My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 259

Episode Date: December 27, 2021

This week’s hometowns include a gaggle of party betches and a meet cute on the side of the freeway. 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. Hello. And welcome to my favorite murder. The mini-so. That's right. We're making hand gestures at each other before we start and you can see them because this is being videoed for the fan cult. It's kind of like mime combined with conducting and it doesn't really work. It doesn't. Nobody can conduct and play. It's really hard to do with this. Yeah, it's dramatic. Here's a mini-so. Are you ready for it? You want to go first? Sure. Do it. Okay. My dad collected dead bodies in Yosemite.

Oh. Hi. I was listening to episode 174 where Georgia covers Mount Everest and it made me remember a few stories my dad would tell me when I was a kid. My dad and his two older brothers were avid rock climbers and all around outdoorsmen in the 70s. They have several first scents in various national parks and at least one of my uncles used to travel around the world for rock climbing events. Show out. They all also worked on one of the first prototypes that's led to today's harnesses used by hang gliders. Oh. Among his many epic stories, one being at a dinner party. Oh. That's nice. Interesting. One that's really stood out to me is that my dad and his brothers would go up to Yosemite in the early spring and work the whole season collecting dead bodies

as they defrosted from the winter. What? This is a follow-up to me saying stay out of the forest, by the way. Yeah. Okay. A particularly gruesome one was a hiker who'd gone up to Yosemite falls too late in autumn. He fell down the falls and ended up in the bowl where his body stayed frozen throughout the winter. I'm sorry. This is so fucking gruesome. In the spring, the fall started to thaw and as it did, my dad remembers waiting for the hiker's body to come down to the bottom. I don't remember if they were able to recover all the different body parts, but I was more fixed on the visual he painted with this story as I was maybe only 12 years old at the time. Well, no. My dad and his brothers would do this kind of work all spring for quite a few years and

the money they got from it enabled them to take summers off and do nothing but camping, hiking, and rock climbing all over California. And going to therapy. And going to massive amounts of therapy. They used a lot of those tragic deaths as examples of what to be cautious of when on their adventures. I have a few more interesting stories I know you would like to hear, so I'll make sure to write them for another time. Say sexy and be safe on the trail, Kiki. I mean, it is an incredibly generous service to provide because it's unlike, you can't just send in regular EMTs or regular coroners or funeral home. I don't know who actually would normally go pick up those bodies, but it's like you'd need specialists and people who could, and it's a service for those families.

Totally. But then you don't need to tell your 12-year-old about it also in addition to. I feel like, you know, and in a lot of these emails that we get, people get told stuff, you know, they get told stuff by their parents. And I think that's why they become listeners of this podcast. So we have, we should thank those parents, bad decisions over wine. It's not the worst to just be like death, you might as well get used to death being a real thing because the longer you pretend it doesn't exist, the more shocking it is. Maybe that's the thinking. Yeah, that's a good point. Here's mine. Weird vibes and truth be told. What a great subject line. Yeah. It starts like this, beautiful humans and precious fur friends. Sorry.

The summer I turned 14, I was staying with my aunt and they mean candy striping, but they wrote candy stripping. Are you sure they meant candy striping? I have a 14-year-old candy stripping at the hospital. I hope not. I will call CPS. Aunt M is a badass. All on her own above and beyond being an RN in a time when misogyny was commonplace. She kicked ass and took names from day one of her RN days. To this day, I love spending time with her and hearing all the tales and stories she has to tell. Some good, some not so good. Needless to say, her life experiences served her well the day that we were on our way home from the hospital after her shift and got hit from behind. A state patrolman came

and cleared the scene, sent the other driver to the hospital, and as my aunt and I were fine, she had to give a statement. Now, me being 14 at the time and never having been in an accident before was scary enough, but I was even more scared when the officer insisted that we both get in his patrol car so that he could take the statement. I remember her asking him why we had to get out of our car as it was raining. He again insisted, so we did as he asked. Let me tell you ladies, the longer I sat in that car, the more terror I felt. Something was off. This officer was adamant that I sit in the front and in the middle part of the seat with my mom and the passenger side. She was furious at the whole situation but gave the statement and got us out of their ASAP.

