My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 160

Episode Date: February 3, 2020

This week’s hometowns include murder and a touching ghost story.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is exactly right. 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. This is the mini-soat.

It's an early morning mini-soat. It's a, this is the short version. We're totally, we redo your ship back. You guys send us great stuff. So many good stories. Yeah. Everyone's got a story. Never forget.

Shout out to Lily for picking. She's our picker now and she's great. She, this night, this batch was nice. Yeah. We had lots to choose from. Yeah. So Lily's the person to harass online if you want to pick your hometown. Sorry, Lily.

I won't say her last name so that, you know, you can't find her. She gets swarmed and swatted. Come on, guys, use your power for good. Okay, go. It just starts. A Catholic middle school English teacher was a lovely, very young woman who was getting married to her best friend of nine years. I remember her including the girls from our class of 13 in her wedding planning and us

gathering around her desk to look at wedding magazines and pick out her dress. It's going to end badly. Right. In the spring of 2002, after her wedding, she very suddenly disappeared from school. The teachers were tight lipped about it and we went on with our lives because we were middle schoolers with short attention spans. Over the next months, we pieced together the details of the story. Her husband had woken up early that morning, started massaging my teacher's back and then

slit her throat. He continued to stab, smother, and choke her for five hours until authorities were alerted that she never came to our school that morning. They found her bleeding in the hallway with her husband leaning over her face and hands covered in blood. There was a long trial during which he pled in sanity claiming he was sleepwalking and had no recollection of the event. It's another sleepwalking murder.

This happened. Holy shit. The lawyers claimed he had cold medicine and wine the night before. Then parenthesis says, who hasn't? No, but... Fair enough. This is a thing that happens. Georgia just did a sleepwalking murder and a psychologist determined he had attacked

her during a five-hour series of recurring dreams that she was leaving him for another man. That's not a reason to kill her. We heard rumors that the case fell apart when it was discovered that he had attempted several other times to murder my teacher that night, including putting something in her drink, but I'm not sure how accurate that is. Welcome to my favorite murder. Yeah, let's just spread some rumors.

I suppose we won't ever know the truth, but I tend to side with the jury who sentenced him to 40 years. Wow. Now, this is where things took a hard left for me. My teacher showed up at our eighth grade graduation ceremony with a scar across her throat from ear to ear. She fucking lived. Wait, what?

She fucking lived. She lived. What the fuck? Yeah. That's what I did because this is such a perfectly told story because I absolutely did not see this coming. I remember the hugs and pictures taken with her all the while trying not to stare and to pretend everything's okay.

She needed a hundred stitches and had said in her testimony that it felt like a stinging paper cut all across her neck and blood flowing down her throat like a waterfall. Explain my case right now. I mean, you're just pulling her eyes down. She's so shocked. She's falling into a vortex of shock. I have to hold my face or it's going to fall off, right? And then here's the next paragraph.

I am still shocked today that someone she thought was her best friend and loving husband turned on her with no understandable reason. However, he's thankfully in prison. It's amazing that she survived and is now remarried. Crazy to imagine trusting anyone else in your bed again, but I'm glad she figured it out. Thanks for all your horrifyingly intriguing stories. I make workouts and housework so much more tolerable, SSDGM, Laura. Laura, what a crazy story.

That is the most jaw-dropping story that is told. Was it intentional? Did you understand? Because the subject line had survivor in it, but that's why I didn't read it. But other than that, I mean, I honestly thought this was a horrible murder story. My God. She survived. She went to their graduation and she then went on to remarry.

I have chills. Incredible. What an incredible woman. Wow. There's your kickoff. Wow. That was a hardcore start. Yeah.

It was great. It was great. Right? Amazing. Sucking amazing. Yay. I thought it was like she wrote something wrong. Also, just that description of the attack is so awful and extreme that, yeah, it's miraculous.

It's crazy. She lived. Okay. This one's called Badass Grandma. Love it already. And the name is Rita. Her grandma's name is Rita. Yes.

Thank you for including that. Okay. My grandmother, who recently passed away at 99 years old, was a true legend. She had spent her late teens as a secretary at the FBI. Amazing. Later in life, after my grandpa died, she moved into a retirement home in Santa Barbara and immediately I got bored, so she went to work in the district attorney's office. She was beloved by those awesome men and women who advocated for justice for victims.

Perhaps the most badass thing she ever did, though, was when she was just running to the grocery store in the 1960s. Some national tragedy, the 60s was full of them, had just happened and a man approached her and said he was collecting money for flowers for the family of the aforementioned tragedy. My grandma said what happened was a shame, and she was praying for them, but she just didn't have enough money to donate. The man then prevented my five foot tall 90-pound grandma from closing her car door. He reached into her car and said, you're going to give me all your money.

