My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 202

Episode Date: November 23, 2020

This week’s hometowns include a sinkhole story and an Australian grandfather.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. And welcome to my favorite murder. It's a mini shirt has its own dollhouse. Oh, so cute. You should see the baked goods in the oven. That's my new thing dollhouses, Victorian fucking or mid-century modern. Yeah. To the T fucking doll housing. It's got to exist. It must. That would be real. How about a mid-century modern dollhouse instead of this usual Victorian bullshit we have to deal with? I don't want a weird clawfoot bathtub for my doll. Wow, I'm gonna, I'm doing it.

Goodbye. That's my new thing. If you, okay, well, Georgia, you do it. Okay. But if you're out there and you make mid-century modern dollhouses, let's fucking see it. Let me know. Is there a hashtag on Instagram? And it's like a whole world I don't even know about. I have probably to find it. That's amazing. That's the beautiful thing about this world that we're all discovering through social media is every, there's a, there's a fanship for every literal thing on the planet. Do you know what I was just looking up the other night when I couldn't sleep? Black mold. Just there is. And there's a there for it. You're a huge, huge fan of black mold. I am. I am. What, like, how to, how to spot it? Just, no, like, invasive, how crazy invasive it gets. And so, like, the photos of,

like, look at how crazy invasive this got. And you're like, wow, that got crazy invasive. That's fascinating. Now, what, is it the kind of thing where people have to, like, burn their house down? It's so bad? Yeah. And there's a lot of abandoned houses, which is like, so it's like a crossover of two of my favorite things that people had to leave abandoned their entire, you know, almost like Chernobyl style, because it was so infested with black mold that they couldn't fucking take anything with them. Oh, anyways, this isn't the regular episode where we talk about whatever the fuck we want. It's not because I want to. Okay. Do you have any, what's your new hobby? Going to be in green mold. Perfect. All right. This is the episode where we read you the emails

you've sent to us at my favorite murder at gmail.com. Yeah. You want to be business-like? I'll be fucking business-like. You want to go first? I'll fucking go first. Okay. I won't read you the title. Hey, y'all. You guys are great. I love what you do. Let's get into it. While I was listening to talk about this shooting in Huntsville, it reminded me of a shooting that happened in my hometown that same year. Clay Allen Duke, whose wife was a teacher and had recently been fired, attended a school board meeting in Panama City, Florida in December of 2010. He stood up, pulled out a can of red spray paint. That's so disturbing. Painted the V for Vendetta symbol on the wall. He then pulled out a gun and let the other attendees of the meeting leave,

as well as the two female board members. So he basically kept the male board members. As one of the board members was leaving, she tried to attack Duke with her purse, but he knocked her to the floor, but still thankfully didn't shoot her and let her leave. The superintendent of schools, Bill Huesfeldt, tried to negotiate with him to let the rest of the board leave, but Duke would not listen. Duke ended up firing four shots at point blank range, which miraculously all missed. By this time, the security guard began firing upon Duke, hitting him several times. Once he went down, Duke took his own life. The craziest thing about this to me was that the entire thing was streaming. No. Yep. And it says, I had teachers watching

all of this happen in real time. The story blew up and got national attention, and the female board member sold the purse she tried to disarm him with for charity. Oh, ginger. That went from ew to aw. Real fast. Oh, I forgot about the name. Ginger. Oh, ginger, you badass. She's a tall redhead with a big ass purse and a serious attitude. He's like, how dare you try to fucking shoot my fellow board members for her. And then it just says, anyway, I hope you enjoyed my tale, SSDGM, Bryn. I definitely enjoyed your tale, Bryn. Isn't that that it reminds me of a member of the shooting in front of the the courthouse with the guy in the tree, and he just kept dodging the bullets. Oh my god. Yes.

