyard around your neck. Oh, just someone could grab it. I guess. Yeah. And keep your keys in between your knuckles, etc. Pay special attention to that last one. Anyway, I was leaving work one day and took the stairwell one because it was much faster than waiting on

the elevator and two, I sit at a desk all day and thought I should get in a minute of exercise. And then she writes, Ha. I walked the floor fights, flights down notice the middle aged man at the bottom. I said, Hi, excuse me. And monitor and motion for the door because he was blocking it. He looked up from his phone gave me the most creepy look slash stare and lunged forward towards me putting his arms around me in a big bear hug. My instincts kicked in immediately. I need him in the balls as hard as humanly possible and proceeded to stab him in the cheek with my fucking car key. He helped started crying like a little girl and yelled every obscenity possible at me. Fucking asshole. Yeah, you're yelling at her as I ran back up the four flights of stairs

in a panic. I got to the reception desk told her to call security while I dialed 911. This was before I listened to the podcast. So my fuck politeness attitude was non-existence. What are you talking about? Yeah, you beat the shit out of this guy. Right there, baby. Don't you worry about your fuck? Well, then she says, looking back, my dainty excuse me was so stupid. I should have immediately turned around and went back upstairs when I saw someone I didn't recognize. But that's not true. I mean, no, you tried your best to be a human. It turns out this person wasn't. Yeah. And so you fucking defended yourself. Yeah, you're acting like how normal people act with normal people. Right. And even if you had gotten attacked and raped and hadn't fought him off,

it's not you didn't do anything wrong. I hate everyone so much. Side note, had I not taken my car to work that day, I would have only had a key fob on my key chain. But because I drove my husband's car to work, I had a nice chunky key to stab that motherfucker with. Yes. Anyway, stay sexy and don't get murdered. Please come back to Orlando soon. Love, Sarah from Florida. Oh, that's an amazing story. Oh, also the presence of mind just to go right for the balls. Yeah. In that in that moment, because I think a lot of times you just freeze up. Yeah, I know I would. I'm sure I would or they would be prepared for the needed. That's why I always fear is that they're going to be like, I, you know, I imagine kicking someone in the dick daily. Oh,

and I always imagine that maybe they'll be prepared for it and block it. Be wearing a cup like from their JV baseball team. That's right. Or be a eunuch. Or, you know, then what are they doing? What are they doing? I live in Narnia in my mind. My imagination is insane. Don't forget, you can gouge eyes also. Someone said recently because they said in they teach you this again, we have to do. Oh my God. We have to do a self-defense class. But they say that you don't think of it because it's so extreme. Right. But if you have a free hand, go right for the, go the eye's nose, put a finger up the nose. So yeah, poke someone in the eye, right? Like, think that's you get to the eye tissue, you get up the nose, you do whatever you can and basically

don't don't be afraid to shove a key in an ear. I feel like I feel like a forehead to a nose bridge would be a great. Yes. Smack that motherfucker on the bridge of their nose. That's the Belfast Good Morning. I don't know. I don't know what's going on. I wish people greeted each other like that. Okay. Oh, boom. In Narnia. Classic headbutton, Narnia. Okay. This is like choice. Italian pizza box, Italian chef, finger kiss. Okay. I'm not going to read you the subject line. Hello, beautiful ladies, Steven and fur babies. I was listening to the mini-soad when you read the story about the girl trying to scare her grandmother, but instead it was someone trying to break in. And it reminded me of this story. Both my brother and his wife used to be cops.

They both switched professions and are firefighters now. They have always taught their kids what to do in emergency situations. One day, my niece, who is about 10 years old at the time, was at her friend's house. Well, while there, someone broke into her friend's house and threatened everyone inside. My niece was able to sneak away and head home. But instead of calling for help, she grabbed my brother's gun, loaded it and went back to her friend's house. What? They lived next door. She walked in, aimed the gun at the man and told him to get out of the house. Luckily, this was enough to scare away the man and he left without harming anyone. Holy shit. 10 years old. Needless to say, my brother and his wife were both proud and horrified. Found out what happened.

