My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 271

Episode Date: March 21, 2022

This week’s hometowns include a nightmare neighbor and a kid drunk off of cough syrup.  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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And welcome to my favorite murder. The mini-soad. That's right. That's Karen. That's Georgia. Hey. Hey. Ayo.

Should I start? Yeah, do it. Okay. This is called, my mom left me with a ghost man. Lighthearted? Question mark? Hey, guys, I don't know if you believe in this sort of stuff, but it's a fun story either way.

For background, I grew up in a very witchy family. My mother taught my sister and I how to read tarot cards. My aunt is a crystal healer and my grandma was part of a coven. Oh, that being said, you'd think the women in my family were badasses when it came to ghosts. The house I grew up in was haunted by the guy who built it, or so my mother says. There have been several occasions where you would hear someone call your name while home alone or late at night, see a shadowy man walk through the house.

The call your name thing is so menacing where it's like, I'm not just haunting this house. I'm fucking coming. I know who, I know you're living here and I'm fucking coming after you. I know it's you specifically. That's horrifying. Yes, I'm specifically mad at you. Or not. Whenever these things happen, we would complain to my mom that the ghost was back and she'd

promised to take care of it. Mom, can you hear what she's getting at his back? One night my mom's insomnia was being a pain so she hung out in the living room watching TV. At that time, my bedroom was on the opposite side of the living room's wall so you could hear everything going on in either room. As it was a school night and I was in high school, my mom got very frustrated when she heard talking coming from my room, assuming I was talking to a friend on the phone.

She got up, marched to my closed door and opened it, ready to scold me. As the door was opening, my mom explained that something like a fist slammed down onto her arm. Being the brave and smart witch she is, she shut the door and went to bed. No one said thanks, mom. Thanks mom. She was like a demon that's like, I don't want you going in my daughter's room and she's like, all right.

She's like, well, if that's what you want, I have to respect your wishes. You're a guest in my house. That's right. You can have her. When I woke up the next morning to get ready for school, I noticed a huge bruise on her arm and asked how she managed to get it. She laughed and told me to sit down before explaining how she basically left me to be murdered by a ghost man.

I tried doing research on the house and asked my folks multiple times if they knew anything about its history, but I never got any answers. Anyway, thanks, you guys, for making the drive to and from work less horrible. Stay sexy and don't leave your kids with ghosts, Brittany. I mean, it's hard to blame even a witch mother in a scenario like that because it's like, well, I'm the only one that witnesses, so I can just kind of like claim total ignorance and just go to sleep it off. Maybe it was like a friendly ghost who was like, let her sleep.

She's in high school. She needs her sleep. Nothing isn't friendly. Ghosts are not allowed in this household. Hitting is bad. Hitting is bad. Ghosts included. All right.

This is intense. Okay. I'm not going to read you this subject line. Hi, Karen, Georgia, Steven, and Pets. This isn't exactly a hometown, rather something that happened a few cities away, but considering the enormous variety of topics you guys take in, I'm going to take a safe guess that it's okay to send it in, and then there's a nice smiley face. You're right about that.

It's 1999 in Northwest Poland, a 70-year-old lady named Olga lives in a small village populated by 200 people. She is retired, but trying to make some extra pocket money by selling homemade wine at the local market. She was really kind and well-liked by the community. She would often let people take the wine and do small chores for her as payment. Oh, that's all right. That would have worked out great for me in my days.

And then it said in parentheses, this might have been a trap for many alcoholics, but it's 1999 Poland, so everybody is a little drunk anyways. Amen. When we went on that trip in high school, we got to go to Russia, and then it was like Russia, Poland, and the East was the name of the trip. So we got to go to Poland, and it was one of my favorite countries we visited. It's a party country, and the people are awesome. I loved it there.

One day, people in the village realized that they hadn't seen Olga in a couple of days, and since she was usually very social and open, the concerned neighbors checked on her, and when nobody would come to the door, they called the cops. The police came and found the apartment completely trashed, and Olga dead on the floor in the pool of blood as she'd been stabbed in the neck. The cops ruled an armed robbery gone wrong as the place was wrecked and clearly looked through. The whole community started to freak the fuck out, everybody knew each other, and crime

was not at all a concern in this place before the event happened. After a few months, with still no suspects in custody, a film crew from the popular crime TV show 997 came to the village. The producer wanted to film a reenactment of possible scenarios in which Olga died and engaged nosy villagers to play the parts. By that time, everybody believed that Olga's murderer was an outsider passing through the village looking for money, because such crime has never happened again, and as I mentioned before, people there knew and trusted each other, and then parentheses.

