My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 270

Episode Date: March 14, 2022

This week’s hometowns include a badass mom named Bernadette and a narrow-minded snitch.  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. Exhibit C, it's truly criminal. Hello! And welcome to my favorite murder, the mini-soad, where we read you your stuff,

and you listen to us read you your stuff. It's going to be just like Georgia said, but better, but we're going to take ahead a helium first. Oh. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go party time. Do you want to go first? Yes, I do, please.

Here we go. I'm not going to read you the beginning of the title of this, but in parentheses, it says classic hometown close call. Cool. Dear fabulous humans and animals, including Steven's mustache. I've been meaning to write to you about this for literal years, and this event popped up in my Facebook memories yesterday, so I guess now is as good as time is any. Nice.

Let the computer tell you. I lived in Bellingham, Washington for six years in the early 2000s. Weird things always happen in Bellingham. I miss it. Most of the time while I was there, I lived alone and had no car, so I walked everywhere. I was also very bad at the fuck politeness thing, because I thought you had to be accommodating to everyone in order to be a nice person. Wrong.

And it says that on the email. That's not me. Wrong. It was pretty normal for me to chat with unusual people while out and about, even when they would come to my apartment door to proselytize about weird cultish stuff. In early spring of 2007, a woman knocked on my door claiming to know my neighbor and asking to use my phone to call him. Yeah, but that does not track.

This was in the olden days when a lot of people still had landlines. I let her come in and use the phone, but she appeared to be tweaking on some kind of drugs, and I realized it was possible that she was just looking for things to steal, so I decided not to answer the door for strangers anymore. That's great. I love it like simple. Here's what happened. And so I just didn't do it.

I said, yep, I didn't realize that was the possibility on the other side of that door. I'm not doing it anymore. Love it. My mom helped me plan out possible ways to respond to unwanted visitors. My mom is much less trusting than I am, and this lesson would soon come in handy. A couple of weeks after this incident, I was at home one night with my best friend, and another one of our friends was on her way. I left the door unlocked for her. When there was a knock on the door, I assumed it was my

friend, so I called out in a goofy sing-song voice. Who is it? But a gravely slurred man's voice responded, it's Jack Sparrow. I ran to the door and put on the safety chain. I opened the door crack to see a scruffy man carrying a bunch of stuff under his arm. Definitely not Johnny Depp. He said, hey, could I use your phone? I told him.

I could hand him the phone. No, you don't have to do any of that. No, the answer is practice it. No. Don't even answer the door if a man who you don't know. No, you can't use my phone. Yeah, and the guy's already using an obviously fake name. That's menacing.

So, like, just don't even answer the door. He told you he's tricking you. Right. He told you to your face he's tricking you. Right. But, you know, this person's sharing her or their more innocent days. Absolutely. So, we're not going to attack.

No shaming. But truly, please, in your day to day, in your car, on the bus, at work, practice saying the word no out loud to other people. Get rid of the strange stigma it might have in you. Just say it. It's your right. You get to say it. Okay.

God damn it. Already the show is giving us high blood pressure. Okay. Okay. Okay. I told him I could hand him the phone and set through the door if he needed. He insisted that no, he needed to come inside to use the phone. And I continued to calmly but firmly offer to hand him the phone through the door.

Why? He said no. He told you he didn't want that. That offer is now off the table. He seemed to be intoxicated, slurring his speech and not making a lot of sense. He growled, it's an emergency. So I said, do you need me to call 911 for you? At this point, as soon as I mentioned 911, he turned and walked, started to walk away

down the hall grumbling, I just got fucking shot, man. What? My friend and I listened to him walk down the stairs and into the carport under my apartment where we heard him tear the side mirror off my neighbor's car and throw it against the wall. From the window, we watched him lurch away down the alley, barely visible under the dim streetlights. I called the police, of course, and they told me they couldn't connect him to the vandalism

