My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 201

Episode Date: November 16, 2020

This week’s hometowns include catching a serial killer and a family stabbing.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. Let's see, it's truly criminal. Hello, and welcome to my favorite murder. I feel like we're starting, the mini-zone, I feel like we're starting to draw hello

out, like the longer we're in quarantine, the longer the hello is getting. It's like, you can hear it deep down, isn't this still happening underneath all this? We're filming this for the fan cult. We put up some live recordings on the fan cult and I just realized that I need to put my computer a little higher so it's not just full chin under chin view. Yeah. You have to do what I do and just like stack it up on as many dictionaries as the source is as you can find.

I want it to be like a tall, I'm staring up at a really tall person, you know. I want to lay on my back and hang it by chains from the ceiling, kind of like a modern art way. So this is where we're reaching your story. Do you know what this is? Oh, it's been a week. Do you want to go first? Sure.

Okay. I'd also just like to say that I recently covered my roots in this color hair that my hair is down, that you can see because you're doing video, is the color hair I had as a child. It's like a beautiful dark brown that's got nice highlights in it. It's just kind of, yeah, just medium brown. I like it. Here's number one.

Hide from across the pond or as we say in Yorkshire, A up. Today the Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe died of coronavirus no less. Did you hear that? No. The Yorkshire Ripper died in jail of coronavirus. Great. So, I thought it would be a good time to share my connection to the case. I'm from Leeds in Yorkshire, England.

My mom's side of the family is from Bingley, West Yorkshire. Mr. Bingley, this is all very, this is kind of like me reading places in Narnia and then, but it's real. It's real. I assure you. So, she grew up there one street over from the Sutcliffe family, that is the Yorkshire Ripper's family. My uncle wasn't still his good friends with Peter Sutcliffe's brother and once visited

his house, which he remembers as being a, quote, long walk over the moors, where Peter gave them spam to eat, a disgusting food suitable for a disgusting man. My uncle has told me that the Sutcliffe family are lovely people and couldn't be further removed from the horrible crimes Peter committed. It's another example of the family, the murderer's family being victims too. On this day, I'd like to take some time not to focus on the awful serial killer, but an inspiring event which came about because of both his crimes and police mishandling of the case.

At the time, both the police and the press zeroed in on the fact that Sutcliffe was killing sex workers. They investigated and presented the case as only sex worker related, despite the fact that Sutcliffe murdered women who were not. Police also advised women to, quote, stay indoors after dark, blaming women and the victims of these crimes for simply living their lives. As a result, 60 women marched in leads carrying signs that read things like no curfew for women, curfew for men.

Fuck yeah. Right? Thus began the reclaim the night protests, which continue to this day across the UK, marching against victim blaming and seeking to make public spaces safe for women even at night. I'm proud to be from leads where women refused to be blamed by sexist dickheads and stood up for their rights and the rights of Sutcliffe's victims. Right now, and that's moving to me. That got me.

That's so amazing. What an amazing thing to do. Right now, I go to university in Sheffield and the university accommodation is in the same area where Sutcliffe was finally apprehended. So I seem to follow this case wherever I go. It reminds me that there are dangerous people out there, but more importantly, that a crime is never the victim's fault and you have the right to fight back. I write for the university's branch of the newspaper, The Tab.

I don't know what that's like. The Tab. We're keeping tabs on you. Wink. Wink emoji. Wink. We got you. This clearly I haven't been around other people for a while, so everything's really

exciting. This email's exciting. Words, nouns, all of it. And wrote an article about Sutcliffe's death today. Check out if you fancy it. We'll go over to the tab.edu, I imagine, UK. In the article, I really wanted to remember the victims of above all else. All that said, no woman should ever be blamed for her own murder and you should never mess

with Yorkshire folk. XOXO, Izzy. Awesome job. This one's called... I'm not going to tell you the name. Okay. Morning, y'all. Wait, no.

Morning, all y'all. Oh. Cats, dogs, and mustaches included. I absolutely love your podcast and have found many other murdering hours from a little call your dad, you're in a cult sticker I have on my water bottle, so thank you for helping my socially awkward ass make friends. Nice. Anyways, it's murder story time.

So I work for a metropolitan police department in the Midwest and my job is called an identification processor. We are civilian workers and essentially we process, aka fingerprints and mug shots, people that are usually from traffic court or are parolees probation nears. While it isn't as interesting as the detention deputies processing the arrestees from the street, we occasionally have some interesting people come and see us. One day during the shutdown, we were limited staffing and two officers came down with a gentleman that wouldn't identify himself.