And needless to say, they moved their guns to a different location, locked them up and had a long chat with their kids about the correct way to handle a situation like that. Yeah, they were like telling them about how to defend yourself, but didn't start with number one, call the police. You're not the police. You're 10. You're in a fourth grade and you don't have to take this on. This is not, this is for adults. It's not yours. Yeah. Although you did. You did. Therefore, you're the most badass 10 year old of all time. That's right. And I will never stop smiling because I've heard your story. Stay sexy and teach your kids to call 911 instead of taking on a burglar by yourself. Sherry. Amazing. I, I love that 10 year old girl. I'm sorry. Maybe I'll have one

kid. Just one. Maybe I'll have one 10 year old. I'll just have a 10 year old. I picture this little girl. This is when I first read this and I could not stop giggling. I pictured that it's like a terrible home invasion scene. And, and I picture a little girl with pigtails sliding backwards over the back of a couch, like when no one's looking like a slug, just kind of just kind of sliding back. Maybe she she's a double jointed and just kind of put all of her things at a joint very circus style. Yeah. She's Cirque du Soleil backwards over the couch. She becomes liquid. She's liquids out the door, form of an ice cube shape of, um, and, but then it's pigtails kicking the door in with the gun going, get out of this motherfucking mouth. She's got braces. She takes

out a retainer so she can say it really clearly. Oh, I just love it. Amen. Children do not touch guns. Don't fuck. Lock up your guns, everyone. Don't let your child lock your guns. Children never touch guns. It's not don't touch guns. We don't think it's cool. Also, don't listen to this podcast of your child. Get the fuck out of here. What are you doing? 10? Get out of here. Except for you, little, little hero. Yeah, a little punky brooster. You little badass punky brooster hero. 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.

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plus free shipping on your first box when you go to hellofresh.ca slash murder20 and use code murder20. 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. Okay, I have one and then you have an ending, right? Yes. Okay.

Worst and then in parentheses, best field trip ever. Hello, Karen, George, and Stephen and friends. I'm from a very small town in South Carolina, so small that we actually shared a high school from with the neighboring town and my graduating class still had fewer than 400 people. It occurred to me while listening to a mini said this morning that I have a gruesome slash delightful story to tell you from my time at this tiny otherwise boring school. In early 2001, my 10th grade civics class went on a field trip to the county courthouse. I'd say there were about 40 or so of us plus our sweet little lady teacher and a couple of chaperones who were being allowed to sit in on some small claims cases so that we could get an idea of what really happens in courtrooms

and how justice is served in Podunk, South Carolina. Here's the thing. The docket was changed between the time the field trip was planned and the morning we arrived in court. Yes. Instead of watching folks get slapped with fines for parking violations and other petty crimes of that nature, we were treated to testimony for, yep, a grizzly murder trial. Whoa. For over an hour, we got to hear some of the more unsavory details of a man who had murdered his girlfriend, chopped her into a variety of pieces, tucked her away in an old chest freezer and dumped her and dumped it in the woods where it was later found by hunters. Oh no. I cannot begin to imagine all caps. What the fuck they were thinking by not informing the school district of the change or by letting us into that

courtroom when we got there or what was going on was going through our teacher's minds when they decided we should stay for the whole tour. Yeah, for real. I bet their teachers were scared because they were in court. They didn't want to like get everyone up and move them all out during the proceedings. Right. Or they were into it. Or they loved it. They murdered themselves. I think we paid a whopping $10 per kid. So clearly it would have been a tragic to let a penny of that go to waste, which is probably why the court didn't weren't like, you shouldn't come today. Yeah, they were like, we need it. Yeah. And yes, they still took us to lunch afterward to a Quincy's buffet. I don't know what that is. I'm imagining it's like a buffet. It's a buffet based off of

