My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 229 - The First Responders

Episode Date: May 31, 2021

This week’s minisode is a compilation of hometowns that feature first responder, EMT, and nurse stories. Thank you for all of your dedication and hard work throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.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. See, it's truly criminal. Check one. Check one.

Check. Is that how you do it? Yes. You just say what I say. Say check. Check. And now say one. And now say one.

Yeah. Do you see what I did there? Hi. Welcome to my favorite murder, Minisodes. This is the episode that is smaller than a normal episode, hence we, did we steal that from Doug Benson? Did he invent the idea of Minisodes? I wonder.

I don't know. I feel like everyone does them and has been doing them, but that would make sense. That's the first time I've even thought of it. Oh, shit. Do we owe him royalties on the nothing we make out of them? We do for being high every time we record. That's true. So we'll just add it onto the tab.

You guys know what this is, right? Hey, your hometown stories, you've emailed them to us. We don't look at them. Stephen does. Stephen does all the work. All the work. And then last week, this is how smart Stephen is, because I don't think we would have remembered this at all.

Last week at the Minisode, we said that we said to everyone, if you're an EMT or like a first responder or some shit or a nurse or a feck and whatever the shit, tell us your stories, we want your stories. And then we forgot. And then just now Stephen was like, hey, you guys remember how you mentioned that last week? Well, I did that for you. And I was like, yes, I remember Stephen hand me the paper.

And I was like, oh, that sounds cool. Like I just had didn't. It was a brand new idea for you. Yeah. Oh my God, we should totally do that. Oh my God. I want to do that. Yeah.

We're so smart. Now you can. Ready? Yes. This is called I survived plus EMT plus they caught that SOB. Nice. All right. Hello, ladies and Stephen.

I just finished listening to your latest mini soda and heard you, your call for EMT stories loud and clear. Have I got a story for you? Yeah. Well, one of my close friends, Ashley is an EMT. She works in a part of Arizona that is rural so it can be pretty desolate for long distances. One day her and her partner were driving on one of these roads when a man covered in blood runs out from the in front of their ambulance.

They stop and proceed to get out to help the man. He could barely talk and he was speaking incoherently. They realized that his throat had been slit. Suddenly another man runs into the road and tells them that he was this man's friend and he was taking him to the hospital. Ashley realized that they came from the other road across the medium that went in the opposite direction of the hospital. Ashley told him they needed to help his friend and told her partner to stay with the man

that claimed he was the friend and detain him. She took the injured man to the in the ambulance and started fixing him up and asked, who did this to you? The injured man pointed at the friend. Ashley then called the police and they were out there right away and arrested the friend. I was told the two men were in fact friends or had some sort of relation. They got into a fight while driving and the one man slashed his throat. The injured man proceeded to jump out of the car and run across the road in front of the

ambulance. How lucky is he that there was an ambulance there? Jesus. An ambulance was driving by. That's crazy. And he's like, can you fix this? Hey, really quick? I have a question about my throat and the other guy was like, no, no, no, no, no, no,

we're friends. I take it. It's like, he's one of my closest friends. He's one of my closest friends. We were just doing blood brothers. He survived and the would be murderer was apprehended by police. Ashley and her partner won awards for their efforts. Wow.

Thank you for your amazing podcast and say sexy, don't get murdered. Samantha. Wow. Thanks, Samantha. So they got the golden ambulance that year. Is that a full-size golden ambulance? They got a ride for a year and then you have to give it back. It's like Mary Kay, a pink Mary Kay Cadillac costs a lot in gas, but it's worth it.

The golden ambulance. All right. The subject line of this email is a very witchy first responder email. Hey team. Oh, that's a new one. Hey team. Hey team. Uh, you asked for all things weird and spooky.

So I hope this home town delivers, if not, well, fuck it, very strong start. I work as a first responder in a rural county in Northern California. Hey, California, it's six miles behind Southern California. Thank you. As a former hometown to a couple of Nassau victims, there is no short of weird, oh, okay, Nassau asshole, such as a mannequin dressed as Hannibal Lecter poised at the end of a very dimly lit dead end street, which is displayed year round. That's not seasonal.

