My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 276

Episode Date: April 25, 2022

This week’s hometowns include a ‘50s sinkhole story and an extra helpful bank teller.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-soad. Hi. Welcome to it. What? We told you already. Are you ready for it or are you just gonna stand there with the air pods in your ears like a fool? Should I go first? Yeah, go first. Okay. The subject line of this email is the one time it really was the mob. And then in parentheses, it says, sorry, Karen. Hey, you too. I have been sitting on this one for a while, but with all the mafia talk and grandparents stories lately,

I realized that this might finally be capital M, my capital M moment. That is what this this mini-soad is all about. It's your moment. It's all for you, Emma. Okay. In 2007, when I was 16, I was dating a guy I'd met at camp who all called Jake in the parentheses, not his real name. During one particularly long heartfelt phone call, in parentheses, on a landline, no less, Jake told me about his grandpa, who he'd been close to before he died a few weeks earlier. Thinking cancer or a heart attack, maybe Jake replies, oh, he was shot in his driveway. Now, this was an immediate red flag for me. Great. Smart girl. You're gonna succeed. She's fucking got it. She's doing it. Jake told me that it had been a random case of mistaken identity and that

they'd never caught the perpetrator. But really, how many elderly men living in the suburbs are victims of a random drive by shooting. So I did what any burgeoning murdering would do and Google that shit. It turns out Jake's grandpa really was killed in a drive by shooting, but it definitely wasn't a case of mistaken identity. His grandpa had been the head of a faction of the Italian mob in an area north of Toronto renowned for mafia activity. He'd been killed by his second in command in an apparent power move. When I told Jake about what I'd read, he had absolutely no idea. Uh-huh. And in parentheses, it says, whoops, and was shocked to learn of his family's dealings. This is like if Meadow Soprano basically had some boyfriend that was like, uh, guess what? Your

dad's not a garbage man. Oh my God. Which probably did happen in that show. Okay. When he confronted his mum and uncle, his mum explained that she had kept it a secret to protect him and prevent his involvement in the quote family business. His uncle apparently emphasized that it was his quote blood-borne right. If he wanted to get involved now that he knew the truth about his family, but Jake said he politely declined. When I told my mum, who has never underreacted to anything. That is such a great description of someone. It's so perfect. Who has never underreacted to anything. She freaked out and immediately started thinking our phones were being tapped. Oh my God. Sure. And needless to say, after dropping an enormous

family bombshell on him that his beloved grandpa was actually a mafia kingpin, mine and Jake's relationship dwindled shortly thereafter. I love her. I just love it. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this hometown, which proves that sometimes it really just might be the mob after all. Stay sexy and always Google your grandparents or have someone do it for you, Emma. That's so good. That's such a 16-year-old thing to say. It's like no stopping to be like, should I be saying this? No. Yes. Guess what? And then you learn. That's how you learn. That's how you learn to zip it. Yeah. Mind. Yeah, business. Mind. Yeah, business. Okay. This one's called you get what you pay for. Just starts. Let me take you back to Halloween in the

early 90s. I was working at a bank in San Diego when a youngish man came into cash a check. As an astute teller, I'm always on the lookout for fraudulent checks, not to protect the assets of my employer, but because they paid you $40 if you caught a bad check and 75 if you kept the check and the ID. Yes. That's smart. Oh my God. There's a bounty on bad check writers. Which is like how you treat employees. Like do something awesome and you get fucking money for it. You know what I mean? That's right. Yeah. My spidey sense was up when I first looked at this guy. There was nothing over just a weirdish vibe and a faded Hawaiian shirt. That's all you need. The check was $150 and in the memo section was written loan but spelled L-O-N-E.

What are the two signs a check may be forged? Misspellings and memos. I didn't know that to do. Like if you write haircut, it's like suspicious. So smart. It makes perfect sense because if you're really like writing your bills, do you take your time to really get specific? No. But how many times have you written like butt stuff on your friends to check you write your friend the fucking best? Not weed. Not weed butt stuff. Misspellings and memos. Now add to that an expired sketchy military ID and I knew my car payment was made for the month. Wow. Tough. I put the check info into the computer. Yes, we had computers 30 years ago and there were no red flags but that is not what I told the guy in front of me. I'm sorry, sir. This check

requires I verify it with the maker and I walked away to a phone out of reach of his arms and ears. Now most forgers realize they have been had and leave. Not this guy. I called the woman who owned the account. Her response was I did not write that check. I had a party last night and he was there and stole a bunch of stuff from me. I am scared. Shit. I immediately put her on hold and called 911. By the way, remember I said it was Halloween. I had sewn a prom dress, taffeta, peach, puffy sleeves and my dad's old suit together. Half my face was made up, big hair and full on makeup and the other half had a fake mustache and the five o'clock shadow. That is a fucking classic Halloween costume. Why don't we see that anymore? It is so remember that was the you might be too

young for this but there used to be a lip syncing TV show that was syndicated and it was on on the weekends like Saturday and Sunday called Putting on the Hits and they're the one that won like when they finally had like a championship or whatever. The one that got the most votes was a person dressed like that that was singing a duet. So they would turn and they turn this way. It was like islands in the stream half and half, you know, Dolly Parton and whoever talent, pure talent, genius, vision. So they're dressed like this as we're calling the cops. Yes. Okay. By this time our felonious friend was getting a little anxious. I returned to him leaving the check and ID by the phone that was out of reach because without them I would not get paid. In my most