The TV show came out, didn't really help to capture the murderer, though. Fast forward to 2008, when the cold case reopened and the DNA evidence was tested for the first time. The police were surprised to find that the murderer was 55-year-old, I'm going to guess that you pronounce his name, Rizard, but I bet I'm wrong because it's Polish, which is one of the most just bewildering languages, who lived down the street from Olga. The harp, we'll say Richard, just, right? Okay.

55-years-old Richard, who lived down the street from Olga. The heartbreaking thing is that he knew her since for many, many years and often visited her for a glass of wine in a chat. The police ambushed him at work and arrested him. He was shocked that after so many years, he hadn't gotten away with it and immediately confessed to the murder. Apparently, this lazy-ass psychopath needed money, assumed that Olga had plenty from her winemaking business, and broke into her apartment at night.

He stabbed her in the neck, burgled the place, and took around $400. It isn't clear if he meant to kill Olga to begin with or was just surprised by her presence somehow, expected her to be asleep or away. When the shocked villagers looked back at the 997 episode, they saw Richard sitting there playing a friendly neighbor and enjoying a glass of homemade wine with sweet old Olga being who he supposedly really was. Oh my God. Yeah.

Isn't that horrible? Shilling. Yeah. He, like, it's those people that go and volunteer to help search and they're the one that killed the person everyone's searching for. He was convicted, got a life sentence, is now rotting in prison for the rest of his miserable days. Sorry for my crooked English.

Stay sexy and don't love thy neighbor, Pat. Wow. It's never... Everyone... I mean, this might be old-timey, but like, wants to believe it's just some stranger going through town because nobody would do that when it's like, it's never ever that. I mean, sometimes it's that, but... But no, I think the...

It's something like 94% of crime is someone that you know, which is horrifying. Yeah. Totally. All right. Hey, y'all. It's a chunky one, so I'll get right into it. Isn't that great? Yeah.

We all know how this goes. When my family starts to worry because all I talk about is true crime, so I stopped talking about it around them, and then one day during a rough patch I was having my dad pipes up with, did I ever tell you about the murderer who lived next door to my friend? Well, I know, Father, you didn't tell me everything. I love the dad's like, let me save this happy story, what would normally someone would want a happy story, a horrible story for when you're down. And they're saving it like a Christmas gift.

That's right. We'll just put this up on the shelf until she really needs it. Yeah. Okay. Dad's friend warned his family and moved into a house in Birmingham, UK, back in 2006. He moved into a road just off the main busy Birmingham roads where he could watch his kids grow up and play outside in the garden. Their neighbors all seemed lovely with an older couple on one side and a family on the

other. Within a year, things started to go downhill. In 2007, the police kept turning up at their door always because of a wildly concocted story by the old man, Harry, next door. It seemed like he loved the drama of seeing his next door neighbors squirm, but that's all he's going to do, right? No, things started getting a bit more serious. Harry drilled a large metal bar into their adjoining wall and hit it with a hammer at

all hours. What? Yeah. He checked golf balls at their house, verbally threatened and abused them, and even turned up to a garden party with a gun that says, in England, yeah, because they don't fucking, they don't do guns in England. And also they don't do garden parties in America, so like we suddenly knew, unfortunately. Yeah.

Warren and his family decided that they had had enough and in 2013, they sold their house and moved not too far away on the other side of town. Having been complaining to the police about the abuse and harassment from the neighbor and them not helping them out, the final call came when the old man turned up at their new house telling them, I have found you, I know where you live. What? Yeah. Jesus Christ.