When we got home, she was talking with my uncle who was a former patrolman and asked why the patrolman might have asked us to get into his car. He had no idea. Fast forward several years, Aunt M and I wrote letters back and forth and it wasn't unusual to get a letter in the mail from her. So imagine my surprise when I opened this letter to find a newspaper article from her town newspaper that stated, the very same officer that insisted I sit in the car closest to him had been charged with several counts of child molestation. Holy shit. The light bulb went on and I knew instantly why I felt the way I did that day. Even being scared from our accident, I had a weird vibe from this guy. They put him away for several years and he died in prison.

My aunt is a survivor of SA and she knew that day that something was very wrong and she was right. Sorry, this is so long. Keep up the fantastic work you do. So proud of you both for living your dreams. Stay sexy and listen to your gut. Wow. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Fuck man. Fuck that guy. That's the thing about the like abuse of power and a person like that that's like getting people at their weakest, most scared, most vulnerable point and then doing stuff like that. It's like Jesus Christ will fucking women knowing their gut and intuition summed off and getting pissed and just being like enough of this. Yeah. Oh my God. That's terrifying. Okay. This one's called almost murdered on the side of the freeway. Hi ladies. After listening to Georgia talk about the man who

helped her in the middle of the road, when her car broke down, I had to write this one in. Let's hit it. I love those like let's get to it. Let's get in. Come on. Here we go. I love those. Years ago, I was in my old Dodge driving to my dreaded night class. Shout out to Santa Monica City College. What's up? I dropped out of there. Hey. Hey. When all of a sudden my car started making a very expensive noise, genuinely thinking that my car was going to explode and leave me dead on the 101, I pulled over on the side of the freeway. Never do that. But you remember when you and Vince did it? I'm saying you and Vince because I was in the car screaming at you guys not to do that. And then he got out of the car. There was like a palm frown under your car.

I ran over something because I couldn't swerve because we were on the five cell. And so I ran over what I thought was the lid to an igloo cooler, like a styrofoam lid, but it was not. And it basically ripped the bottom of my car off. And then I had to pull it. Then I was dragging it. Yeah. And I had to pull over and it was mayhem. It was mayhem. I was screaming at both of you and you were blowing me off. Both of you were blowing me off. But I will say, I will say one of the things that I have, I learned along with take your fucking lint out of your dryer trap is even if you fuck your car up, pull over off of the freeway. Do not pull over on the side of the freeway. Like even if you're on your rim, fuck your rim up rather than right. Anyways, I'm done fucking.

I was just doing what the what Vince told me to do. No, no, you totally were. It's all I just didn't know what to do. And it seemed like am I wrong to remember the sparks were involved somehow? They might have been. It might have been dire. However, it seemed a little dramatic on the freeway. It was at night. It was bad. It was terrible. I was like, well, there goes my husband. There goes our life. That's right. Side of the freeway. My dad, who grew up in NorCal, terrified of Zodiac killer, had quite literally ingrained in my head like the Lord's Prayer to never pull off the side of the freeway. So there I was 19 year old me with an amazing metabolism and zero car experience. Yeah, we've been there knowing that I already couldn't afford what was going

to be wrong with my car. I got out to examine if anything was smoking or leaking as if I had a plan when I look up to see headlights pulling off the freeway behind my car, the car parks and sits there for a few seconds and out walks the most giant man I have ever seen in my life. He started to walk closer and closer to me and all I could see was his silhouette when with the headlights blaring behind him. I my heart was pounding as I clutched my keys and began to thread my house key between my fingers as self-defense. I scanned his face for details that I could give to the sketch artist. He was about six, five, 250 pounds, a huge beard and tattoo sleeves on both arms. Hagrid? Oh. With tattoo sleeves on both arms. Yeah. He came up and asked if I needed any help

and I calmly explained that I was fine and my car was just making noises from the engine. He quickly began to examine. I looked back at this car and started to memorize the license plate when I saw movement in the back seat, a hostage, a child. After just a few minutes of watching my own forensic files episode play in my head, the man started to laugh menacingly. Turns out nothing was wrong with my engine, but the little flap on the bottom of the car was just falling off and wailing in the wind causing it to make the god-awful noise. He went back to his car to grab zip ties when I saw a little chihuahua ears pop out of the passenger seat and excitedly begin to yap. Menacing people don't have chihuahuas, right? Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Only good people. He came

back and zip tied the plastic piece back to the bottom of my car and over the zooms of the freeway background noise he explained that I had no reason to be scared. He was a mechanic and was also a student at another nearby college. My guard rested as I realized this man was just a big teddy bear type that just wanted to offer a little bit of kindness and help a clearly freaked out young woman. After zip tying the flailing plastic on the bottom of the car, he asked me out on a date. I wish I could say that we lasted and went off to get married, blah, blah, blah. But after a few dates, I finished the semester and transferred to a college at a state. I still have never told my dad this story for fear of him literally disowning me as a murdering a daughter. Stay sexy