reassuring and earnest voice, let him know that I really wanted to cash that check for him but I was having a little trouble getting in touch with the account holder. Please have a seat and I will let him know when everything is okay. And even if I could not verify the check, I might be able to cash it anyways. I still had the woman on hold and checked back with her every few minutes. Eventually the forger returned to my window to see what was happening. Sir, I reached the account holder. She does not remember writing this check and there's a police officer behind you who would like to talk to you. Fortunately, I assumed correctly that the man in uniform was legit and not someone dressed as a copper for Halloween. I was like, Oh, I knew Dave. I'm a

stripper. I'm just trying to cash my paycheck from Chippendales. Right. The police questioned him and found the woman's property in his car. Before leaving, the officer came to me. The perpetrator claimed the check was for sexual services rendered. Not alone, L. O. N. E. No. Her response, the woman who whose check it was was, Yeah, I had sex with him, but it wasn't very good. And I definitely would not have paid for it. Stay sexy and beware of bank tellers who are way too helpful. PS, I was picked for best costume and want to pay day off. Yes. No name. How are we going to celebrate your name? Wow. That's so hilarious. I want stories of people who worked in banks and the sketchy shit they've seen. Yes. Right. Or that. Yes. Bank employees. Now is your time. Yeah.

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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 Hello, fresh.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 Hello, fresh.ca slash murder 20 and use code murder 20. Goodbye. Hey, I'm Aresha. And I'm Brooke. And we're the hosts of wonderies 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, add free on the Amazon music or Wondery app. Okay, I'm not going to read you the subject line, it just starts Hello, all. I sadly did not get to see our Santa Barbara show when y'all rolled in many moons ago before the Rona, but my friends who went said you were amazing. Any who, any who I have a hometown story from when I attended college in Santa Barbara. And the scene is our return home from a drunken night out

downtown near where y'all performed. The idea that you, the people from Santa Barbara saying y'all is the funniest thing in the world. Maybe they were a Texan transplant. Okay, we had taken Bill's bus and then a parentheses queue excited screams from past and current Santa Barbara drunk college students, which is a bus designed to take the college community downtown for a small round trip fee. You get a wristband and everyone knows that you are a badass bitches who put safety first. It's pretty magical. Anyway, we're going back to our student apartments after having a pretty fun girls night out. And we're all fairly drunk, but not driving things to our friend Bill and his bus. We were running because it was winter and freezing and our jackets didn't match our cute

outfits barefoot and in short dresses with our heels in hand. When one of my girlfriends called out laughing, Hey, look, a dead guy. We all laughed with her thinking silly drunk girl and kept running. Then I noticed that what she had saw and I thought wait, there was a man laying on the ground in the middle of a parking lot near our complex. He wasn't moving, but he was in an odd position. He was on his back crisscross with his hands crossed over his chest like a super creepy yoga pose. We decided to go check on him, but we were still pretty drunk. So we mostly just poked him and yelled, Hey, dead guy, are you okay? He didn't respond. But we could tell he was breathing. And then in parentheses, it says sigh of relief. So we chose the most sober of our group to call the

police. They asked us to stay with him and the EMT arrived shortly after they couldn't wake him either. And we had gathered around and they hadn't shoot us away yet. We watched as one of the EMTs performed a quote sternum rub, which is a painful experience will wake up almost anyone no matter how deep their stupor. His eyes shot open and he gasped for breath. And my girlfriends and I all shrieked. And one of them even yelled sorcery. And then we were politely asked to leave and talk to the police. We never found out what happened to the poor guy, but they hooked him up to some IVs and rushed him to the hospital. When they realized he was so drunk, he couldn't even recognize them or tell them his name. He was in good hands and probably went on to have a very

successful college career. At least that's what I tell myself. Stay sexy and always check on the dead guy, SJ. I mean, they maybe saved his entire life. They absolutely could have if he was like could have choked on his vomit or like, yes, he was in a total blackout. Man, sternum rub. What is it? Oh, I don't want to Google that. You can party as much as you want, but please stop one drink before you get the sternum rub. I say. Get that tattooed on your finger. Please stop before the sternum rub. Use an index card if you must. This is called Baby Georgia and how you guys helped us become parents. And yes, this is a fucking pad on the back one, but it's cute. Hi, y'all. Not a hometown, but hopefully still worth a quick personal read.

Oh, oops. I'm like, tell everyone. Simply put, I owe you both a massive thank you. My partner and I welcomed our baby Georgia June and then exclamation mark exclamation mark exclamation mark into the world two weeks ago. The birth we planned and hoped for was not in the cards for us and proved to be a long, painful, emotional journey to becoming parents about 20 hours in and more intense, painful, back to back contractions. Then it says shout out to all birthing people. Then I could count my partner bravely called for the epidural. As she got some relief and much needed rest, I was buzzing in an anxiety level just below full meltdown. As we hadn't prepared for this birth story, I didn't even think to bring my anxiety

meds to the hospital. So what does one do? First, send an emergency SOS to my psychiatrist. