My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 118

Episode Date: April 15, 2019

This week’s hometowns include a helpful rugby team and an 80s mom 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. Hello and welcome to my favorite murder, the mini-soad. This is the mini version of the episode. And hence the name, mini-soad. Do you get it yet? This is, it's kind of like a cipher where it's parts of words match with other parts of words and you are the one that has to put all the context clues together and figure out what we're talking about. When you figure it out, tweet at us. Tweet at us, mini-soad solved, hashtag brilliance. You guys are so smart.

That's the whole hashtag and if you leave one letter out, you're off the thread. What's that to me? I don't know. You want to go first? I'm going to go first. You go first this time. Okay, we're going to read you your shit. Ready, here we go. Ready, go. How police finds bodies that have gone missing in the water and it creates young murderinos. Okay. Hi, MFM people and animals. I have written in previously about a few hometowns but recently I had this holy shit recovered memory moment that may have just been my murderino origin story. I grew up on the beach in an extremely tall, nope, extremely small town. I want to live in a tall town. It's area-wise. It's not big but it goes straight up 25 floors all the way to the ceiling.

Okay, it's extremely small. College town on Rhode Island. Most homes were just summer houses and college students would rent them for the winter months. Cool. Yeah, there is this tiny unassuming beach at the end of my street that people would just leave their little dinghies pushed up onto the sand. Cute. Then she says, I have the beach coordinates tattooed on me. Let's see if I regret that in 10 years. You will. That's cute. I don't think you will. Where is it on your neck? Then yes. Then yes. So basically anyone could grab a dinghy and pull it into the water if they really wanted but we have like basically no crime other than college parties so no one really cared. Anyway, one February night five drunk college students decided to take out a dinghy in the

middle of the night. No. Well, this is New England. The water is 37 degrees in February. Also drunk driving rules apply in the water as well. Oh, good to know. I didn't know that. Very tragically, all five students fell out of the boat and drowned in the water. No. But only two of the bodies were recovered. So fast forward to the spring and I was like 11 years old walking down the beach and saw a rock question mark that was shaped strangely like a femur and also one that was curved like a skull bone question mark. Naturally, I picked them up and they were very much not rocks. I literally ran up the street to get my mom to be like holy fuck just found one of the bodies and she was like let's go fucking look. She came down and looked and was like we have to

call the police because you found a body. The police came and collected the specimen and brought it to the station. A few days later, we get a call from the station that was like what you found was not a body but pieces of a dummy that the forensic team throw in the water to see where the currents would take the body. So please tell your daughter to stop telling people she found one of the bodies. And then it said small town, remember? Yes. Oh no. But actually, as I write this, it seems like they were they may have been telling me slash my mom this to stop us from excitedly sharing our story all over town. I believe this is the exact moment I became obsessed with true crime. Anyway, you ladies are amazing. Also, Georgia, always lock your car doors when you get

into the car. I got a story about that one too. When two grown men tried to get in my car late at night, not once but twice after I got in and stayed and started the car. Stay sexy and always look out for bodies on the beach, Caitlin. Sounds like to me like Caitlin, you're giving Georgia advice about locking the door because you didn't lock it twice. Wow. Well, remember I had the whole issue with my new car and I couldn't figure out how to lock the doors and yes, yeah, I get it. Okay. She's like, I've this is a hard, hard earned wisdom I have about locking the door. This, the subject line of this one is 80s moms don't give a fuck. Hi, all. I heard you were calling for some quote accidental kid injuries and I thought you would appreciate the very 80s

approach that my mom had to one of my childhood mishaps. I was about eight years old and I was, for reasons I can't remember, standing on a chair and I had one of those small American flags in my mouth. No. Why, why and why? When I read it to myself, it was funny but reading it out loud, it's just, it's the beginning of every terrible anything. Oh my God. I can't remember why I put an American flag in my mouth. Of course not. I stood on a chair at the same time. That's like the definition of being a child. Totally. I was trying to make a mom, like a mosaic of American flags. I'm pretty sure I was trying to tape it to the ceiling. Who knows? Kids are weird. Anyway, I fell off the chair and when I did, the flag went into my throat. Oh my God. Oh my God, you could have died. Sorry.

It's just, an important part of the story is that I had a somewhat freakish tolerance for pain as a kid. So it wasn't that this was causing me a ton of pain. So I might have ignored it. But when I pulled the flag out, there was some blood on it. Oh God. The line we always got as kids was, don't bother me unless you're bleeding. So I figured that I should probably tell someone. I went to talk to my mom who was sitting at our kitchen table talking to friends, drinking, playing cards, and of course smoking. This is just like 80s. My entire childhood. Ah, the 80s. Anyway, I went to tell her what happened and she shushed me because she was the middle of a conversation. I said, but mom, and she yelled at me that I should not interrupt adults. She went on to finish

whatever conversation she was having and of course taking longer than normal so that she could teach me a lesson. Finally, when she was done, she told me I could ask her what I wanted to. I opened my mouth, which was now full of blood. Yes. That's like what you always want, right? Like with you in the lighting the bed on fire. Yes. I fucking told you this is important. I fucking told you. Listen to me. You should listen to kids, not your stupid drunk friends. Now, I'm not, I haven't read the rest of this, but I will say that if this was me, I would not have opened my mouth entirely. I would have just sat there staring and let the blood come out on its own. Just to freak your mom out as much as possible. Dramatic effect. Little Austin Perry, dramatic at all times. Okay, it was now full

of blood. It turns out that the dowel from the flag had gone through my tonsils. Oh, God. Yep. So as I was telling her what happened, blood was literally streaming down my face. Of course, in typical 80s mom fashion, she said, why didn't you tell me sooner? All in all, it turned out not to be a big deal. Apparently in it healed just fine. I still like to bring this up from time to time just to poke my mom, just to poke the mom guilt. I have kids of my own now and the rub dirt in it and walk it off attitude lives on to this day. Stay sexy and don't ignore your kids while they are bleeding from the mouth or do it builds character, Jen. Oh my God. Is it any wonder we're also fucked up? For real. Truly. I just did the Sklar Brothers Dumb People Town and Dan Van

Kirk's podcast Dumb People Town and they were doing a, it was a 2018 roundup of all the things that were found in people's different orifices at emergency rooms. Fun. And I had a recovered memory while we were talking about it where I'm like, oh yeah, I went to the, I stuck a piece of like foam from like foam rubber basically up one of my nostrils and then left it there. No. When I was like four and then I just had like after a couple of days, I just had green like bright green snot running out of my nose. And when my mom took me to the doctor or the emergency or whatever thinking I had some bizarre infection or whatever, they just put tweezers up there and just pull out this long piece. I mean, endless. Kids are so gross. We're gross and our kids are

gross but then they're also like the child logic where it's like, I'm standing on a chair, I've got an American flag on my mouth and I've got a bunch of important things to do. Or I'm just gonna put this up here and leave it there. Yeah. Let's just see what happens. Yeah. Why can't we just improv this? It's science. This is a science experiment. You know, I'm a Petri dish. You don't get me. Okay. This one's called another killer dentist story. Yes. Hello, murder queens, furry friends and Steven. Do you hate that whole thing? No, I like it. Okay. I was listening to a minisode where someone's mom almost dated a killer dentist and it reminded me vaguely of my hometown killer dentist story. My first dentist when I was a child was Bart Corbin based out of

Hamilton Mill, Georgia. It's really confusing when you see your own name. Based out of Hamilton Mill, Georgia. Anne Ruhl totally wrote a book about it and I reviewed it for my seventh grade book project. Nice. Very cool. Awesome. He always seemed like a little odd but the man knew how to clean teeth and do root canal so we didn't think anything of it. My aunt used to play tennis with his wife's sister and they seemed like a normal family, husband, wife, two sons, white picket fence. This though was not the case because in December of 2004, their oldest son, who was really young at the time, ran to the neighbor's house and told them that someone had shot his mom. When police arrived at the scene, Corbin's wife, Jen, was found with a gunshot wound to the head, suicide-esque.

It was quickly determined that it was a homicide framed as a suicide. The giveaway was that the hand holding the gun was neatly tucked under the covers. Oh. Yeah. It came out that their relationship had gone south. She had met someone online and he was having an affair with his secretary. She was in the process of serving him divorce papers and he lost it and killed her. Oh my god. It came out later that he had done the same thing to his ex-girlfriend he had in dentistry school, Dolly. She broke things off. He put sugar in her gas tank, stole her cat, and destroyed her final project before finally shooting her in the head and framing it as a suicide in the same way. I feel like this has been a forensic file. I'm sure it has. The name Dolly is the first girlfriend.

Yeah. The only reason he didn't get caught that time was because a rookie cop responded to the scene and picked the gun out of her hand after seeing the shot through the head. Yeah. Needless to say, he was arrested for his wife's murder and was no longer my dentist. But I did, but he was arrested for his wife's murder. So I began to travel to the prison to get my teeth done there. What else was I going to do? My dad was in the middle of a root canal and had to find a new dentist ASAP. He loved the new guy we went to and told my mom we should start going there since our old dentist was a murderer. A week later, the new dentist was on the news for child molestation. No. I know a dentist who has never been convicted of anything, thankfully. Nice. Love the show and

all you do, Mads from Georgia. Oh, Mads. Dude. Don't let your dad pick dentists anymore. It's hard enough to go to the dentist's plane without all those threats and weirdnesses. 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 available weekly. Why stop with just dinner? Now you can enjoy Hello Fresh's expanded menu of quick lunch solutions, weekend brunch, simple side dishes, and amazing desserts. Karen, January is going to be my month

for Hello Fresh. I am so sick of takeout. I miss cooking so much. I haven't lifted a knife or a pan since early fall, so I can't wait to get back in the kitchen and Hello Fresh makes it so easy and also makes it so that my food tastes good, which is hard to do on my own. It gives you everything, everything you need. So get up to 20 free meals with purchase plus free shipping on your first box at hellofresh.ca slash murder20 with code murder20. 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. 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 podcast. You can listen ad free on the Amazon music or Wondery app. Okay, the subject line of this one is grandpa stops a robbery with some unlikely help. All right, great. Page two. Sup, Karen and Georgia and Stephen. Hi. My dad and I were on a road trip and we swung by a little house he grew up in with his seven brothers and sisters, his mom and his dad, who was the only police officer in town. Really? Their house was

also the police station. Where is this? New Zealand. Okay. That suddenly makes totals any. Seriously, the front two rooms were police for police business and the family kept the bedrooms to live in. And I think they shared the kitchen. Oh my God. It's amazing. When I asked my dad what the hell they did when they needed to lock somebody up, he said, there was a shed in the garden. I don't know if he was joking. So good. Can you imagine growing up at a police station? I asked dad what it was like for grandpa to be the one and only cop in town. And he said he needed to improvise sometimes. Then he told me this story. Late one night grandpa spotted men with flashlights inside the TV and appliance repair shop, obviously robbing the place. Back up from

New Plymouth would take over an hour to get there. Grandpa didn't want to wait because of course he knew the people who owned the repair shop and he couldn't just watch while robbers ruin their business. That's when he saw the lights in the local rugby club were on. I like to imagine that he now said fuck protocol before he took off running for the club. He burst into the room of drinking rugby players. Oh my God. And asked if anyone would like to help him catch some bad guys. They were into it. The town didn't have street lights back then. So grandpa had to shepherd the rugby players through the pitch dark desperately trying to keep them quiet. He positioned them at the front of the shop. Then he snuck around back took a deep breath and kicked in the back door

shouting freeze police. The robbers dropped what they were holding and bolted out the front door right into about a dozen drunk enthusiastic rugby players. Amazing. As my dad said, quote, they weren't cops so they didn't have to hold anything back. Holy shit. I feel sorry for the robbers. They had not signed up for anything like what happened to them and it was dark so they literally didn't know what hit them. Oh my God. They were scraped off the pavement and sent to New Plymouth for processing and the rugby guys would talk about nothing else for days. I think we all dream that one day we'll get to help take down a criminal. Hopefully we'll be sober and not one of the 12 other huge ass men when it happens. Stay sexy and help out your local cop Lorraine.

That is a perfect story. Isn't that I mean you can just see it all happening and as soon as you said rugby players I'm like oh yes so fun yes and drunk ones too the best kind are there any other kind are there any other kind yeah a b how good are they at tackling and punching punching and tackling yes it's what they do and it's like you can't get by them no that's their whole job no is to keep you from getting by them that's a brilliant story. God bless Lorraine. Okay this is my last one. Attacked in a bathroom. Aloha from a Maui Murderino. I love stories of beating this shit out of awful men so here's mine. Well at a bar with a couple sorority sisters we went to the bathroom together as a team because the world we live in makes us feel safer in numbers

but the line for the women's room was too long and this is fucking this is me in my 20s so I dragged my two sisters with me to the men's room since no one's ever in there said an overly confident drunk girl voice. We went to use the stalls and I heard a woman crying in the larger and furthest stall still in my unshy mode I looked over to see a man towering over her with his pants down and her sobbing in obvious distress without thinking another second I leaped over the stall and attacked him from behind. Wow because it was the handicapped stall he smacked his face on the handlebar and lost a tooth yes I yelled at my girlfriends to take the unknown woman aside for safety while gripping my tiny arm around this guy's neck the male bouncers came in and told me to get off him

but in sheer defense mode I told them I wouldn't get off of him until quote the fucking cops come and peel me off love it. I managed to keep my knee on the back of his neck and twist his arm while his face was on the floor she must have taken a self-defense class because how do you know to do that shit. Sometimes you know the you're the muse it just like comes through your you're a vessel of violence your vessel of long island ice tea and and like a bunch of uh procedural shows that you've watched other people beat people up and take them down that's right um from what I remember that night I got lots of horrified stares at the bump on my forehead which I think she meant she fell and hit her head maybe not the bump on my forehead blood on my sweater lots of free whiskey

and a new thankfully short-lived cigarette addiction probably because uh shit was intense and I needed to take the edge off drunk cigarettes man I mean is there anything better I bet you that's how they were invented and why they're invented initially drunk people or cigarettes either one interchangeable my therapist tells me this came out of the rage I couldn't express in past abusive relationships which totally makes sense the bright side of the story was that the woman he was victimizing became great friends with my sisters and I braved her attacker in court told her story to the men and women on campus and went on to become a lawyer specializing in domestic violence advocacy yes college sexual misconduct cases are under reported and brave

people like her are sometimes the encouragement survivors need to share their story and or heal for any of you who need to hear this I believe you a lot of other margaritas do too stay sexy and strong m yes beautiful good job m beautifully written so true so true all around yep yeah dive over that fucking fuck yeah yeah also if you're in a poke place like that yeah your risk look yeah you're gonna get a bump on the forehead yeah you might lose a tooth sure you could break a bone but there'll be bouncers there within minutes yeah you could even get in trouble yeah get it scrap it up right ladies but we only have each other we need to come to each other's aid yeah wherever we can that's right you're right yeah okay I'm not gonna redo the subject line

