My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 249

Episode Date: October 18, 2021

This week's hometowns include an Alaskan cruise ship murder and a Liberian champagne punch recipe.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Don't worry about it. Come on, no big deal. It's so biggy. Why are you making such a fuss? So what if we have the same shirts on for four weeks in a row? Do you care? Oh, yeah. If you're listening to this, you can also be watching this on the fan cult.

That's just $40 a year, and you get all kinds of perks, including looking at our clothes. Um, way to upsell. Thank you. Including, uh... Faces. You want me to go first this time? Sure. Watch this.

Hey, gang. Thank you, gals, so much for the amazing podcast. It never fails to make me smile. And then, in parenthesis, which is well-appreciated, up here in cold, dark Alaska. Ooh, Alaska. Ooh. I'm a long-time listener, and when I heard you, gals, talk about the danger of going on cruises, it made me have to write in this story.

Yes, cruise stories. Cruise stories. I love them. I live in Geno, Alaska, which is the state capital. Oh. Alaska. I'm pretty sure it is. Uh, please write in to tell me it's not.

I live in Geno, Alaska, which is a popular destination for many tourists who come via cruise ship in the summer. In fact, there are so many cruise ships that they create a large wall that blocks our view of the ocean. Oh, come on. That sucks. It's this world. Yeah.

Like, what are we doing? Yeah. What are we doing? What are we doing? That summer, I was working in a food truck that was stationed on the dock right in the center of all the action. One day, I was working my shift just like any other day. Suddenly, there was an overwhelming sound of sirens, and then we saw many first responders'

vehicles, including an ambulance, headed toward one of the cruise ships, which was surprising since nothing like this ever happens here. So, you can imagine that the whole town later loses their minds when they found out that a Utah man murdered his wife on that cruise ship and had attempted to throw her body off the balcony. Apparently, they had gotten into a fight, and she told him that she wanted a divorce, and then he beat her in the head until she was unconscious. Their daughter heard the screams from the other cabin and called the police.

That's awful. Then, when the police got into the state room, they found him trying to throw her body off the balcony of the ship. The EMTs tried to resuscitate her, but she had already died from blunt force trauma. He's now in jail, and when they took him to trial, he is noted as saying, quote, my life is ruined. Oh, is it? Oh, wait, you'll like this next line.

Okay. And it's like, yeah, that's your own fault, asshole. Ah, right? I do like that. Right? Perfectly put, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison, but this July, he was recently found dead. The Department of Corrections say that no foul play is suspected and that his death is

not COVID-19 related. Anyway, best wishes from Alaskan Murderinos, stay sexy, and don't go on cruise ships, Leo. Wow. That's so sad. That's horrifying, and cruise ships are like tiny towns on the water, so like having gone on a cruise with my parents, you like get to know the people because you just keep seeing the same people for the seven days or whatever you're on it for. With your neighbors constantly.

Yes, it's so horrifying and intense that that would take place in such a public, and then the daughter. I know. That's horrible. Poor lady. Okay. This one's called, I lived in Wichita, Kansas, and it was very sucked up. And then it says Wichita, just in case, which I appreciate, but actually that's one I know.

Wichita. Wichita. The net expelling of Wichita. Wichita. That's how bad we have been, that's necessary. Yeah. Yeah. K and G and co.

When I was a young child, my family lived in Wichita, Kansas for a few years, and thankfully I do not remember most of it. There were constant tornadoes, there were frequent and ominous gatherings of crows in our backyard. There was a little boy down the street who accused me of giving chocolate to his dog. I did not, JFC. What's JFC? Just for clarification. Jesus fucking Christ.

Just for clarification. Right? Jesus fucking Christ. Jesus fucking Christ. Clarification. There was Dennis Rader on the news. Jesus for clarification. Jesus for clarification.

What would Jesus clarify? What would Jesus clarify? I am not homophobic. I am not anti-whimmy. I never said shit about that. Yeah, that's right. Actually, you guys put that in there. You people are in the wrong.