And it says four days later, yeah, I know, right? The police finally moved in to arrest him. When the police turned up at his house to arrest Harry, they did a search and found a large amount of weapons, including guns, homemade bullets, and even some anti-aircraft shells. The bomb disposal experts had to be called and surrounding families evacuated from their houses until the house was made safe. But police were more shocked to find out that this old man was actually Barry Williams. Barry was a spree killer who in 1978 shot eight people killing five and attempted to

shoot many others across two Midlands towns. Oh, following a high speed car chase, he was arrested and later convicted of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. He was detained under mental health legislation in a secure hospital. In 1994, he was given a conditional release. But once he left, he found a loophole, which meant he changed his name, yes, Barry to Harry, and moved to Wales, got married, and had a family. His family returned to Birmingham in 2005 and then Warren and his family had moved in next

door a year later. After the 2013 incident, Barry pled guilty to three charges of possessing a prohibited firearm, putting a neighbor in fear of violence, and making an IED. He was ordered to be detained indefinitely. He died in December 2014 from a suspected heart attack in a secure hospital. Warren and his family are doing really well, and me and my dad now regularly chat about true crime and our extra wary of our neighbors. Thank you for being your wonderful bad ass selves, for continuing to inspire us all on

a regular basis, and for being unapologetically you. I look forward to you joining me in the car next episode, kindest flow. Oh, flow. Wow, that's the timing of that. And then a year later, they move in next door. It's like the beginning of one of those nightmare neighbor horror shows. Lockwood Vince and I were looking for our first house. We found a house we really loved on the listing, but we realized that there had been seven

owners in the past two years. There's some crazy amount of owners. So we went to my stepdad, who's our real estate agent, and we're like, it's haunted, right? What's the deal? And he's like, it might be that there are bananas neighbors next door. So we didn't go to look at it. It's like, I'll take a haunting, but a fucking neighbor who like hates you.

Uh-uh. Yeah, no, no, no. That's bad. You can't get away. Yep. Can't get away. That's right. This subject line of this is a very unfortunate mix up.

Okay. Hello. For the last two years, I've been trying to figure out what hometown I should send in. It's been a toss up between my 16 year old brother fighting off a robber, the salon I work at getting robbed at Knife Point midday, or me almost calling the cops on my dad's weird dealer when I was five, but I chose something more lighthearted. Okay.

Great. I love when it's like, I could tell you this. I could tell you this. I'm telling you this. I love those. Yeah. Because here's the thing. Anyone who writes an email like that, and I hope this is from E. So I hope that E remembers

now you can circle back and send in all those other ones. That's right. We'll never stop needing minisodes. We won't. We've committed to doing this for 45 years. Okay. There's, there's been a minisode around there in 45 years. 45 years.

So my brother was in Boy Scout and my dad was very active in it as most of the fathers were. On his first scout camping trip, my father volunteered to be a cook, but when you're around that many children, a criminal record check is required. What? Oh, no. Yep. Well, and thank God it is.

Yeah. Yeah. Good. A week later, my dad's informed that he can't volunteer because he was charged with selling cocaine. This was news to not only the scout leaders, but to my dad. You can imagine how shocked a man who had never sold cocaine in his life was to hear this.

A few years before, my dad saw some sketchy kid in our very family-friendly neighborhood who was clearly off his rocker as the good father he is, he called it in out of concern. It turned out the kid was carrying enough cocaine to be charged with intent to sell. But a kicker is that they mixed up my dad's name with the guy who had the cocaine. No. So my dad was just casually living life with a drug trafficking charge. Oh, my God. All was sorted out and my dad was able to attend the camp.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for all that you do and your podcast makes my long road trips much more enjoyable-y. Ugh. That, that is so fun. I mean, Alyssa wasn't like, like he was at the border or something like that. I'm not sorry. I actually know someone who found out that their partner had a legit drug charge because they were always like, they went to a fucking Niagara Falls and they were like, let's go

into Canada. Let's go to the caniside. And the partner was like, nope, I don't want to. I don't want to. And then they were like, why? What's the problem? It's like, I can't go to Canada because I have a drug charge. Shit.

I never, they just weren't ever going to say anything or was the beginning of the relationship. I think it was the beginning of the relationship and happened a long time ago. Yeah. 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.

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makes it so that my food tastes good, which is hard to do on my own. It gives you everything, everything you need. Also 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.