of this one because it'll give it away okay hey Elvis assorted other animals humans and Steven's mustache I think actually that's redundant Steven's mustache is assorted other animals but I'm not gonna start criticizing right away I don't know why I've hung on to this story for so long but since I'm recovering from pneumonia this week I guess I've got time anyway about 35 years ago I went to the Oakland Zoo with my parents who probably had no business being parents to be honest I was only five or six so I don't remember anything about this trip except this the zoo had a baby hippo named mugs because he was sponsored no what sorry because he was sponsored by mug root beer oh my god that's the cutest thing I've ever heard

why did they name him root beer it's like it's the most uncreated thing you're just like mugs mugs for mug root beer okay luckily he wasn't named A&W because that would have been confusing hard for the children all right oh parentheses I would love if anybody could confirm that they had a baby hippo named mugs but I swear I'm not making this up okay close Instagram comments yeah someone will answer that for you somebody might even have pictures that's right um because that's what I was looking at before we started I was trying to make sure um there's the Oakland Zoo but then there's also a place in Oakland called Children's Fairyland that is I think 60 years old wow and I couldn't remember if those two things were connected

because I don't think I've ever been to the Oakland Zoo but we went to Children's Fairyland many times so fun it is the best fucking place my sister recently went there with her class and sent me pictures and all the stuff's the same because it's not brand yeah so it's just like there's one thing where there's a whale's mouth open and then you walk into the whale's mouth to get to one of the like to the show area or whatever I don't I don't remember I'm into it okay um um and there's a water fountain that you stick your head into a hippo's mouth to drink water that's so cute and that's what made me think of it anyway maybe his name is mugs maybe it's a root beer it's a root beer fountain that'd be amazing if all water fountains that like children's um places

like that were just high fructose corn syrup so uh it's just a bunch of tang coming out of a pot of this mouth okay anyway of course there were signs that said something like do not put arms and legs over the railing of the hippo pen so of course what does my dad do but but put me right on the railing with my legs dangling over I guess nobody knew how dangerous hippos were back then they absolutely didn't really no are they super dangerous they are super dangerous they're the number one killer of tourists in Africa or in the Congo or something yeah wherever people go to look at like animals you know in the wild in Africa um they kill tourists the most because people think they're friendly and cute and ballerinas but they're not wait they're not ballerinas sorry but

yeah you've been introduced to many a cartoon hippo by thinking that it's a big female hippo that also wants to be a ballerina isn't that funny and great no no it's not real George I'm sorry wait listen because this will make you happy okay well mugs being curious and probably hungry came right up to me and swallowed me up to my waist oh oh dear I began screaming my mom began screaming at my dad and my dad started pounding on mugs's snout I distinctly remember being covered in hippo slobber and the feel of the hippos teeth clamping down on my legs everybody is losing their shit now and it seemed like forever but it was probably only a few seconds but mugs who was probably confused as fuck finally let go of me I guess I didn't taste too good the even crazier part was there were no

zookeepers around oh my god at least none that I can remember totally traumatizing to kid me but pretty funny now anyway I love you all at MFM thanks so much for the show stay sexy and don't get eaten by a baby hippo James from Oakland that's bananas like what if it had been a full-grown hippo I know what if it wouldn't I was trying to think of a funny thing instead of mug like a pint glass forget it uh leader bottle yeah um no it's I mean if it was a full-grown hippo that little kid would have been gone I think oh my god isn't that poor hippos like what are you doing you're just dangled food into my cage yeah you basically gave me two steaks with some shoes on them you handed me a snack what am I supposed to do now you're hating me about it you know what I'm not

doing ballet anymore I quit I quit goodbye to the nutcracker this year that's right you can find another fucking hippo dance your goddamn dance for you I don't get to eat a five-year-old if I feel like it um wow those were what a great batch those are a great batch send your great batch to my favorite murder at gmail oh and also you can go now on our new brand new pretty sparkly website and just submit there somewhere yes that's right you can go directly at www.myfavoritmurder.com um slash gov thanks for listening and sending in your stuff and stay sexy and don't get murdered goodbye