A person with a gun in a room trying to kill people. It's like, yeah. What a traumatic nightmare. Amazing. Good job, Bryn. Thank you. Okay. This one's called an early 1990s abduction with some solutions. Hello to my murdering of fam. I was born and raised in Rochester, New York. My parents raised my brother and I by watching the news, unsolved mysteries and rescue 911, leaving us obsessed with all things horrendous. Anyway, I happen to remember an incredibly sad hometown murder that I wanted to share. On November 13, 1993, 18 year old college student Jennifer Coon was abducted from a suburban mall parking lot after using the ATM in an affluent town near Rochester, New York. Jennifer desperately called 911 with her cell phone

while the abductors were driving. She pleaded with the 911 operator to help her, but since it was the early 90s, the technology to pinpoint a caller wasn't accessible. Oh, it's horrible. Jennifer Coon was raped, then shot and killed all well on the line with 911. She was found dead two hours after the initial call and the cell phone was locked on 911. One of Jennifer's killers, Willis Knight, was arrested six months later. There's a brief mention of others involved, but no conviction or follow up as to what happened to them, what the fuck, Rochester police. And I looked it up and I guess there's like people talking to each other on the 911 recording, but they said it was only one person. The gut-wrenching 911 recording was played

in court and the 911 operator whom Jennifer spoke with took the stand to convict Knight. He was sentenced to 37.5 years to life in prison and I'm happy to report is still in jail. Following his daughter's murder, her father, David Coon, asked local officials to install security cameras in such parking lots, but received no response. This led Mr. Coon to political activism. He successfully ran for the 135th assembly district seat in a special election hell in February 1996 and won that shit. Hell yeah. One of Coon's legislative priorities was for full funding of E911, a system used in North America to automatically provide the caller's location to 911 dispatchers. Coon and his wife Suzanne were also instrumental in creating

and managing the Jennifer Patterson Coon peacemaking foundation at their daughter's college, St. John Fisher. The foundation recognizes and honors people who have made a significant contribution to peacemaking and who foster and stimulate a commitment to peacemaking in our society. The end, love you all. And then I, so I looked him up to see where he is now and I couldn't really find out what's exactly happening. I guess he lost to, he lost his next, what's a collection? Yes, but I did see his Wikipedia and it says Coon is in favor of increased penalties for violent crime, including the elimination of the statute of limitations for criminal sex cases. So I'm wondering where he is now, if anyone has any info.

I mean, it's just, wow. I mean, that's a horrible story. And again, like when you're like, then he ran for assembly, it just, it gets me because those people are in such pain, suffering such a horrible loss. And then it's like, and now I'm going to go take action. I mean, it's like, it's the beautiful part, you know, through the grief, you can actually use grief to help you through his grief. He's trying to keep other people's children safe. That's what he's doing. It's like, he is trying. His whole point is to make the world safer because he can't do anything about what happened to his daughter. He wants to do something that happens for someone else's daughter, which is just incredible. And the idea of peacekeeping, yeah, is so nice. That

idea of like, what if, what if we, in this utopian concept, none of us had to deal with this shit in any way, in any part of me, I mean, or if you like, just try to do better things for the world, even though it won't affect you, you know, it's like, try to do better for everyone else. Right. What a great concept. Yeah, to kind of like, I don't know, the more we do the show, the more these stories we read and we read things like this parents that then take up this unbelievable charitable action for other people, it's like the solution is not revenge. The solution is not hurting other more people. It's like to then go out and try to lessen the hurting and the, I don't know, it's very beautiful and inspiring. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Wow. Are you ready for this one?