Usually when this happens, the person is shit-faced drunk and frankly doesn't even know their names themselves. However, this was not the case in this situation. It was a very calm man with a charming smile and yet every instinct in my body was screaming at me to get the absolute fuck away from this guy. I knew that I was safe, there were two officers and this guy had handcuffs and yet I broke out in a cold sweat and my fight or flight instincts were in full force. I kept my shit together and fingerprinted his two thumbs and pointer fingers and then

went to see if there would be any results on the fast ID machine. There was and this fucker's name was in bold red, something I had never seen before. The officers and I made eye contact and I told him I was going to do a little bit more research to make sure that their results were accurate. When I went to look up his name on our warrant database, this fucker was wanted and then all caps in four motherfucking states for killing families. Oh my God. I quickly printed the results out and told the officers to call for some backup, aka calling

in our cert team, which makes sure shit doesn't hit the fan, that's C-E-R-T. The cert officers came and put this bastard in a quote, three piece suit, which is the crass name for the handcuffs that are around the feet, waist and hands. He was then taken away and I last I heard he was being transferred to Minnesota and is awaiting trial there before having to go to the other three states to stand trial as well. I needless to say, I quickly called my sister also a murderer now and told her everything, where she proceeded to also flip the fuck out.

I can't say I would recommend having to stand so close to what I would say pure evil feels like, but I would say that it was an experience that my morbid and twisted self will never forget. Thanks again for all the amazing work you do. Just remember to stay sexy and always wash your hands after fingerprinting a serial killer, A. You know, that level of evil, it's like, I feel like and I say this knowing you can't discern one horrifying act, intentional act of murder from another, but something about

killing families, it like puts you straight into like, it's like manhunter, you know, like the prequel to silence of the lambs type of stuff, where it's just like, you're a family and I later. And it's also like the killing, being a family killer, and then also coming in smiling, acting casual and refusing to give your name and like, you are playing, you are this person, you are a void of empathy or, you know, any kind of human fucking, which is what was sending their senses crazy because I think that the idea that it all came down to instinct like that.

Like acting like a normal person and it's not fucking working somewhere deep in my animal brain. I mean, I really, that's the kind of thing. Would you want to experience that firsthand? Do you think? I don't want to say yes, because I don't like, let's do it, but I think it would be really interesting. You know what I mean?

Just, I would like to see what the difference is and I would like to go, oh, I've had that feeling about. Yeah. What's cool about it is that I'm sure we actually had those experiences, but she got to immediately have hers confirmed, so like, we'll never have ours confirmed. We'll just be like, that guy's creepy. We need a fast ID machine. Yeah.

We see them only put that on the list of stuff to get from. Put that on the exactly right card, credit card. Okay. And then we're IDing you, Steve. This one is badass survivor story and a 14 year old hero. Great. More credit to the 14 year olds and the tiktokers. I actually, there's notes left over from our last episode and there was a thing I wrote

that said, don't shit on tiktok because I think I said something like, I don't understand it, I'm too old for it, but I should have probably qualified it to the millions and millions of passionate tiktok users that, that's all on me. I'm sure doing great things and being creative and amazing and awesome and where the oldies going. Yeah. What the heck is that? I don't know because as I said, Nora sends me tiktok, she likes all the time and I sent

you that one, the cap that just skateboarded across the room. And the girl goes, did he just do that on his own? It like, that was insane. It was, that was amazing. The other person just perfectly caught it. We'll send it to you, Steven. That's right up your alley. Okay.

So this starts, hello. I love the show, yada, yada, yada. Let's get to it. In 2013, I was a freshman at Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant, Michigan. The town of Mount Pleasant was a small town invaded by college students, very infrequently plagued by crime. It felt so safe that I often walked home alone in the dark on campus. Freshmen get the short end of the stick when it comes to class times.