You have taken my words and twisted them to your uses. That's right. And then the ultimate sin in you will burn. Yes, there is no forgiveness for that. Anyway, there was Dennis Rader on the loose. And of course, he was a friend of a family friend. This isn't about that. There was Wichita Massacre Killing Spree that took the lives of five and included a badass

woman who survived being shot execution style and subsequently being run over by a truck because her plastic barrette deflected the bullet. Oh my God. She stayed real fucking sexy. However, a gentle reader, in light of the recent patriarchal man handling of body autonomy in the state I claim as my real home, Texas, I want to share the story of Dr. George Tiller. Tiller was a medical student planning to do his residency in dermatology when he heard of a story of a woman who died during an illegally performed abortion and he decided

to instead dedicate his career to protecting women's right to bodily autonomy. He was a pioneering physician of late term abortions in cases where giving birth or continuing pregnancy would cause substantial and irreversible impairment to his patient. He was also in recovery for substance abuse, which is unrelated but deserves mentioning because that is champion shit. In 1986, his clinic was firebombed. In 1993, he was shot five times by a radical anti-abortion activist and survived. Dr. Tiller attended Reformation Lutheran Church, the same church my family attended

when we lived in Wichita. My mom remembers hurting my brother and I who were both very young into church under a barrage of verbal attacks from the anti-abortion activists that came every Sunday to protest because they never learned the mind of their goddamn business. And then this is in bold. Seriously, who the fuck yells at a six-year-old on the Sabbath? That's insane. Yeah.

The protesters were never allowed on the premises and the church maintained security precautions to prevent violence or disturbances during the service. However, in 2009, Dr. Tiller was shot and killed in the church foyer while he was serving as an usher one Sunday. My family had moved away a few years earlier, so we were not there. But my mother says that she is haunted by the image in her mind of Dr. Tiller's blood on the tiled floor of the foyer mingling with the dappling colored light projected through the stained glass window over the entrance of the church.

Today, the abortion clinic closes to the Texas-Oklahoma border that is serving many people who must now travel out of state to receive the care that they need is operated by the Trust Women Foundation, which also operates Dr. Tiller's former clinic in Wichita. Stay sexy and avoid Wichita if you can, and also support the hell out of people with uruses are she her hers. Wow. Wow. Yeah, it's so intense.

So intense. But we're still fucking fighting the fight for god damn autonomy over our fucking bodies. And also that people would actually call themselves pro-life that are doing shit like that. Right. And most, it indicates a hypocrisy and a contradiction and a lack of reason because they don't believe their own like stance. Yeah. They don't actually believe it.

They have no respect for life and they have no respect for other people. That's right. And it's insanity. It's insanity. It's a misrepresentation of morality and what it means to support your fellow human and it's fucking utter bullshit. And it's terrorism. It's fucking terrorism.

Yeah. Amen. Horrifying. Wow. I like that was a good email. No, your history. Yeah. The subject line of this email is what's in your freezer?

Oh, no. I did the line reading like what's in your wallet. I know. I liked it. Thanks. Thanks. That was for free. Let's get cracking.

I grew up in the mid-sized city of La Crosse, Wisconsin. When I was 10 years old, two of my classmates were messing around in the yard of what seemed to be an abandoned home. To their surprise, a man barged through the door and aggressively confronted the boys. Luckily, they fled immediately and notified their parents. Later that day, when the mom and dad of one of the boys confronted the man about the incident, he opened fire at the parents who escaped with only mild injuries. Ultimately, this led to an overnight standoff between the man and the La Crosse Police Department.

As the sun rose the next morning, he finally gave up. Upon searching his home, they found he was in possession of numerous illegal guns and homemade explosives. But these were the least of the news reports at the time because in the basement freezer, police found, drumroll please, a woman's body frozen in a block of ice. Further investigation revealed that the man's name was Philip Schiff. His mother died three to five years earlier and he had kept her body in this freezer in order to prevent being framed for murder as he collected her social security checks.

While in prison, the city of La Crosse ran wild with this story. T-shirts and car magnets were sold depicting a chest freezer with an old woman's manicured nails hanging out. These items had the phrases, what's in your freezer and my mom is cooler than your mom imprinted on them. Seriously, these items were everywhere. Oh my God. In an attempt to wrap this long story up, there are many layers to this case and it is definitely worth a deeper read if your curiosity has been sparked. And sorry for the length of the story, much love Q.

Who? Yeah. You've got to love stories out of Wisconsin though because like in our last minisode I was talking shit on Florida as everyone does, very hacky of me. But Wisconsin comes through time after time with the creepy story. And the horrifying. It's like under the radar, hey, radar. The polite Midwest version of Florida.

They're not on as many psychotropic drugs. I think there's just much more. They just have eaten so much, so many funeral potato casseroles that they are in a daze. There's a lot of what they call a cheese euphoria that's going on in that state. That's not made up at all. Okay, this is called the three drunk of tears. You know, I love a drunk children hometown. Oh, hell yeah.

This is the one for this week. When y'all asked for hometowns about getting drunk as a kid, I knew it was finally my time to write in. My parents were total anomalies. We were forbidden to attend sleepovers, but we were often welcome to attend their ragers. We are Liberian West African and partying is a huge part of our culture. Mine too. Yeah.