and listen to your dad for once when he talks about cars, Kylie. Hey, I like even just a passing love connection is still exciting because that adds to the element of the full 180 of going from fear to abject fear to dates to dates to make it out at a bar to make it out outside the pizza parlor. Okay, the title of this email is the Scarface of UC Santa Barbara. Oh, hi friends. I was recently listening to an episode that mentioned Steven attended UCSB. And after a bit of good old FB stalking, it turns out I was studying there at the same time as him, small world in parentheses. This took me on a trip down memory lane, which reminded me of a story that I tried to forget. And it involves, you guessed it, murder. My best friend and I used to hang out with a group

of bros at UCSB circa 2006 to 2010, one of which was named Kirk Galvin. Most weekends, we'd stroll down to his Oceanside Place in Isla Vista ready to party the night away. At some point, Kirk established quite the coke habit and eventually sold it to friends, etc. One night, I took a gaggle of party betches, a gaggle of party betches over to his plates. And he had a Scarface style mountain of cocaine on his kitchen counter in plain view from the balcony sliding glass door, and was enthusiastically encouraging all the ladies to snort what they wanted with a rolled up $100 bill he provided. Fuck, that gives me just, I feel dirty just hearing that. Yeah. It's just like red flag central. Yeah, don't do coke, you guys. It's dirty.

Also, and in that scenario, it's, that is, you're never, this is never a no strings attached scenario when someone's like, look at all my drugs. Do you want free drugs? Those are not going to be free. If someone actively, especially a, okay, if a dude actively encourages you to get drunk, to drink more, to do drugs, to like, go away, go leave, go by. Yes. No, that, that's, that should all be your decision. Yeah. You get to put on the brakes anytime you want. Yep. And yeah, be careful of mountains of coke in any scenario. Truly. Even if it's just you and your betches. We're only halfway through this email. Okay. At one point during the evening, his $100 coke straw went missing and he snapped. He went from being this chill party guy to a visibly

angry psychopath in a matter of minutes. He was positive. It was one of us who stole it. He was not in the least bit reassured by us emptying our pockets and offering to let him look through all of our purses. In fact, this seemed to make him angrier. Hi, I'm a huge red flag. Nice to meet you. And we were honestly terrified that he was not going to let us leave this apartment until it was found. This is, and this is what we're talking about. Yeah. Because drugs are in the mix. You can't, people are going to be erratic and bizarre behaving yourself included. Like it's all, it's all, oh yeah. Okay. We were relieved when he screamed that we'd better get out of his house now and we jumped at the opportunity. We took our monster heels and tiny dresses and got the hell

out of there. We partied onward into the night and we decided probably we shouldn't hang out with our newfound drug lord anymore. Other than the occasional creepy request to take one of us dress shopping, so he could quote, see you in the dress I bought you, shutter. We didn't hear much from him until a year after we'd graduated. In July of 2011, we found out that Kirk had murdered his uncle at his father's house in Orange County, drove with the dead body in his car two and a half hours to the hills of Santa Barbara and set it on fire. Holy shit. Two hikers came across the corpse and Kirk was arrested soon thereafter claiming the devil was in his head and voices told him to do it. Cocaine is a hell of a drug. He is now in prison and we are all just glad we said

no to more free cocaine and dresses, managed to say sexy and knock him murdered. Go Gauchos, love you all, Sarah. That is the darkest you CSB party story I've ever heard in my life. Yeah. Stephen, have you heard of that one? I think I remember the part about the burning the body in the hills because there's a lot of fires in Santa Barbara, so that would already be like such a red flag of like those those tree like that area gets on fire a lot. So if somebody actually purposely going out there, that's terrifying. Yeah. And then and then there's so much more terrifying about it. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, God. Looking for a better cooking routine? With meal planning, shopping and prepping handled. Hello Fresh has you covered. Hello Fresh makes