What? There's always a mannequin of Hannibal Lecter at the end of the street. Just leave your Christmas lights up. Which is worse, while I was on training long before I was accustomed to the bizarre occurrences that seemed to occur daily, I was on patrol when I saw an elderly woman screaming and running out to the roadway. The woman who was all of four and a half feet tall ran up to me screaming in a language that I could not understand.

Her daughter ran out of the house and apologized profusely. She said her mother was suffering from dementia and was confused. Her mother became even more enraged and grasping my arm. As the tiny woman held my arm, she yelled, her daughter translated, she's cursing you. And she giggled awkwardly. I assumed that she meant cursing at me until two weeks later, I was in the emergency room with inexplicable swelling to the same arm that tiny angry woman had been clutching. Oh no.

Yes. All nurses and doctors examined x-rayed and poked at my arm but could find no reasonable explanation as to why my arm was swelling to twice its size. And sadly, workers' compensation does not cover witchcraft, I asked. It was nearly two years later when I had my second encounter with a person of the witchy persuasion. I was conducting a coroner's case of an elderly woman who, prior to her demise, was an end of life caretaker.

She had amassed an entire family of loved ones left behind by those she cared for and was by all accounts a gem of a human being. While looking through the house, I found loads of homeopathic remedies and a book about white witchcraft. I assumed she was an extremely curious retiree. Wrong. You know. As I made my way through the residence, I turned the corner and found myself standing

in front of a black altar adorned with figurines, dollar bills, and burned photos. The walls and ceiling around the altar were painted in inky black. After my first encounter with the wacky world of witchcraft, I put on my gloves and backed the fuck out of the room. And then in parentheses, as if latex glove protected against woo-woo. No. I asked her family if she was a bruja, her broken hearted adopted daughter smiled and said, yes, we don't go in that room.

They don't say that beforehand. Yeah. It's like the cat box room at my house. I just stay away. Just don't go in there. Just don't go in there. It's none of your business, really. She told me about the trips to the store for ritualistic chicken feet and how she would

burn photos of her granddaughter's boyfriends whom she did not trust. Right? Okay. After learning more about her life and her practice, I'm sure she was a benevolent bruja, but I kept my gloves on the entire time. Stay sexy and remember that workman's comp does not cover witchcraft-related injuries. No name. Sweet.

That was a good one. Sweet. That was a good one. That was nice. Hello, ladies. Oh, hello. Hi. Is this Steven Merchant?

I just listened to the last Minnesota and I couldn't help but send in some more details on the Idleweld Park Daniel Tiger little boy fell out of the roller coaster story. Thank God. Uh-huh. Thank God. Remember that? A follow-up. Yes, I do.

I, along with my dad and four siblings, have worked at Idleweld for many years. It's a popular summer job for kids in the Pittsburgh area starting at age 14. Great operators have to be 16. They wanted to clarify. I worked there for nine summers and my dad was there for more than 12 years. My siblings and I all worked in the food department and my dad was the lead carpenter. That's such a dad job. Putting the nails up in the roller coasters.

That'll fix it. Basically. Yeah. The roller coaster in question was a wooden coaster and during the off season, my dad was rebuilding sections of the track. So yeah, that's exactly what was fucking happening. On the day that this accident occurred, I was working at my non-Idleweld job. When I heard the news of what happened, my heart instantly sank to my stomach because

I was afraid that it had something to do with my dad's work and could inculcate him in some way. Luckily, it wasn't the fault of the coaster track, but the fact that the two brothers were seated together in a car and switched places once the train left the station, leaving the smaller boy on the outside of the car. I think he was also standing up, which made it too easy for him to fall out as the coaster went around a curve. And then it says in parentheses, this could have obviously been avoided with seatbelts.