Sure. We're going to be now going over to our friends over in Ireland, Ireland, Ireland, the island. Let's do it. I care to Georgia and then parentheses and Stephen. My girlfriend is a longtime murderino. She told me about your mini so it's an encouraged me to send in this story about the craziest shit that ever happened to me. And hey, why not listen? Whatever, you do what you want. You do what you want. I went to college in Dublin, Ireland. One week, one week, a classmate asked if I played soccer and invited me along to his once a week kick around with some friends. There was a core group of about 15 or so guys and I became a regular playing with them. Among the group was a short bearded Sicilian, Sicilian guy called Severio. He was good at

soccer, quiet, never yelled or got too angry, never lost his temper when he got fouled. You get the impression he was a little bald, bottled up, but but on the whole seemed like a nice polite guy. The weekly games or organized via a big email chain with with everyone CC'd. One week, there were a lot of emails in the chain and a link to a news article. Most of the time, these emails were meaningless. So I just skimmed through and marked them as red. Later that day, though, I ran into my classmate and he said, did you read the article? I hadn't. He walked over to the nearest computer in the lab and opened it up for me. The headline read, Italian lodger charged with murdering Dublin landlord right next to a photo of Severio. Severio lived with this guy

who was a member of a notorious organization in Ireland. They were a right wing Catholic activist group who campaigned on the wrong side of history on issues such as abortion rights, gay rights, same sex marriage, and they even dabbled in some climate change denying. So the night before Severio and this guy were playing a game of chess at two in the morning. Why play chess so late? No one really knows. But this whole story is so fucking crazy that that's not even the weirdest thing. An argument broke out between the two of them about whether a move was legal and Severio lost it stabbing his landlord four or five times with a kitchen knife and eating what he believed to be his heart. But it turned out to be his lungs. Yeah. Severio called the police on himself

and confessed to the murder. The cops that came to the house first were so traumatized, they were put on indefinite paid leave afterward. Ireland's a small country about five million people and murders are rare. A modern case of cannibalism has never been seen here before. Local police had no experience with it. So investigators with some expertise were brought in from a neighboring county. It turned out Severio had schizophrenia and had been taken off his medication two days earlier. He thought his landlord had come to embody evil and that by killing him and eating his heart that he could end the evil in the world. The weirdest thing though was how well our little soccer group adjusted to finding out one of our ranks was a cannibal.

It was like it was so preposterous, so outrageous that our brains couldn't register it. It was surprisingly easy to be quote unquote light hearted about it. Weirdly, I think if he'd just and just as in quotes just murdered someone, we would have been way more shocked. But with all these bizarre details, it passed into the surreal and it was easier to come to terms with. Or yeah, you can come to terms with anything friend. Go into full straight up Irish denial. Don't even kid yourself. It's called trauma. You are pushing it down. It's gonna come back up. Blast I'd heard Severio had been found not guilty by reason of insanity and was in a mental hospital. Stay sexy and don't play chess with a cannibal, Patrick. Wow. Oh, it's just sad all around.

Yeah, that's so heavy. And also it's that thing. It makes me think of, you know, we've all seen like say a beautiful mind movies where you can see the inside of the experience of like a mental illness, a delusion like that. Yeah. Where actually in it, he's he actually thinks he's helping people. Yeah. As soon as it I had all these comments in my head. And then when it came to the fact that he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, it's like, Oh, okay, this is not this is a completely different thing. Yeah. And I think it's completely inaccurate to call that person. I mean, he technically cannibalized the victim. Yet it's not it wasn't a practice, right? You know what I mean? It was like it was an explosion. Yes. And it was extension of his mental illness. Right. It was almost like

this story. Wow. Just yeah, wild. Okay, I promised you this one last week. So here is abandoned underwater locales, accidental deaths and bonus sinkhole horror. There you go. Hello, ladies. Hope this bullshit year hasn't been too stressful on you. Thank you. I'm from Twin Falls, Idaho, which is built right on the Snake River Canyon. While the river is beautiful, there are a series of lakes in the canyon system that are less well known, one of which is Durkies Lake. And they spelled out how to say Durkies for me, which I really appreciate. Very nice. Which legend says was not always a lake, but used to be an old dairy farm. At some point, the area was flooded and is now a popular swimming fishing and cliff jumping location. Some of the other lakes in the area