on the car because we had heard it rather than seen it. But that they would try to find the man because he said he'd been shot. My friend, the one I'd been waiting for, showed up a few minutes later. She had exchanged greetings with him on her walk home and found him to be creepy. Yes. Everybody. The police were unable to find Jack Sparrow, quote, unquote, that night. But I learned that the items he'd been carrying under his arm were consistent with those that

had been stolen from a neighbor's car. A few weeks later, I found an update in the news. This man, our so-called Jack Sparrow, was a transient with a known criminal record. And over the course of a few days, he had forced his way into several homes in my neighborhood, raping and beating the women inside, sometimes robbing them as well. Oh my God. One of the victims was in the building next door to mine. It could have easily happened to me, too, if I hadn't been prepared by my previous

encounter and my badass mom. By the time police identified the perpetrator, they believed that he had left town. As far as I was able to find, the man was never caught. But thanks to my mom helping me practice to be more assertive, do you want to touch my phone through the door? My friend and I were saved from being among this man's victims. And my friend and I have had 13 years of sneaking references to Jack Sparrow into our gifts to each other as a reminder of our shared brush with danger.

Say sexy and never open the door to strangers, especially if they claim to be fictional characters, Jessica. There we are. Jessica, we're glad you came around. We were all dumb in the early 2000s, right? Can we all agree on that? I don't care how old you are. Right, or like if it's your first apartment, there's a lot of innocence and a lot of,

I just want to meet people and be in the world and be in whatever. So then you have an experience like that. Yeah, things change a little. In my Hollywood apartment, so I was in my 30s, I had like a used couch delivered or whatever. And the dude who had moved it in later, I was like paying him whatever. He goes, this is a nice apartment and you live here alone. And I was so proud of my very first apartment alone that I was like, yep, I live here all by myself. And then I left and I was like, why didn't you say no, I live here with someone.

I live here with my boyfriend. He's also a sniper. That's right. I was so proud. So proud, you know. I just told you the story of walking down my own street and a guy who walked out of a driveway. But I didn't know if he lived there or not. He had been anyone, basically said hi, asked what Frank's name was, chit-chatted a little,

then asked me where I lived. And I literally was like, I'm right up there. And it was like, I walked away going, I have, who am, I'm the biggest hypocrite in the world to be yelling at Jessica during her email when I literally did it myself at age 51. It just doesn't cross our minds that people, sometimes that people are like, they're always out for bad things. Or maybe they're not, but you should just assume they are. Just don't, save it for the fourth conversation.

That's right. Just make that the rule. It doesn't have to have a bunch of good or bad around it. It's just like, it's just a nice boundary. No, you have to earn the information about what color my house is. What address is and social security number is. Where I hide my cash. Right.

I thought you were going to say cat, but that's okay in the same place. Okay. This is a hometown survivor story. It just starts. Hello. I have to tell you about one of my mom's old high school friends. Her name is Janet and she and my mom went to high school together in Ohio. Fast forward to 1990 in Florida.

Janet was coming home from a video store when she decided to stop real quick to pick up some beer. She grabbed a six pack of Keystone gold and went back to her two bedroom home where she lived with her two cats. Love Keystone beer, by the way. Yeah. It got me through college. Yeah. All right. I actually did it.

It got me to flunk. It's the reason I flunked out of college. It didn't get me through college. It got me through nothing. Yeah. Yeah. I ruined your life. Some would say.

A couple of hours after getting home, she was attacked by a man who had slipped through her bedroom window. Wearing gloves, a black ski mask and holding a hunting knife to her. He tied her up with duct tape and proceeded to rape her. Janet knew this guy was going to kill her. She also knew that she had no chance of overpowering him, so she decided to try to relax and stay calm. And then what did she do, you ask? She offered him a beer. Yep.

Janet quietly asked her attacker if he wanted to take a break and have a beer. At this, he immediately went from a vicious maniac to a chill dude who told her to shower off and join him in the kitchen. Being the brilliant murderer she was, Janet cleaned off with a towel before showering, hoping to grab some DNA from the D-bag. And this is in the fucking 90s. Wow. Yeah. Janet poured him his beer and he started telling her all about his terrible childhood and how awful his abusive dad was, whom he later killed and blah, blah, blah. We get it.

Uh-huh. Janet was like, okay, let me relate to this fool. So she told him that she too had a miserable upbringing, which she totally didn't. Super great fam and friends. Hi, mom. But he didn't need to know that. After chatting for a while over some beers, she calmly told him that it was time for him to leave. And you guys, this dude actually got his stuff together, headed for the door, turned around and asked her for one favor. He asked Janet if she would give him a 10-minute head start before calling the cops, and then he disappeared into the night.

A few years later, Janet heard a man talking on TV who was pleading guilty to the murder of five college students from the University of Florida. She knew it was the same man by his voice and body language, and sure enough, it was confirmed by that DNA she snagged. The guy who attacked Janet that night was Danny rolling the Gainesville Ripper. Wow. Quick thinking, nerves of actual steel, and some cold Bruce Keys saved Janet's life that night. She's a true badass, and I'm glad to know she existed in this world. She died of cancer a few years ago, but her story of bravery and quick wit sticks with my mom and me, and I'm sure many others to this day. Stay sexy and keep the fridge stocked, Chelsea.

Wow. I know. I mean, that's harrowing. That story is the story of the Gainesville Ripper is so upsetting and so awful, and that idea that a survivor came through that and then was able to see him on TV basically go to jail. So scary. But it must have been satisfying. Yeah. And there's like a lot of people that never get closure like that, or it's not closure, right, but that final moment to say he's there safe from that person.

Totally. Totally. And because she saved DNA, she was able to get that confirmation. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Bravery. All right. Well, I'm going to change the tone slightly.

Great. Because the subject line of this email is the statue of the Virgin Mary cries blood. Hey, friends, when I was 20, I worked in a children's retreat center in the UK. That's basically a scaled down version of a US camp. Lots of outdoor activities for groups coming from schools with an extra helping of Jesus since it was a Catholic center. Obviously, all the teenage camp counselors here were very much fucking each other. Oh, tradition, tradition all over the world. Yeah, because that's right, especially if it's a religious camp, that's when the heat starts, that's when the friction begins.

Anyway, that's not what I wanted to tell you. The camp was based in a listed Victorian folly, which in turn had been built on the remains of castles dating back to the 12th century. What? Right? It had been everything from a private home to a boarding school run by the Sisters of Mercy, the band. Great band. And now, and now is the Catholic Children's Camp Center. As you can imagine, there are so many creepy things and stories from this place.

These include, and then it's a bullet pointed list. All right. This straight up crypt built into the basement where bodies were kept before burial. Now a place for prayer and creeping kids out. The life sized statue of John the Baptist who stood on the stairway to nowhere and scared the shit out of me all the time. The stuffed animals kept in a glass case in the basement, again, just to scare kids, I think. The ghost, this is the last bullet point, the ghost of the little boy who was a student at the boarding school who had died on my god damned birthday, WTF. The most popular story was that the statue of the Virgin Mary who stood on the ruins of the old castle would cry blood.

We'd have to convince kids all the time that it wasn't true, go back to sleep please. When a school came with a teacher who had worked here the very first year the center was open, I asked him about it. Did he know how this rumor got started? Oh, he said. It's probably because we'd climb the ruins every night and move the statue around to scare the kids. Oh, my god. Yeah, you did. The next thing is, thanks dude.

Okay, that just made me flash back to one of my favorite videos I ever saw on Twitter, which was the girl, it was probably a TikTok because it had the writing on it. Yeah. Where it's just a hand on the breaker and remember it's my 12 year old sister and her friends are playing with a Ouija board and she's just turning all the lights in the house off and turning it back on. And you can just weigh in the distance here, little girl screaming. Every time she turned her little like through the wall, that was so good. This is basically like the analog version of that. Moving a religious statue around by hand. So fucked up.