the 70s series. Quincy. It's all about the corner. It's all vintage. It's all vintage food. It's a buffet off of medical tables from the coroner's office. God. Stop it. To be fair, I think only one of my classmates threw up. Stay sexy. Don't get murdered. And for fuck's sake, verify the docket before taking a bunch of 15-year-olds to sit in on a trial, Sarah. Can you imagine what it's like, you're the teacher and you're just like, now, if so, there's 30 kids, if we all get up at once, this is the amount of noise we're going to make. This is how mad the sheriff's deputy is going to be. Sure. Instead of being like, hi, I have 15-year-olds and they shouldn't be here. What the fuck is wrong? We're leaving. You need to pause for a hot second. Yeah. No. No. Don't

interrupt. Have you been in a courtroom like that, though? No. It's really intimidating. Is it? I had to go in for, I was in a, like, the middle car in a car or somebody stopped and then someone hit me and I was so freaked out and it was just the Burbank, like, city hall or whatever. It's just so grandiose and intimidating. Yes. And it's like, you know, that person is the one that makes the decisions. Yeah. One wrong move and they can fucking send you to prison. I don't know. Can they do that? I mean, it felt like it. Yeah. And I was like, oh, I'm just here to say that I was in the middle. Yeah. And then they basically said, this guy that got hit by me because the person hit me, I stopped in time, but then the person behind me hit me and rammed me into the car in

front of me and the man, the old man in the car in front of me wanted all of us to buy him a new car basically. Thank you. And so I was just there to be like, here's my insurance and here's what happened and I don't know what else to tell you. Yeah. And I got dismissed out of it because, like, it was basically between the car that hit me and the guy I hit. And so I got to leave mid-thing and I was thrilled. You were the fucking middle of a sandwich of people. I was the lucky Pierre. Okay, we need the last one. I'm excited. Okay, this is good. Okay, great. My grandparents, the baby smugglers. Oh, shit. Hi, Karen, Georgia, Stephen and significant others. Oh, yes, you did it. My grandparents lived in Nazi occupied Holland during World War II.

Opa was both a part of the Dutch underground and a high up in and high up in a shipping company in the north part of the country. One of the activities of the underground was to smuggle Jewish babies from the major cities to the north where they would be placed with families until they could hopefully be reunited with their families after the war. Babies would be placed in the holes of boats and ships and Opa and Oma would help to smuggle them out at the other end. Babies used to arrive with labels on their identification details pinned to their backs. Oma used to tell the story that on one trip the person placing the babies on the boat clearly didn't read the instructions and put the labels around the baby's wrists.

And when the boat arrived in the north, the babies had chewed off their identification tags, meaning there was no way of knowing who they were. Whilst I'm tempted to be super critical, I have to remember that this person was risking their own life to try to save others. Anyway, the Nazis ended up taking Opa for questioning three times and he managed to talk his way out of it each time. On occasion, the family had to go into hiding. The neighbors would come in and take all of their furniture to protect them from looting. They would return and then they would return it when things died down. Oh my god. I have to say that I'm pretty proud of the fact that my grandparents did something when it would have been easier

and safer to do nothing. Oh, it's so true. I clung to this when my Oma got older and used to drive me absolutely friggin nuts. Quote, you should wear your glasses more often. You look so ugly without them. Grandma. And she said the last line is, saving babies gives you a lot of leeway. That's such a like from the past thing for a grandma to say. I love it. Stay sexy and remember to pay attention to the details when smuggling small children. Christy. Oh my god. Isn't that awesome? Yes. That's a feel. That's a feel of good World War II. Story. A anecdote. Yeah. So from now on, we'll say, do you have a good ending or do you have a good ending? And we'll decide based on that who goes first. Great. Yeah. I think we've

done that before. Probably. And we were like, we're gonna do that from now on. Yeah. And then we did it. Let's do it. Okay, great. I forgot. All right. Send us your emails. My favorite murder Gmail. We fucking love your stories. Thank you guys for writing in. There's always so good. Always. We love these. And stay sexy. Don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis. Do you want to cookie?