are a bit harder to get to and are colloquially and colloquially just known as I'm going for it as the hidden lakes and are also popular for cliff jumping. Unfortunately, because these lakes are harder to get to, anyone who is injured cliff jumping at these lakes is less likely to receive medical care in time. One of my high school friends was at these lakes and warned a boy that he was on one of the more dangerous jumps. He scoffed at her several minutes later after my friend had left and was back to the road and ambulance went past her. The boy had hit a rock on the way down and died. Another boy from my parents church hit his head jumping last year at a different lake and drowned. Several years ago, the city finally installed a road all the way

to the most popular lake in order to reach it quicker. Finally, a family in a different Idaho city had a sinkhole occur near their house, which caused a partial collapse in the basement. This revealed that their house had been built over a snake den. No, what? What? The family later said that they had heard slithering in the walls over time and that their water, are you ready for this? Had tasted like the snakes smelled. No. No. Can I tell you that if I had read this to Vince, he would have divorced me immediately. He's so... That is, that is a... So there's a sinkhole and then it's just fucking Indiana Jones straight into Indiana Jones. That's it. That's it. And it tasted their water. And you've been drinking snake water.

Which I would think is like probably good for you. Like they could probably bottle and sell that shit. I mean, right. What do you think it's good but like good for your skin or virility? Virility, colloquially good for your skin. This is the most fucked up thing. How is this possible? I hate its guts. SSGGM. Oh, sorry. And shout out to my sister who introduced me to your podcast and hates me for seeing you live in Manchester last year. Lia. Lia's sister. Sorry. You were there first. Okay. Also snakes and walls. Like you would think you were going insane. Yeah. Yeah. Slytherin. You just like, do you hear that? Because it almost probably smells, sounds, smells like, sounds like, like bugs or water or something.

Or the devil. I mean, I don't like this at all. Should I take that one out? No, no, no. It's amazing. I mean, like fucking eight. Because also when you buy a house, it gets inspected. Like there's guys that come and look at every single goddamn inch of your house. But it wasn't their sinkhole. It was like a sinkhole nearby that caused it. So like... But, but the pit was under and among their house. Every house is built on top of something, right? But snakes, like, come on. No house in the room, no top of a snake. I know. It's terrible. Someone did something. Someone make that illegal. Please. Fuck. All right. I know. Blech. Uh-huh. That's not even your last one. No.

Send your stuff down in walls stories or snake pit stories, everyone. What was your house built over? But may you have a nervous breakdown? Black mold? Would you rather, would you rather have your house be built on a snake pit or a black mold pit? W-Y-R. I would pick black mold all day long. A black mold pit, though. That's different. Ew. You fall into it and it's all soft. And you're like, wait, this isn't so bad. And then the spores begin to take over. My water tasted like this. My water tasted like snakes. I'm so thirsty. Hold on. Let me just stand here. And why is my hair so shiny lately? I love that you think snakes would have this great effect on you.

You know how like they use snail, like snail slime? Yeah, for facial. For facial. It's the same concept to me. And like sometimes they'll put, you have to eat the rattle of the rattlesnake and it'll get, make you all, you know, like in, in some, some like mescals or shit, tequila. Oh, sure. Yeah. Like, and it'll, it's supposed to make you like get a boner or whatever. Right? You're making this. I'm not. I swear. If you're out there and you're an esthetician or a urologist, well, you let us know the, like, how good snakes are for your face or genitalia. God damn it. Sorry. I'll never stop thinking about snake water. No.