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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 Arisha and I'm Brooke and we're the hosts of Wondery's podcast even the rich where we bring you absolutely true and absolutely shocking stories about the most famous families and biggest celebrities the world has ever seen. Our newest series is all about the incomparable diva Whitney Houston. Whitney's voice defined a generation and even after her death her talent remains unmatched but her incredible success hit a deeply private pain. In our series Whitney Houston destiny of a diva will tell you

how she hid her true self to make everyone around her happy and how the pressure to be all things to all people led her down a dark path. Follow even the rich wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad free on the Amazon music or Wondery app. All right. Well, this one is from the fancult. But hey, if you want to hear one more story from each of us in the fancult, it's there as is the video to this. Okay. Maybe the owl theory isn't so crazy. First responder story lighthearted. My husband is a midnight duty police officer in a suburban somewhat rural part of Maryland. So every morning when he comes home, he regales me with his adventures from his previous shift. Like the time he had a breakup and after our skinny dipping pool party at a public school.

Nope. At a public pool. I mean, that would be very different. But my favorite story happened two summers ago. It was a hot humid summer night. The dispatch radio was quiet. No service calls. So he decided to check on the neighborhoods in the more rural part of his patrol area. With the windows down and music turned up, he was driving down a dark, desolate country road when all of a sudden he heard a loud swoosh right by his face. In the next second, the cruiser was filled with flapping wings and feathers everywhere. It was an owl. Shit. An owl had flown through his open driver's side window and became stuck in the tiny space between the windshield and cruiser cage. So just looks like

it's like a two-seater fucking. Yeah. As my husband jerked his cruiser to the side of the road, he and the owl screamed in each other's faces. My husband dove out of his vehicle with the owl making a swift exit afterwards. The cruiser's interior was covered in feathers and there were some scratches on the dashboard and steering wheel from the owl's talons. My husband was fine, just shaken up. He thought the owl must have been attracted to the lights of his cruiser's computer. So stay sexy and maybe just use the air conditioner while driving on hot summer nights. Danielle. Holy shit. That would be scary. Remember when we first started the pod? Do you remember? And we were driving down like fucking somewhere in Hollywood and you had your, what's it called open?

Sunroof. Sunroof and a crow almost flew directly into your car like first and like couldn't fit its wings in or something. Yeah, we heard it. It came so close to coming in that we heard it and it was like took up the whole sunroof. It did. It like shadowed over the car. It's crazy. And that meant that was, it turned out to be a good omen. That was the magical omen of the crow. That's right. It said five years of good podcast luck to you ladies. We said, okay. We said, sounds good. Subject line is hometown Hatter. Hi, Karen and Georgia. Huge MDM fan. And then there's a sneaky smiley face. MDM forever. I grew up in the mercury capital of the world. I mean the hat capital of the world, Danbury, Connecticut. You mentioned it recently on an episode about

Victorian arsenic dresses. Other than being the birthplace and home of Charles Ives being the hat capital of the world that was most drilled into our heads as children. Our high school mascot was even a Hatter whose giant head downed our senior year. Anyway, by the time I was five or six, all of the hat factories had closed down for good. My grandfather spent a good deal of his life working in one of those factories. While he did not die of mercury poisoning, traces of it were found in his body when the autopsy was done after his death. After all of the hat factories closed, the buildings and land remained mostly uninhabitable due to the mercury in the soil. Yeah. Jump forward to today. I am the director of education at a domestic and sexual violence

resource center in Danbury. Recently, the city gifted us one of the old hat factory properties. We worked with the state and the EPA and completely cleaned up the land and just opened a transitional facility for women and children in need. Wow. Proud to say that a piece of history that did so much harm now does so much good. That's a fucking hooray, Matt. Oh my god. That's so such a great email. What a twist and rule that that hearkens back to a story you covered and then also hearkens back to things that we support. All of us murdering us. That's amazing. Yes. That's a beautiful. Matt, you nailed it. You did it. You threaded the needle. You did. You did. You got 100% on your test. Well done. Beautifully done. And thank you for your work and the work you do.

Yeah. And everyone in the hat factory and doing that work. That's beautiful. Wow. Is that it? Is it for me? I'll quit if you quit. I quit for sure. Let's do it. Work. Thanks for listening and sending your emails. Continue to do so because we fucking clearly love them. You guys are the best. You do such a great job. Thank you for being here and if you're watching on the fan cults, thank you for being a part of the fan cults. Totally. Hold that down. Also stay sexy. Tunk it murdered. 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 hurrays at myfavoritmurder.com. And follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at myfavoritmurder and Twitter at myfavemurder. And for more information about this podcast, our live shows, merch or to join the fan cult, go to myfavoritmurder.com. Rate, review and subscribe.