Right after, we wouldn't know. Right after Christmas break, I got my very first central alert and abduction on campus. My roommates and I were flooded with terror, but also imagining the terror of the person who was taken. On 9 p.m. on January 16th, 2013, a young woman, her name was not released, was leaving the Student Activity Center, AKA the gym, when she was approached by a man in his 30s. He showed her a gun and forced her into her vehicle. He said to her that he had been waiting for the perfect person to grab and she was the

unlucky one. He drove her to his mother's house, not far from campus. There he bound her and raped her. After this heinous act, he forced the woman back into her vehicle and told her that he was going to kill her. He brought with him two canisters of gas. Now here's the badass part. As they drove down the road, the woman was able to get the door unlocked and she jumped

out of the moving vehicle. Oh my God. She sprinted to the nearest house and began pounding on the door. A 14-year-old boy babysitting his younger siblings answered the door, let her in, and told her to hide in the closet. He then locked the door, grabbed the phone, and joined her in the closet with his siblings. As they called 911, her abductor ran up to the house, realized it was locked, and proceeded to pour the gasoline all over the exterior of the house and then lit it on fire.

As the police arrived, the suspect took off in the stolen vehicle. After an hours-long police chase, it ended on foot in a city hundreds of miles away with a police-assisted suicide, so the police killed him. Even before that, he posted on Facebook, well folks, I'm about to get shot, peace. How are we not heard of this? I don't know. Okay, so it says, the rapist was Eric Ramsey, a recently released felon. He ended his life, but the woman and those young children saved theirs.

Side note, soon after this, my sister was leaving the SAC, which is the gym, and someone shouted to her. She audibly screamed and started running. Turns out it was just someone making sure she was getting to her car. Yeah, dude, just by screaming, better safe than sorry. That idea where it's just the second you hear any noise behind you, you just fucking take off. I just pictured them actually just letting out a loud scream, not like, are you okay?

You know, it's just, yeah, yeah, exactly. Anyways, thanks for normalizing therapy and being such a great space for me during this difficult time, stay sexy and jump out of a car if you have to, to not get murdered, Carly. Wow. Unbelievable story. That idea that, so someone who, the instinct that when that person escaped, the instinct that the kidnapper had not to, oh shit, I'm caught, take off, but to fucking keep coming.

And they didn't know that the boy was home alone. There could have been adults in there. There could have been, you know, people with a gun in there. They didn't care. Like that, that to me is just like, I don't care, you know, I have no care about what happens to me. So there's just not a thought in my mind of, well, it's very animalistic. It's like, it's pursuing your prey and trying to get it no matter what and not carrying.

Yeah. Yeah. What the reality of it is. Wow. That's terrifying. It's, and what a brave 14 year old boy, I wish their name was published because that's badass to not, to not panic, to not shut down, to not, I don't know what I would have done, but there's a 50% chance as a 14 year old, I would have been like, you can't come in.

No, you wouldn't know. Thank you. That's all I wanted you to say. You might have been like, what's the number for 911? But I don't think you would have been like, no, get out of here. I'll let you in, but you have to hit me to this one thing. I've heard about this emergency line you can call where the police will come super fast to your house.

The end. Okay. Okay. Here's one. The help solve my roller derby friends murder. Hi MFM crew. I started listening to your podcast during quarantine and your voices have helped me feel like I have a social life.

My hometown murder is the unsolved murder of my friend and teammate Kobe Walden. It's K-O-B-I. I'm from Indianapolis, Indiana. You may know of us for the Indianapolis 500 or Ahem, our former governor, Mike Pence. And then it says, sorry about that. I played roller derby for years and I met Kobe in 2017 when he joined our men's roller derby team, the race city rebels. Roller derby is a tight knit community.

You automatically become friends with anyone sharing an interest in the sport. Kobe was sweet and kind and so excited to play. On the night of May 1st, 2017, Kobe went to a derby practice and then stopped by the grocery store on his way home. Shortly after 10 PM, he sat in his car in the parking lot of Southport Crossing Apartments and texted a friend. That is the last anyone heard from him. Just before noon the next day, police were called to the apartment complex.

A group of young fishermen had found a body near the creek behind one of the apartment buildings. It would later be identified as Kobe. He had been shot multiple times and was laying face down near the creek. In the parking lot outside of Kobe's car, police found a bag of groceries and a gym bag. His gym bag appeared untouched by his cell phone and the ring he wore was missing. Police canvassed the area and found a few neighbors who heard gunshots but no one saw what happened.

The theory is that Kobe was walking towards his apartment when he was confronted by a stranger. He ran around the building to try to get away when he was fatally shot. There was a brief period where a few people called in tips but since then the case has gone cold. Everyone who knew him misses him terribly. We wear a 47, his jersey number, on our helmets or bodies during games to honor his memory. Stay sexy and if you know of anything related to Kobe's murder, please call Crime Stoppers

of Central Indiana, Kali. Yeah, so it's Indianapolis, Indiana and it happened in 2017. Oh man. No, so awful. Like just long enough to be a cold case but it's still so recent. It sounds like someone tried to rob him and he was like, fuck this, I'm getting away. Then they murdered him. I mean, I don't know.