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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 murder 20 with code murder 20. That's up to 20 free meals plus free shipping on your first box when you go to hellofresh.ca slash murder 20 and use code murder 20. 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. The subject, the subject line gives us away. So I'll just read it to you. Hi friends. I didn't know my dad's father very well. He passed away when I was still quite young. And I remember him only as a quietly imposing figure who sat in his leather armchair in the corner of his hoarder's paradise of a house. A chronic shopaholic, his home was always filled with ridiculous treasures from the department store floor sale. And his grandchildren always received many impersonal

but weird and wonderful gifts for Christmas and birthdays. Love it. Love it. I had this same, my Aunt Dorothy, who was not an actual relative, but she was friend of the family, had a gift room at her house. She couldn't not buy anything that wasn't on sale. And when we were building the house that my family lives in now in Petalun, we had to live with my Aunt Jean and Aunt Dorothy would be there all the time. And so on holidays, we would come out of our rooms and go to the front room and Aunt Dorothy would have like a gift for me and a gift for Laura. And, and so one time I watched Laura open up this, it was a necklace that was easily from like 1978. It was like that really thick gold and it came

down into like a V diamond shape. And then a matching, yeah, and a matching costless, no, no, no, it was not nice. It was the, it was very corny and cheesy looking. And then I just had $20. Can I, that would be, I could easily become that person, especially with vintage stuff, because I'll go find like a set of incredible 60s, like drinking glasses that I don't fucking need, but I hate to leave them behind. It's only $10, you know, I, I have to stop myself from doing that. I mean, that is the, that is the thing of thrifting is I can't, this is a true treasure. I can't just leave it here and it's only $10. Like, yes. Yes. I have, I have a garage filled with like fire king bowls and dishes and plates and I'm like, this is the cutest coffee cup.

Can I come shopping at your house? I miss, I miss, I miss, I start shopping so much. Can I just go to your house and do it? Oh yeah, set up a little store down there for you. Right now it's all still in boxes from when I moved. I'm working on it, working on it. Oh okay, sorry, I'm in the middle of an email. I knew vaguely that in his youth, he had been a navigator in the Royal Australian Air Force during World War II. Shortly after that, he had graduated from Sydney University and became a well respected doctor in Sydney. That was a sum total of my knowledge until a recent Google of my uncommon family name turned up a surprising newspaper article from 1946. Google your name everyone. Yeah, get in there. On December 15th of that year,

the Sunday Mail reported that three medical students were about to spend their university vacation in a pretty unique way, attempting to cross the 600 mile stony desert in central Australia on foot. Oh no. Among them was my grandfather, then age 22, who was putting his skills as a navigator to use, plotting the course across the desert. This desert is notorious for having beaten Captain Charles Sturt, who had attempted to cross it a hundred years earlier. Unfortunately, I've been entirely unable to find any other articles from their, from the end of their trip. In fact, the only other article I found mentioning my grandfather was from a few years later, when at the age of 30, he apparently got extremely drunk and decided to drive home anyway.

According to the paper, the car quote unquote got out of control. It's the passive voice. Clearly he's not responsible overturned three times and plunged 40 feet off an embankment. The car was wrecked. My grandfather, on the other hand, came away uninjured and was fined 15 pounds. Guys, don't, even when it's all timey. Don't drink and drive. Don't in the past drink and drive. That's, and also he drove over a 40 foot cliff and walked away unharmed. Insane. I can't. This guy, while I don't have any evidence that the desert crossing was actually completed, I like to imagine that only such an experience would allow a man to drive his car off a 40 foot cliff and live to deal with the resulting fine. Stay sexy and don't drive drunk back. Good one, Beck. Wow. Love it.

Grandpas. All right. My fine one. Grandpas. What'll they do next? Oh my God. Tell us by sending us an email about it. All right. Okay. The last one's called hometown story. Hi, MFM fam. I'd like to tell you the story of my aunt's seemingly haunted house. When I was in elementary school, my aunt lived in Minnesota. If there's snakes in this house, I'm going to get so mad at you. There's no snakes in the story. Next time there's snakes in the story, let's do trigger warning, right? Snake trigger warning. Where you just go, oh, you're ready for this story? Yeah, exactly. When I was in elementary school, my aunt lived in Minnesota in a town of about 17,000 people. Her house was on a nice corner