My dad was one of the first employees on the scene, but fortunately the first aid building is located right next to the coaster and EMTs were with the boy immediately. As the last emailer said, he was life-flighted to a nearby hospital. From what my dad heard in the months following, the little boy recovered well. I believe he has some minor lasting effects from the accident, but on the whole is doing well. Phew. Well, I just wanted to share some more, huh?

It's a miracle. Yeah. To be thrown off a working roller coaster and not only live, but be okay with minor. I mean, Jesus Christ, seriously. I just wanted to share some more insight on that accident as it also struck super close to home for me. Stay safe and wear seatbelts on roller coasters. Amber.

Thank you, Amber. Don't go on. Don't go on. That was really good. That was good information. Okay. Okay. The subject of this is paramedic first responder story, light hearted.

Hey, ladies, Steven J. Katz docs. My boyfriend is a paramedic in Orange County and has been for years. Being a longtime listener, I always ask him for crazy stories or if he walked into a crime scene or whatnot and he never tells me anything good. Suddenly he came home and said, Hey, so I ran this weird call last night and I immediately got super excited and I knew I'd be emailing you. Supposedly some guy broke into a house and pointed a gun at the homeowner who was thankfully the only one there that night.

The homeowner ran into a bedroom and grabbed a gun and aimed it back at the original guy with the gun. But before you think this is getting crazy, the homeowner grabbed a Nerf gun and started firing little foam Nerf bullet things at the guy with the real gun. I guess the guy with the real gun was so confused or distracted that he fired a few shots, missing the man with the Nerf gun, except for one bullet grazing his leg and ran out. So when my boyfriend got there, he walked into a house with Nerf bullets all over the floor, a man bleeding from his leg and bullet holes in the wall behind him.

The homeowner is all good and was more upset at the fact that the kid's Nerf gun had blood on it and he had to clean it. Stay sexy and always carry a Nerf gun with you just in case, Allie. That is so dangerous. That could have gone so poorly. It's so dangerous. And also, if that man on the ground had been killed, it would have looked like a Nerf murder.

Like when the first responder walked in, it'd just be like, well, from everything I gather here, this man was actually murdered by a Nerf gun. Oh my God. Well, congratulations Allie. Good job. Yeah, you've done it. Now you can break up with your boyfriend. I'm totally kidding.

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Follow Even The Rich wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. This one's called First Responder Hometown Lighthearted, question mark, Georgia and Karen. Hello, MFM fam. I've been pondering on whether or not to send my family first responder stories mostly because I couldn't pick out my favorite because there are so many. I come from a family of first responders. My mom's father was a sheriff deputy back when your personal vehicle was your patrol

car, but most deputies preferred just to use their horse. Collapsed. How old are these people? I don't know. My mother has worked as an ER nurse and a 911 dispatcher in addition to volunteering as an EMT. My brother has volunteered EMT in firefighting his free time and works in law enforcement. My dad, she just kind of gives us her resume.

That the whole family's in. The whole family. It's usually how it is. So okay, when my dad was a young beat cop, he attempted to arrest a man. I don't remember the entire story, but this guy was jacked up on drugs and all caps angry. The guy knocked my dad down and the two started wrestling to the ground. Who fucking knocks a cop down and starts fighting a cop? Well, if you're on PCP and you think the cop is Godzilla, sure, you know, fair.

This guy knocked my dad down and the two started wrestling. The guy reached for my dad's gun multiple times, and my dad could feel him pulling at the weapon with extreme force. This was back in the day when cops carried revolvers and leather holsters with only a thin unreliable strip of leather to hold them in place. After one hell of a fight, back up arrived. Back up arrived. Back up.

Back up. Back up. Back up. Back up. Back up. Back up. All right. You gotta have a fucking slash, man.

That's right. Back up arrived and my dad was able to get away and the guy was arrested. When my dad got up from the ground, he was covered in blood. After checking himself for any wounds that happened during the struggle, he found that his assailant had ripped all caps. A strip of flesh from the palm of his own hand on the hammer of the revolver when he was trying to take my dad's gun. Oh, no.