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Okay, this one, I'm not going to reach the whole thing, but it's that starts out told to jump out of a car. You recently asked for stories when we were told to jump out of a car. So here we go. When I was in high school, some friends and I had driven up to Mount Lemmon in Tucson, Arizona, where I grew up driving back down. When we realized we were pretty much out of gas, God, this is fucking me even as an adult, but figured we could coast all the way down to a gas station at the base.

Sure. Why not? Roll those dice. The only tricky part was one stretch that leveled out for a bit. My friend Mark and I were in the back seat and as the car started slowing down, he told me that we should help by pushing. He opened his door, jumped out and started jogging alongside helping to push, not to be outdone.

He opened my door and stepped out, did not start jogging and fell. As it turns out, we were still going about 10 miles per hour and you can't just step out of a moving car like it is parked. That's true. I did somehow manage to grab onto the armrest on the door with both hands to catch my fault, but now with my arms fully stretched out in a Superman pose, gripping the armrest with my fingers, I found myself being dragged alongside the car. After what felt like forever, but was probably only about 20 seconds of being dragged over

the dirt with a creeping panic, I had realized that my weight was causing the door to slowly close and in doing so, it was guiding my lower body underneath the car. Yep. This is when I resigned that I was 100% going to be run over. This was an old-ass boat of a car with a huge back door, so it was going slowly, which gave me a little time to process. I realized that if I let go when the door was almost shut, the rear tire might hit my abdomen versus if I let go earlier, then I would just have my legs run over.

What a choice. Good God. It's a fucking mate. Sorry. I hate to ask this, but how old is this? Is this teenager stuff? Oh, yeah. This is teenager stuff.

Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The rear tire ran over me and as the car slowly pulled away, I gave up completely and just continued to lay on the ground. Yeah. It was only when Madeline, the driver, saw my crumpled body in the rear view mirror that anyone realized I was out of the car. That's correct.

The entire time I was being drugged outside the car, I was all caps completely silent. It never occurred to me to call out or tell anyone. I just quietly struggled and then closed and then chose to be run over instead of just saying, Hey, could you stop the car for a sec? Hey, could you fucking stop driving? That is such a life. You're just like, well, this is my problem. I'm going to fucking deal with it and take whatever happens instead of being like, Hey,

I need help. That's like what therapy is. It's like, Hey, can you stop the car real cool? Hey, here's the thing. I need to sign up to have a professional explain to me how I don't deserve to get run over. And I actually, if, and that my need to not be run over is valid, no matter who's driving or what they're doing. And you're not putting anyone out by needing someone to stop so you don't get your legs

run over. I really relate to that though, not to, I relate to Samantha of not being able, just being trained out of asking for help because you get like dismissed so much that after a while you're like, well, if I can't do it for myself, like I have to solve this problem. Someone could stop the car easily. There isn't the choice between getting your legs run over, getting your abdomen run over are not the only two choices. There's one more, which is stop the fucking car.

Just start yelling and just start yelling something or just, but I also get the point of like being so embarrassed all of a sudden when you're just like, I fucked up so bad. Like nobody noticed me. Yes. And also where's Mark, like Mark jumped out and ran along. This was his fucking plan. Mark didn't see her. Yeah.

Was she trying to be kind of dainty lady like, and then she, because it's really my favorite visual is opening the door and then being stretched out Superman stuff. You don't want anyone to see that shit. The, at the very least you were absolutely in the right to yell Mark, what kind of plan is this? Yeah. Don't trust Mark. Don't trust.

Everyone knows don't trust Mark. Like that's the number one thing. Mark is like, Mark's wearing dove, dove running shorts and no shirt. He's like, cool. It's cool. If you just get out and run alongside. It's like, it is for you, Mark. Yeah.

I get Samantha's want to be like, I'm not, Mark's not going to show me up. I'm a badass too. And then they're like, oops. What if Samantha was lightly in love with Mark and she was just trying to show that she too can get out of a moving car and run alongside it. I'll chill. No NBD. Right, or maybe she was in love with Madeline and she was like, I'm going to show Madeline

fuck Mark. I'm going to show Madeline what I can fucking do. She's like, I'm going to show Madeline that I never ask for anything and I'll never make a peep if I'm even if I'm being run over by a fucking car. Okay. Uh, I was pretty dirty and kind of sore, but it worked out because I got all the attention a middle child could ever dream of from my friends. We made it to the gas station the next day my legs swelled up like crazy and I never told

my mom. So there it is. Stay sexy and stay in the damn car, Samantha. She her. God, I almost want to guess that Samantha's mom was a nurse because that's that kind of that's exactly the kind of thing we're like, I did get run over, but it's I'll just ice him. It's yeah.