It's one of those things where it's like those little tips that you don't think mean anything. Like if you live in an apartment building and you notice something weird around that time too and maybe there was, you know. Or if you know, I wonder if there's a website somewhere where what that ring looks like that got stolen. Yeah. If it's showed up anywhere, that's completely from Golden State Killer stuff.

You know what I mean? Like the way, the way websites do it. Totally. Totally. Yeah. 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

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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. Okay, this, my last one is also an update.

Subject line of this one is personal connection to the UAH shooting. Hello, I've been meaning to send this email for months, but when I saw today's episode was about my hometown murder, I figured it was finally time I tell you my personal connection to this tragedy. I thought I was done with procrastination when I graduated college. This may, but you know, shrug emoji, oh, oh, that never goes away. Let me just tell you, it gets worse as you get older. I'm not going to retell the horrible story of the shooting, but my personal connection

is kind of funny. So let's just focus on that. If you want to hear the horrible story of the shooting of the University of Alabama at Huntsville, we just did it this week. So congratulations smarty episode. We lived in a suburb of Huntsville at the time of the shooting and it shook the entire area because things like that don't really happen here. Flash forward a couple years and a new fast food establishment is built in our town.

My mom went to this restaurant every morning before work to get a sandwich and chat with one of the employees who she ends up becoming very good friends with. My mom is a classic Southern woman. She never meets a stranger and she will talk your ear off. So this was very common for her. Well, after a while, my mom, being friends with this lovely woman, she finally confides in my mom that she, and this is in all caps, shared a jail cell with Amy Bishop Anderson while she was awaiting sentencing for this murder.

Whoa, that is not the connection I thought with writing. It's very much out of left field. And then it says seriously, the employee was in jail for minor charges, but she was put in a cell with a murderer for some period of time, but that's not all. She told my mom that while they were in jail together, the other inmates called her shooter bishop and that she mostly kept to herself. The woman also told my mom that the 2020 episode about Amy Bishop Anderson aired on the jail TV and they all watched it while she was in the room with them.

Oh my God. The woman said ABA sat in the corner and sulked at the hold. I don't like the way I'm portrayed in this story about me being a fucking murderer. About me truly doing one of the worst crimes there have ever, I mean, just absolutely psychotic. Anyways, as much as I make fun of my mom for befriending every person she meets, I'm currently thankful that she talks to everyone she meets or else I wouldn't have the story to tell you. Stay sexy and maybe befriend your local restaurant workers.

Abigail. I love that because I love the idea of this nice southern mom woman who somehow gets this woman to tell her about something you would think a southern mom might be judgy about. Right. She's not. She's clearly not. Yeah. Which is really cool because people get in prison for very petty things and it happens

to a lot of fucking people and to judge those people is pretty sad. Sometimes people get arrested and put in jail for things so minor or sometimes for nothing at all as we well know. So there is that thing of like, you know, we're not, this is not, we're not, basically why did they put a person who murdered three people and shot nine people just kind of in with who anybody. Petty drug crime or something like that or whatever unviolent, stealing muffins from the shop or whatever, right?

Yeah. Okay. My last one, abandoned underwater locales, accidental deaths and bonus sinkhole horror. Whoa. Wait. That's not the right one. Oh, no. That's not me.

Oh, just everything I want to hear about. Do you want me to do this one because it's kind of a bonus and then it gets at the end is a sinkhole. I'm going to save it for next week, I think. Okay. This one's just called my favorite drunk grandpa story. What bitches? Okay.

My sister introduced me to your podcast a few months ago and by no surprise to anyone, I am hooked. I love all the grandpa stories and I think you guys might love this one too. I've always heard stories about my mom's dad being a badass. He always bragged about being a marine and how he was trained to kill knowing so many stories about him. I couldn't pick one. So what do I do?

Call mom. I asked her if there are any cool stories about her dad and she replies with, well, there was the one time your granddad's brother stabbed him 16 times in the stomach and he almost died. Oh, what? And then it says, excuse me, what? Which I think every, that is, line is an every time someone asked their parents something is.