Oh, anyway, stay sexy and don't scare the crap out of kids in this name of Jesus question mark. And then it just says S she her. Wow. That reminds me actually. So we have so in Jewish, in the religion, one of the holidays, you leave a glass of wine out for this spirit called Elijah. And supposedly you just leave it out overnight and Elijah will come drink it. And every time. Passover.

Passover, thank you. That's the religious thing. I got to read it Passover one year and that's when I became convinced that Judaism was for me. Right. That's the holiday. I always thought Elijah came and drank it. It was clearly my mom, which I fucking realized when I was a little older is like I actually goes. It somehow goes away.

I think I even thought it was like it evaporated because I was like that six was like, I don't think ghosts exist. But then I realized my mom just drank it. Oh, Elijah. Sure. Sure. Wait, when does that when is that supposed to take place? Like is it real time during Passover? No, I think it's I thought it was overnight.

We left it overnight. Like we clean up and we'd leave that out. Oh, got it. Okay. So it's sorry to compare it, but it is a little bit like leaving cookies up for Santa Claus at Christmas. Exactly. Yes. Exactly.

Except for Janet's eating all the cookies. Quote unquote. Exactly. It's our version of that. Okay. Mistaking a bomb threat for a naked man. Lighthearted. Dearest badasses.

I've apparently lived through multiple bomb threats through no fault of my own, but only one has ever made me laugh. Let's get into it. Back in the day, our Costco equivalent superstore called for an emergency evacuation. My mom with seven year old me and my three year old sister in tow fucking booked it. Nice. Over the speakers, they announced may bomb but which exactly translates to there is a bomb. Unfortunately in Tagalog, our common tongue here in Manila, bomba also means naked. I was in the second grade having just learned to how to speak and read English.

So my Tagalog was definitely not up to par enough to understand the looming threat. Looking back, I should have known that bomb was just given the typical Spanish colony treatment of borrowed words where we add a or o to the end, but I was seven. Leave me alone. Okay. You got it. I was unfazed by the potential threat of a naked man running the hallowed halls of the superstore and kept wondering why they'd be making such a fuss over said man in the first place. The alarm started to blare and light started flashing, but I took to heart my duty of grocery cart pusher and began leading our cart of groceries to the checkout counter. My mom began to scream, just leave it over the alarms as she pushed my sister and her stroller.

I looked at her stunned and offended, beginning to explain eloquently how we worked so hard over the past few hours for these groceries. But all that came out was, but mom. She eventually grabbed me and ran the car, tossing my sister and I into it as quickly as possible. Nevermind the violence involved. Once in the car, I popped out from the back seat, mandatory seatbelt laws for people over the age of five were not a thing at the time. To ask my mom, doesn't bomba mean naked? I don't remember. So she thought a naked guy was being called over the speaker running around the store instead of an actual fucking bomb.

She's like, why is everyone freaking the fuck out for a naked man? I don't remember her exact reaction, but when I asked my mother about it, as you do when you're about to send in a hometown, she just laughed at me and told me to send it into our long drive podcast pals, Karen and Georgia. Oh, I know. By the way, the grocery was never blown up. It still stands today, but I'm sure my mom is very grateful that she can order her groceries online. Hope you enjoyed this long, but hopefully funny story from the other side of the world. I hope this hometown proves you have loyal murderinos wherever English is kind of smoking. I've been listening to the podcast since 2017 and you ladies have changed and saved so many lives with your openness and honesty about anxiety and addiction and just overall weirdness, including mine.

Thank you, ladies, Stephen Jay, the team and Paul Holes. Stay sexy and ask your mom what that word means, Isabella from the Philippines. Nice. This is Isabella Epic. Epic Journey. Looking for a better cooking routine? With meal planning, shopping and prepping handled, Hello Fresh has you covered. Hello Fresh makes home cooking easy and affordable so you can stay on track and on budget in the new year. Hello Fresh meals are convenient, seasonal and delicious. Stay cozy all winter long with classic comfort foods available weekly.