It truly is. Your function was regarded a failure if headcounts didn't tip into the three digits. Yes. Fuck yeah. Our high school graduations were like Jewish bar bot mitzvahs where we made bank and got a flex in front of our family and friends. Nice. Needless to say, I have many drunk childhood memories.

My favorite was my dad's 40th birthday. It was right after 9-11 and I grew up in the DC area. So it was the first time we felt allowed to have fun and be excited about something since that tragic day. Our house was full of the most amazing smells. As our mom, one of the best cooks I know, whipped up all the most popular Liberian dishes. My dad was on liquor duty. Men are always in charge of alcohol while women handle food at these events very progressive.

And he made his signature beverage, champagne punch. This innocent-sounding drink is anything but as a single batch contains two to three liars of brandy, assorted fruit liqueurs, and six to eight bottles of champagne. Holy shit. An array of tropical fruit nectars hides the danger that lies within. The whole thing is then frozen and served as a slushie. Oh, you mean the thing children love the most? Right.

And then it says, is it any wonder us kids loved it? Once the party got started, cars parked on our lawn in a gentile suburban neighborhood, full DJ booth and basement dance floor. Can I please live in a fucking Liberian neighborhood? That sounds okay. I'm loving learning about Liberian culture directly from a person who's just like, here's what it was like. We did it.

What a great way to learn about other countries or cultures. Totally. Tell us about your childhood parent, your parents' ragers when you were a kid. It was really appropriate. How did your parents party? Do you think that they partied harder or less hard than Liberians? That is no, because we didn't always, we definitely always had huge parties, but we didn't max out at 300.

That was like, I think we were up, 200 was like not so for us. Yeah. Like if your family had to get a DJ booth, then it's a fucking rager. And all the adults were having too much fun to be bothered with us kids. We got to work. Like an old school firefighter, Bucket Brigade, we smuggled our slushy booty. The party didn't wind down until six or seven AM. Fuck.

And when our parents noticed we were still hanging with them, the truth finally came out, then no one, not even their elementary school-aged kids had turned it down. Luckily, since our parents were too embarrassed to make a big deal, we all got huge hunks of cornbread. I now realized to soak up the liquor and we're shuttled off to bed. Honorable mention goes to my Uncle Terry, who would always make a special cranberry vodka and quote, forget it somewhere in arm's reach of me and my cousin, twin. Don't worry, we were 18 by then.

Oh, I forgot it next. Oh, Uncle Terry. Oh, whoops. I guess I'll make another one. And because I'm realizing my family sounds like a bunch of single-brained cell degenerates. Let's do a quick, where are they now? My brother is a kick-ass surgeon serving our nation. I work in finance and my sister is a marketing wizard.

Please remember us like this. It's too late. Yeah. Stay sexy and don't miss a Liberian party, Antonia. Fuck yeah. That is an all-timer. That's an all-timer. Yes.

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A pair of unlikely heroes emerges. Follow against the odds wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. This is an Aussie hometown pub story. Okay, that's the title. Hey, when I was in my 20s, I worked the day shift at a pub in Sydney, Australia. We've been there. I love it there.

So good. It was a bit of a rough and tumble place. Disagree. Frequent. Wait, the borrower said me. Not a rough and tumble bar, man. Just a nice rough and tumble bar for an afternoon, Bev. Hell yeah.

Frequented by boisterous, often badly behaved young men. Oh, my faith. Otherwise known as Laracans. Laracans? During the weekday, though, it was pretty quiet. Our pub was on the corner of a busy intersection in an inner city suburb with cars and buses warring past all day long. One quiet lunch shift, a rather restless looking bloke comes bursting in in what seems to be a bit of a hurry. He hastily orders a schooner of beer and a glass of Coke.

After pouring both drinks, I give him the total and he quickly produces a large handful of change, then begins to shakily count out the money in 10 cent, 20 cent and 50 cent pieces. No, not okay. Yeah, straight on to and all over the counter. As I start collecting this rather annoying amount of coinage, I notice him trying to chug the Coke, ice and all, in one go. Sorry. Was he a seagull?

Did he just pour it into his gullet? Just say no ice. That's so dangerous. Don hinges his entire jaw. He's a snake. You know, sometimes when you're drinking out of a glass that has ice in it and the beverage, the beverage line has gone down below the ice line. Yes.