Yeah. It's always in there. Like why haven't you fucking told me this? According to my mom, my granddad Robert and his brother Clint were drinking together. Not an uncommon thing. And Clint asked my granddad for a cigarette being the cocky dude. My grandpa was, he picks up a cigarette butt from the ashtray and flicks it at his face. Clint in a drunken rage stabbed him 16 times in the stomach, leaving his small intestine

basically laying on the floor next to him. No. He lost about 90% of his blood and was put into a medically induced coma when he eventually recovered and lived to get shitfaced with his brother another day. Oh, so no hard feeling. Or jail time, apparently. I, okay. My granddad and all of his hate siblings had a fair share of family squabbles and stabbings.

Oh, like the time one of his sisters stabbed another one of his brothers, because why? I have no fucking clue. What? Anyways, stay sexy and don't flick cigarettes at your brother's face, Macy. I think especially if you're, I mean, look, look, all families are different. And this family is clearly into knife play in many ways. There's knives laying around, maybe that's the family business, but I'm laughing at this because it's old timey.

It feels old timey. And so it almost feels like it's a time and a place it's not funny and they are still friends. So it's, you know what I mean? And it's his name's Clint. So clearly it's like a cowboy hat and then bad attitude. What if it was like inside information about the actual Clint Eastwood where it's like, you know, he's like, he's a touch of a homicidal maniac, just a touch.

That's why movies are so good. Surprise in the least bit, but it is so funny to have like stories that you don't know about your family. Do you know yesterday? I just feel like sorry really quick that Clint, it's right to be mad if someone flicks a burning cigarette in your face, but, but two stabs would have gotten a message across 16 as I'm trying to kill you. It's too many.

I mean, that's, it is. I'm trying to kill you. I'm controlled rage. Yeah. Or I'm a blackout alcoholic who maybe needs to go to AA after this experience and well, you know, now you're sober and you're judging everybody. Fair enough. Fair enough.

Rock bottom for me is a different thing than rock bottom for Clint and I appreciate that and I agree that mine is maybe like, you know, falling asleep in front of the TV and Clint is not stabbing someone 16 times, 16 is two, it's a it's three more than a baker's dozen. I too many. I don't want to see intestines spilling anywhere. I don't want to medically induce coma involved. If your brother, if you and your brother get into a fight that ends in you holding your small intestines.

Yeah. And then I bet you any therapy. Yeah. Clint's the one who called the ambulance to one of those like, Oh, let me take it like, I did this. It's such a brother thing. You know, either that or Clint picked up that lit cigarette and finished it and then put it out in his small intestine or Clint's all these different.

Clint was the town ambulance driver through him and yeah, wait, how old do we know how old it is? No, I'm always thinking it's old timey, but then a lot of our listeners are super young. So this could have been from the 80s, like in 1991, my uncle Clint went nuts, no, it's grandpa, so it could be the 80s, 70s, 70s, which sounds right still. If you have more information about when this happened and how inappropriate my laughter is, please write in and let us know if Clint's actually our age and he wants to tell us the story himself.

Oh, no, please tell him no thank you from us. Not interested. He straightened his life out. Remember? He went to AA. We did. Eventually. We did.

He eventually stabbed someone 17 times and that was rock bottom and he said enough. Enough with this. Clint, you need to take a long look at yourself in the mirror and my relationship with my siblings. That's right. Well, we did it. We did something. All right.

Look, you're sending it to us. We just, we're just reading the news. We don't make the news. That's right. We're news talkers, not news, you know, creators, that's right. Your story is clearly the, the bar is set very high and, you know, we want to share all your fucking stories about whatever the fuck. Really love, just this batch reminding me, really love heroic teens and pre-teens.

Oh, absolutely. They really need the shot in the arm. They need, you know, to know we respect them. They don't have to be about murder. Like, did you, you know, put out a fire at something? Yeah. Right? Like you start a fire and then put it out quickly.

We want to hear about it. Did you, like, yeah, did you do something heroic that, like, or a teen that you knew did something? I don't know. Yeah. Were you brave in the moment, but also at the same time, 13, those things are difficult as a combination. Right.

So hard to be both of those things, brave in 13. All I did was wine and eat candy. All I did was wine and meth. You know what I would love it? We always ask for sibling stories that when you tried to kill your sibling, when you were a little, you know, on action, what about, you saved your sibling, we thought that would be nice too. Right.

Yeah, that would be. But guess what guys? Stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Goodbye. All of us, do you want a cookie?