lot near a park and my younger sister and I loved to visit and spend weekends with her. As I got into my early teens, I started to become more in tune with my sixth sense and felt uncomfortable going anywhere in the house other than the new addition of the sunroom. I even slept in there instead of the spare room when I visited. I had just, I just had this weird feeling when I spent too much time in any other room like someone was watching me. Well, it turns out I wasn't completely wrong about that feeling. My aunt moved into a new house right before I started high school, which didn't seem too weird. Everybody moves until I heard why. Well, hanging out with her at her new house, I asked why she decided to leave and she proceeded

to tell me that while she loved the supernatural, the house was just too haunted for her. And then it says, excuse me, what? Lights would turn on and off. She would see hair whipping around a corner as if someone was running and your footsteps in the attic. Okay, so cool. My creepy feeling was right. Great. I had always assumed this was the whole story. But then a few years later, I was left stunned when I learned the truth. When I was in high school, circa 2010-ish, we were having Thanksgiving with aunts and uncles and someone cracked a joke towards my aunt about someone living in an attic. I didn't get it, so I didn't laugh. Feeling dumb, I asked what was so funny about that. Well, it turns out my aunt's ex-husband was unknowingly living in the attic

of her old house. No. What's worse, he had installed cameras all over her house. I was essentially watching her and our every move while stowing away. So yes, my feeling of being watched in every room of that house minus the sunroom where there were no cameras found was valid. Genius. More valid than I could have ever imagined. Obviously, the adults decided to keep this story from my sister and I until we were older. And honestly, probably would have preferred to keep it from us forever. As far as I know, my aunt's ex-husband is still in prison and my aunt still swears that the old house was haunted by ghosts, not just her ex-husband. Lady. She is now enjoying life with her cats in a non-haunted house and has neighbors that always

keep an eye out. Nice, right. Thank you for bearing with me during this long story, SSTGM Taylor. Taylor, that was a great story and a horrifying story. And you do have a sixth sense. Like, had to be somewhat not satisfying. You now have proof that your instincts are razor sharp, that you are very smart in almost a ESP style way. I would have so much more self-confidence after learning that even as disturbing as that story is. This story is about how you are a badass. I would insist that everyone around you start calling you Vanguard if I were you. Just based on this alone. I don't know. I think you're the true Vanguard, turns out. How creepy. That's unbelievable. Of course, nightmare. Because I've had those feelings

before. What if someone in this video has a secret hidden camera? Because you can put those in a fucking pen now. They're so tiny. Yes, they're everywhere. And then you would monitor yourself for being so paranoid. But wait, no, would you would you rather? W, Y, R. Okay. Mold snakes or some fucking creep in the attic. Oh, obviously snakes. With cameras. No. Snakes below. Total creep above. Camera snakes. They're snakes. I still think. I think. No. Yeah, I still don't want those snakes though. I still don't want a snake pit and snake water. But you want them more than mold, I promise. Yeah, the water is the problem here. Unless it's like an esthetician is going to tell us. Incredibly good for snakes. So good for your kidneys.

Snake venom. Drink it. Drink it and become young again. Good luck. Oh my God. Right. Right. Here come the lawsuits. Allegedly. Allegedly. Allegedly. Allegedly. We are not doctors. We are not doctors. We are not. We are not ectheologists. That's right. What? Send us the craziest thing that's ever happened to you. Story. Please. Because if it's anything like Taylor's story or any of these stories, I mean, great batch. People are really honing in on what we love to hear. And writing it really well too. I feel like. So good. Yeah. Good job guys. Thank you. Thanks for listening too. You don't have to write. If you just want to listen and don't want to write anything in, don't feel pressure. That's fine. You can. But please definitely don't be like Patrick and

don't listen and still write in. I'm still mad at Patrick. He's a typical Irishman. Just does whatever the fuck you want. That's our only rule. But it rambles right up and tells us a story that everybody loves so much. And then walks away. It's a story for you. Oh, also stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Elvis, do you want a cookie?