While I stop with just dinner, now you can enjoy Hello Fresh's expanded menu of quick lunch solutions, weekend brunch, simple side dishes and amazing desserts. Karen January is going to be my month for Hello Fresh. I am so sick of takeout. I miss cooking so much I haven't lifted a knife or a pan since early fall. So I can't wait to get back in the kitchen and Hello Fresh makes 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 murder20 with code murder20. That's up to 20 free meals plus free shipping on your first box when you go to hellofresh.ca slash murder20 and use code murder20. 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 podcasts. You can listen ad free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. Okay, I'm not going to read you the subject line.

Karen, Georgia, and the rest of the MFM crew. My mom, Bernadette, is a badass. She graduated as a chemical engineer at a time when professors had the audacity to ask if she was getting her MRS degree. Oh, fuck you. How about fuck you? Think about it. First, I can put your index finger on your chin. Oh, fuck you. Is the answer to that question.

When she first entered the workplace, they had to all caps build her a woman's restroom. Oh, my God. For a while, she had to put a sign up on the men's bathroom while hers was under construction. Put your shit. My favorite story of her early career days is the calendar story. All the men at her workplace had playboy style calendars with women posing scantily clad with power tools. And then a parentheses that says, of course they would. My mom didn't really appreciate that they had these and at first politely asked for the calendars to be taken down.

HR said this must have been fucking in the 70s because listen to what HR said. HR said they didn't see an issue and that people were allowed to decorate their offices however they want. Fuck. Yeah, that ain't true anymore, friends. My mom immediately went and bought as many Chip and Dale's calendars as she could find and she well-papered her office with them. Yes. When the men began to complain, she gave them a smile and said that she was allowed to decorate however she wanted. Needless to say, a week later, all of the calendars had to be taken down. Yeah, they did.

Yeah, because men don't want to look at it. No. Men don't fucking want to look at it. My mom put up with some real shit and worked the system as cleverly as she could to get things changed. Oh, thank you. As a young female mechanical engineer who still sees some ridiculous things in the workplace, I can't imagine how my mom dealt with it. Stay sexy and fight workplace sexism with Chip and Dale's.

Question mark. Meg. I read that wrong. Stay sexy and fight workplace sexism with Chip and Dale's. Meg. Got it. Yeah, the one-hole thing. Bernadette, first of all, is such a fucking good name.

I can't even stand it. Bernadette's the best name. Yeah. And then also, it turns out you're also a badass. And also, I'm the best dancer from St. Bernadette's, my favorite line from Grease. I have it. Hold on. I have a Chip and Dale's one somewhere.

Let me see. Okay. You know what? I'm going to read this Chip and Dale's one. I wasn't planning on reading. Sweet. Perfect. I can end on that.

This is called Chip and Dale's and 80s parenting. Hey, MFM crew. In 1984, I was 13 years old and slogging my way through eighth grade. I was there. I got it. I was with you. I was there and I was with you. That year, my Christmas stocking, my mom gave me a deck of playing cards featuring the

famous Chip and Dale's dancers. And then it says, you know, because it was the 80s and parents did crazy, seemingly irresponsible stuff all the time. But now before you start thinking that my mother actually gave her 13-year-old pornography for Christmas, let me say that none of the guys in the cards were naked, much to my chagrin. This gimpiest photo showed one of the guys in a Speedo and in fact, several of the cards showed guys fully clothed.

Come on. It's Chip and Dale's. Can we get some fact inequality over here, please? But still, this was the best Christmas present I had ever received. I was thrilled. I felt so grown up. So sophisticated to receive such a gift. I couldn't wait to show all my friends.