Samantha's mom had no sympathy when you got hurt because you did something dumb. It was like, well, what did you fucking think was going to happen kind of? Yeah. Right. Yeah. Probably also sorry, but she had her legs run over and it just like they didn't break or she didn't look into it further further is the great question out of them all. I don't know.

Yeah. We need a follow up on that one. That's Samantha. Great job. That's yeah. That was a good one. Good visuals. Okay.

The subject line is, who does this drunk child belong to? I love it. Hi. Hello. Yada, yada, yada. Let's get a move on. Okay. Picture it.

South Carolina, 1975. I have just been dethroned from my six year run as baby of the family by the arrival of my sister. My mom's in the hospital and my dad's in charge of getting the house ready for Christmas and keeping two older brothers and me alive. Not only have I been summarily dismissed from my place in the spotlight of baby and shunted into the ignominy that is the middle child syndrome and then in parentheses it says just call me Jan, but I also have a very bad cold.

My grandmother had taken me to the doctor and he prescribed dimetap back before you could get it over the counter, you know, when they had alcohol in it. Hell yeah. Right? Have some fun. One of the greatest and earliest memories is at our very first house jumping on my bed and drinking grape cough syrup. It tasted so good back then.

It was so good and I was just like, what a great day. I would just pause jumping on the bed to drink a little cough syrup. Little scissor right there. It was like, that's how you know you were an alcoholic. I was five and I could figure out where the good stuff was. Well they kept it in the fridge, I remember they kept it in the fridge, right? And have that little weird spoon that was like a measuring spoon or you were like, open up.

Hell yeah. Or the bubble gum one. In the 70s it was pre-bubble gum flavor, pre-spoon. You just got your little shot glass that was plastic that went on top of the lid. They're just like creating alcoholics at this point. Yeah. Okay. Yes.

The prescription and came home where my gammy, who's named Lib, gave dad the instructions for dosage. Perhaps he paid attention to the directions, but who knows? He gave me a dose before dinner. The thing is, I was sick and I didn't feel like eating, especially since dad wasn't known for his cooking skills back then. I wasn't perking up, so he figured he should give me a bump since it didn't seem to be working.

A bump of dime a ton. I love it. Well, something worked. My father ended up calling my mom at the hospital and saying, you have a drunk six-year-old. No, you don't. Yep. Mom's response was, no, I have a newborn. You have a drunk six-year-old.

Hell yeah. Yeah, she knows. It's been 46 years and that story still gets pulled out and presented like I'm the lush. That's right. Personally, I think my dad was just prepping me for later life when the new rival would drive an older me to drink. Stay sexy and make sure that your kid is eaten before dosing them, Julie. Yeah, dad, that's on you.

That's another one of those, like, not like, you got drunk. Why did you get your kid drunk? It's like, stop blaming the six-year-old for the meds. You fed her without fucking your shitty dinner. Yeah, this setup as it exists now is when you hold up a spoon, that child's going to open her mouth because that's the trust and that's you're in charge. That's what it's like. And also, can you imagine calling a woman who just had a baby to be like, you've got

a drunk six-year-old. You've got to deal with this drunk six-year-old. I love that she was like, no, you're not babysitting. You are parenting. Yeah, that's right. Fucking shut up. Welcome to it. Yeah.

I'm a bitch. I'm a bitch. Send us your fucking stories, whatever they may be. Yes, please do, and also stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie?

This has been an Exactly Right production. Our senior producer is Hannah Kyle-Cryton, our producer is Alejandra Keck. This episode was engineered and mixed by Stephen Ray Morris. Our researchers are Jay 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. Listen, subscribe, and leave us a review on Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Goodbye. Goodbye to all of you who have been watching this episode. Thanks for watching. I will see you in the next episode. Bye.