Somehow the tiny piece of leather that retained the revolver did not break, which ultimately saved my dad's life that night. Wow. Thank you so much for the amazing podcast. Your friend, Pantra, has gotten me through so many long commutes and equally long days. Something something mental health, stigma surrounding mental health. Keep on being awesome. I hope I make it to a live show this year.

So do we, Jesse. Yes, come on. Stay sexy and get murdered all the best, Jesse. I like that you said something something mental health. You know. Fill in the blank mental health. Mental health. Awesome.

Jesse, that was an amazing story. Thank God for leather strips. Hey man. But also so gross to be covered in someone else's blood when you get from a strip off your hand. Gross. All right. Okay.

Let's see the subject line of this is badass ER nurse grandmother saves hospital from shooter. Oh, fuck. Fuck. Howdy Karen and Georgia and Steven and Kitties. Let's get right to it. So I come from a long line of nurses and medical professionals, but I went into the art. Sorry, mom.

So my house has never been lacking in bizarre stories. When I heard this one over Thanksgiving, however, I just knew I had to write in my grandmother's kind of infamous and our smallest Southern town for being a badass ER nurse that always went above and beyond the call of duty. This particular incident stands out from the rest and I can't believe I hadn't heard it until now. It's around 3am in the midst of an already hectic night shift and my grandmother is walking down the hallway of the hospital with a security guard.

We'll call him Terry. Just shooting the breeze. They're walking along when the elevator door starts to open in front of them and they stop to let the person get off. Off gets one lone guy who stands there for a moment faces them and then pulls a gun aimed right at my grandmother. They stand. They all stand there frozen for a second until Terry scared shitless turns around and makes

a beeline down the corridor and my grandmother yells in the most Southern voice imaginable, Terry, don't you dare leave me here. Oh my God. That's how I pictured it. Karen, that was amazing. Thank you. I needed that. But Terry's long gone.

Terry. So it's just grandma and the shooter. She stands there for a second with a gun pointed at her. Jesus. Then she puts her hands on her hips, points her finger at him and says, young man, you better put that away or you're about to get in trouble. And he does. And he does.

Grandma. Oh my God. I love her. He stands there for a second, really confused, puts the gun away, gets back in the elevator and walked out of the hospital. What the fuck? And that's the story of how my grandmother saved an entire hospital from some jerk with a gun.

She passed away when I was young, but I've always felt this connection with her that is strengthened every time I hear a new story of her life. The way this one correlated with my love of true crime really gave her a whole new dimension I didn't expect. I bet this quiet, charming Southern lady would have been very grateful for people to hear about her bravery. I also bet she gave Terry one hell of an earful. Thanks for all you do and keep up the amazing work.

Much love, Micah. Oh, that's fucking rad. Grandma. Grandma. You badass. I mean, I want to end on that. It's so good. It's so good.

I mean, can we only do hometown EMTs or first responders from now on? I mean, I wouldn't mind it. It just made me think of, so I already said this, but Dave's wire, who is our family friend, started as an EMT. Now he's a San Francisco fireman, but he, we were at a wedding once and he was on one side of my sister and I, and then Jeff Newburger, who was our neighbor growing up, who also was an EMT, but he was an EMT in like somewhere fancy in Marin County. And they were swapping EMT stories and Dave told a horrible story of somebody that tried

to run across the freeway that ended very poorly and he was like, he, it was, it was, of course, I was like, uh-huh, tell me whatever, and my sister's like, what's wrong with you? No, I want an I want to be sitting there, right? But then Jeff, he finishes that story, then Jeff goes, yeah, I'm in Marin County. So like, we just got like, you know, we get called when people have hurt feelings depending on where you live. It's like, it's an okay. You know, it's like stressful.

I mean, I just can't imagine. Send us more, by you, I mean the podcast, of course, I'll say it on the podcast, um, because I'm a monster, uh, send us more first responder stories. Yeah, those are great. Put that put, yeah, put first responder EMT story in the subject. And thanks for writing those in. Stay sexy. Don't get murdered.

Bye. Elvis, do you want a cookie? Yeah.