So sophisticated. So sophisticated. Oh, you're just, you came over on the Mayflower, you're like old money, sophisticated. That's right. With your naked man playing cards. That's how you know it, mom. The next year, mom got you wine coolers for Christmas. Okay.

On our first day back to school, after Christmas break, I asked my mom if I could take my cards to school to show my friends. Of course she agreed, but did tell me, uh-huh, but did tell me that I had to leave them in my backpack during class and could only take them out during passing periods and lunch. That was such a responsible parent. There are rules to life, Karen. That's right. Uh-huh.

So I took the cards to school and showed them off before class. My friends and all who saw the cards were amazed and impressed. These cards had done what my carefully feathered hair, pop shirt collar and Jordan Ash jeans had so far failed to do. They had raised my social standing and popularity to never-before-seen heights. I was over the moon until I got to third period English, as I stood in the hallway showing my glorious gift to a friend, a boy in my class, we'll call him Dick, came over and said, what are you looking at?

I hurriedly tried to hide the cards, but Dick grabbed them, saw what was on them and ran into the classroom straight for our teacher. We'll call her Mrs. Smith yelling. Look what Megan has, pictures of naked men. He handed the- Shut up, Dick. Shut up, Dick. He handed the cards to Mrs. Smith who promptly motioned me over to her desk.

She quickly flipped through the cards and said, where did you get these? Does your mother know you have these? To which I replied, um, my mother, this is her emphasis, by the way, to which I replied, um, my mother is the one who gave them to me for Christmas. She said, Mrs. Smith, the word, no wait, hold on, really said Mrs. Smith, no, that's not it either. Keep this all in tune. Take three.

It's dripping. It's dripping from the top. It says it's dripping with sarcasm, so it's really, was that it? Did I get it? Sure. Yeah. Yes. I replied, you can call her and ask her.

She even knows I brought them to school today. Mrs. Smith stared at me for a minute, hurumped and said, well, we'll see about that. For now, I'm going to hang onto these. You can pick them up after school. I was pissed. My dreams of conquering the hellish landscape that is middle school by way of almost pornographic playing cards were dashed. I trudged through the rest of the day and went to Mrs. Smith's classroom to pick up

my cards, where she again questioned whether my mom knew I had them. I just rolled my eyes, grabbed my cards and ran to catch up with a few kids who were still in the building, hoping to recapture some of my previous glory now that I had my precious cards back. I know I should probably end this with stay sexy and don't give your child Chip and Dale's merchandise. But I think the real moral of the story is stay sexy and don't take things that aren't yours.

Dick. Dick and Mrs. Smith. Megan. Oh, Megan, what a wonderful email you just crafted. Epic. Epic sweeping tale, well written, beautifully, you know, whatever it is. I mean, the idea too that this was going to somehow break the ice of junior high and that it actually was working until the boy child stepped in and snitched, like outright

snitched. I hope she was just like, hey, don't trust this guy with any insider information kids. I hope Dick's popularity, whatever it was at, probably not high plummeted that day. I mean, while Megan was a rising shooting fucking star. Also, it's like, why are you so let people have their dirty playing cards in eighth grade? It's hard enough. Yeah. I mean, I had way worse stuff in eighth grade.

Yeah. For real. Okay, please keep perspective. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, send us your fucking crazy ass tales of the craziest birthday or Christmas gift you've ever gotten and all that stuff. Yeah.

We want to hear all of it. Great job to everybody who wrote in this week. Thank you so much for sending us your stories and stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie? This has been an exactly right production. Our senior producer is Hannah Kyle Crichton, our producer is Alejandra Keck.

This episode was engineered and mixed by Stephen Ray Morris, our researchers are J Elias and Haley Gray. Email your hometowns and fucking hurrays to myfavoritmurder at gmail.com. Follow the show and Instagram and Facebook at myfavoritmurder and Twitter at myfavemurder. Then subscribe and leave us a review on Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Goodbye. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 10, 11, 12.