And so when you tip it back to get the last of the beverage, the ice just crashes into your face. Of course, you've all had that experience. Well, this guy was trying to swallow that experience is what I think and why I'm enjoying myself so much on this episode. It's the best. Okay, sorry. All in one go. Pretty thirsty, I guess. Not sure a soda is a good call for chugging, but he can enjoy the gassy results of that later.

He keeps glancing out the window to the traffic, hand tapping on the bar, all while chugging. Oh my God. He gets to the first sip of his beer when he suddenly takes the glass, runs out the side door onto the currently empty street, stands in the middle of the road, chugs the entire beer in literally two seconds flat, smashes the glass to the ground and runs away down the middle of the street. What? I can see both of the cross streets from this corner bar and just as I see old mate piss-bolting away down the street. And sorry, there's little asterisks at the end of old mate and piss-bolting.

So I'll go down to the key here and old mate is a person whose name you don't know and piss-bolting is running really fast. Okay, perfect. Just as I see old mate piss-bolting away down the street, I see a bunch of police rounding the corner running right after him. They check in with me to see if I saw the guy and of course I point them in the right direction. I notice across the street a bunch of people gathered around a bus stop, a bunch of people gathered around a bus at the nearby stop. Turns out this guy had just robbed a bus that had stopped directly across the street from the pub. So literally robbed this bus, stole a shit ton of coins, then ran across the street to smash down and then actually smash a coke and a beer.

I mean, at least he paid for the drinks. I had to admire his desire for a cold beer. The cops got him not far down the road. I was impressed by the speed of the police, but I'm guessing it's not easy to go on the run after guzzling a soda and a beer. And I'm not keen to try. Also, who drinks coke before beer? Especially if you're in a rush to escape a crime, you just commit it. Thanks for all you do.

Stay sexy and don't go running after bubbly drinks. Kira. And then it says in parentheses rhymes with beer. Yeah, it does. What the fuck? Like, why did you need the beer right away? Why did you need the coke and the beer? Why did you pay for it?

Why did you stop across the street from where you just robbed place of lace? Why would you rob a place that just fills your pockets with heavy change and weighs you down when your plan is to outrun the cops? Right, another great question. Okay, we're going to write these questions up, Kira, and we're going to send them to you in Australia. That's right. Okay, I have one more. All right, I'm not going to read you the line of this. Okay.

Hi, Karen, Georgia, an MFM family. I just listened to the Minnesota word listener used her lessons from dog training to scare off a would be carjacker. This makes total sense to me. And I wanted to share a quick little story of that dog training energy in action. For context, my mom has been raising puppies for a guide dog organization for about 15 years. How fucking adorable is that? A few years ago, I was in town visiting and we were walking our dogs around my parents quiet neighborhood. Suddenly we hear barking and turn to see a very angry German shepherd barreling out of a driveway across the street, charging straight at my dog.

Of course, I had no idea what to do. I was already imagining how I would pull that dog away from mine and how much damage it could do first. Fortunately, my mom and I had swapped leashes, so she had my dog and I was a few yards behind with one of hers. I watched as she calmly stepped in front of my dog, planted her feet and said in the front, I mean business voice. Hey, knock it off. To my amazement, that dog stopped in its tracks. It reminded me so much of something you would say is like what your moms would sound like to you guys. Hey, knock it off.

Knock it off. Yeah. And that dog stopped in its tracks, I mean, it skidded to a halt so fast it looked like something out of a cartoon. Then tail between its legs, it turned and ran back home. Oh, I could not believe what I just seen, but my mom just shrugged and said something about letting him know that his behavior was unacceptable. Then she continued to walk like nothing had happened. I suspect there's a big overlap between training your dogs and being a mom. Oh, yeah.

The show, thanks for all you do, Kim. Well, yeah, you got to say stuff like you mean it. Yeah. And sometimes you have to scare people a little bit to get the message through. And ultimately, everybody wants someone else to be in charge. Everybody wants to be told because no one knows what the fuck they're doing. And maybe a little shame too. Like you're acting like an idiot.

Yeah, like hold on. And then you're like, you're right. I'm just running down the driveway barking like a lunatic. This is embarrassing. I'm going to go. I'm ashamed. I'm shaming my breed, my dog breed and my family. I'm not going to do it. We've done it again.

We did it again. You want to listen to one more? There's a mini-mini sound on the hometown. This is video, so check it out. Also, of course, most importantly, stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Goodbye.

Elvis, do you want a cookie? This has been an exactly right production. Our producer is Hannah Kyle Crichton. Associate producer, Alejandra Keck. Engineer and mixer, Steven. Ray Morris. Researchers, J. Elias and Hailey Gray. Send us your hometowns and your fucking arrays at myfavoritmurder.com.

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