Rita outmatched physically but never mentally, then yelled, if you don't leave me alone right now, I'm going to throw up on you. The man ran away and my grandma was no worse for wear. I said, CGM and threatened vomit, James. I was so perfectly set up that there was going to be some legal thing. I thought there was going to be, she was going to be, I recognize you from the docket the other day or whatever, and it's just like, I'll project a vomit on you. I mean, that's a threat, and it also like momentarily stuns you because you're like,

what the fuck? You, it's like, I want, I do want money, but Barf cannot come out of this place. Yeah, like if she's threatening that, then it's possible. A hundred percent. She's like, this is the thing I do. Wow. I'm Rita, and this is my gift. Mm-hmm.

That's amazing. God bless Rita. Rita, no. What? Nothing, edit that out. I was going to say a pun, but I would stop myself. This one is a. Rita, gurgitate.

Stop it. Don't laugh at that. It's good and fast. I guess. So this just starts, the most recent mini, so do you ladies mention sending in kids stories and it made me think of this one. So everyone has at least one story about them that comes out of family out at family gatherings and the such.

Well, I have a few. My most famous that my family absolutely loves to bring up at Thanksgiving Easter, my wedding, et cetera, goes like this. When I was five, my parents decided we should drive from the Chicagoland area to Washington, DC for a family vacation. Along the way, my parents stopped for a meal at a mall. While we were there, me being a five-year-old found something I just had to have and demanded it from my dad.

When he refused to give in, I started screaming and went up to a stranger, a strange older couple and screamed at them, he is not my daddy. Oh, no. What an evil thing to do. This is straight out of the Karen Kulgera five-year-old playbook. I'm not kidding. For some odd reason, they believed me. I say some odd reason because I look almost identical to my father.

This older couple went to get, I guess, a mall security as my dad picked me up and booked it out to our family's van. Oh, my God, like, then he takes up running with the kids. And puts them in a van. Oh, my God, no. We drove out of that town as fast as my parents could and we never went back. For all I know, I'm on milk cartons in some random town. Don't worry, my dad is currently greatly enjoying the fact that I have a five-year-old who is

doing his best to recreate my childhood antics. Oh, my God. That's how it goes. Stay sexy and don't let karma bite you in the ass, Ingrid. Those poor old people probably still talk about like the one time they could have saved a child and they just didn't act fast enough. They just didn't. They blew it.

Oh, my God. He's not my daddy. That's evil. I love it. Okay. This is called the time a murderer sent my city into a panic. Hey, cuties. All right.

No. This happened a few years ago in my hometown, Baltimore, Maryland, or as locals unfortunately call it, body more murder land. We have a large homeless population in the city and panhandlers often stand at intersections to ask for donations. A husband and wife were in the car with their daughter when the wife rolled down the window to give a panhandler money. The panhandler was a woman who appeared to be holding a child.

The panhandler then reached into the car window and shot and killed the wife. Oh, my God. The entire city went on high alert, cracking down on panhandling in the city and cautioning people against giving money to the homeless. The husband went on local news telling his story and warning people of the same thing. Even Oprah Winfrey commented on the whole ordeal, though I'm not sure on which platform. The thing is, that shit didn't happen. It turns out that the wife was in the middle of filing a divorce against the husband and

the husband and daughter had murdered her and fabricated this whole story. Oh, my God. The daughter was in on it. Wow. The place of the murder wasn't even anywhere near the city area where the husband had originally said his wife had passed away. The husband and daughter fled to Texas, were eventually picked up and are currently facing trial this month, January 2020.

Facing a dinky sentence of only around 10 years. Wish I had more information for you, but I had a right in any way. Stay sexy and don't blame the fucking homeless, Elizabeth. For real, Elizabeth. Dude. That's, well, I mean, we've heard that story so many times, continues to this day. Oh, my God. That's evil.

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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.

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A few nights ago, my sister and I were having dinner with our parents and somehow the topic got on the subject of murders. It may or may not have been steered that way by me. Yes. Anyway, I brought up Richard Ramirez hoping one of my parents would have a story since they both grew up in LA. My mom said her grandmother was terrified and stuck broom handles in every window and sliding door for safety but no other exciting news.

Damn. Then my dad pipes up and says, well, I almost got kidnapped by the freeway killer. Now, just so you know, this is a man that intentionally tries to make you laugh at funerals. Oh, dad. It's the same. And told me priest jokes in church till I busted up in the middle of solemn services. He thinks morbid stuff is hilarious and he likes to yank your chain so I was suspicious to say the least.

On Halloween of 1979, my dad said he dressed as a flasher. Yes, you read that right. Oh my God. You just wear a ring coat. Yeah. That's the easiest costume. That's true. I went to a friend's house, his friend John's house, not too far from his own.

My dad grew up in orange and was well aware of the boys and young men who were going missing and getting killed by the freeway killer at this time. He had to cut through an elementary school to get to the back wall of his friend's house where he would jump over. Oh, it's such a childhood. Dude, way to go. What's wrong with the front door? As he's making his way towards the school, a man appears out of nowhere and seems to

be walking in his direction. My dad immediately gets weirded out and starts changing his path, but the man seems to be following. It continues to happen until the guy was getting too close. My dad finally had enough and said to himself, fuck this, if that's the killer, then I'm not going without a fight. He turned around and started sprinting as fast as he could and screaming right towards the man.

Oh my God. The guy seemed to get freaked out and took off in the opposite direction. My dad sprinted the rest of the way to John's house and arrived yelling for his friends telling them he had almost gotten kidnapped by the freeway killer. They all agreed that they should call the police, so John goes to get his mother. At the same time, their friend Tim comes bursting through the door screaming for help and saying he's almost been abducted by the freeway killer. He starts telling a story about how he was cutting through the school behind John's house.

When a guy in a trench coat, a lot like my dad's, came charging at, oh wait, they all realized what happened and they couldn't stop laughing for the rest of the night. That memory still makes my dad laugh to this day. It makes us laugh too, and I had to share it. My dad is still friends with John. They were around 12 or 13 when it happened. Oh my God. So it's two fierce 13-year-olds walking toward each other out.

Oh God. Wow. As funny as it is, I have to give my dad credit that even though he thought a serial killer was stalking him, he summoned the courage to go on the offensive. Yes, hell yeah. Then joke about that fear for years after. He's an interesting man and he has a lot of other stories, but this one is a particular gem.

Love, love, love your show to death. Pun intended. Stay sexy. Someone please arrest the 70s. No name. I just love the idea, the other kid I feel so bad for, someone just starts screaming towards him. Running straight out of him in a trench coat with probably no pants under the trench coat.

Just very disturbing. Wow. Dad, that's such a dad story. Okay, this one's called a ghost story, but sweet. Hello everyone. I was in high school when I heard this and it is my favorite quote, ghost story. I lived in the same house my entire life across the street from Ed and Delia. They were my parents' first neighbors in the city's new development back in 1979.

Ed and Delia were basically a third set of grandparents to me. Growing up, I got to shovel their driveway after heavy snows and mow the lawn during the hottest days of summer. Oh, that's sweet. I would sit with them after school and chat until my mom got home from work. And then there's some musical notes around these words so I feel like I have to sing them. Do it.

Latchkey kid. I even briefly trained to be a paper boy with Ed who did a morning route as well into his retirement. It took me maybe two rainy mornings to realize 3 a.m. start days were not for me. I'm from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and winter sucks. Everyone loves to shovel a foot of snow off their car every morning, right? A foot? Oh my God.

It was one of these early mornings when the sweetest and saddest story I know comes from. Ed was starting his normal day by warming up his car and shoveling the driveway. Delia wakes up and she feels Ed sit on the bed and say, I've got to go now. Will you be okay? This was the middle of the night to her and like any other morning so she replied, of course I will be. Confused and a little peeved about the uncharacteristic waking message. She fell back to sleep.

She was soon awakened by a neighbor's knock on the door and flashing lights. Ed had fallen while shoveling and hit his head on the driveway. I do not know if he died from the fall, a heart attack or hypothermia but for the rest of Delia's life she knew that morning message checking in with her husband's spirit. Yeah. I want to give a shout out to my friend Megan for introducing your podcast to me and thank her and all art and music teachers across the globe for trying to keep the world beautiful. Hey.

Stay sexy and check in with your loved ones before your spirit moves on. Joe J. Aw. That's beautiful. I have to go now. Will you be okay? Aw. That's lovely.

Vince. He would check with me. He would. I have to go now. Here's the American Express credit card. You pay that. You have to pay it every month. Major coffee.

Here's your coffee. Don't forget to give Elvis his pill every day. Starbucks? Starbucks? One more on the road. That's just the music to my ears is when Vince will text me. Starbucks? Like you're still in your hotel packing at Starbucks?

Yep. The greatest. Aw. Yeah. You can get orders of all kinds to my favorite murder at D-mail or you can, if you go to myfavorimurder.com, you can just do it there as well. We love your stories. We love your stories.

Everybody does such a good job. Yeah. Stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Goodbye. Thank you.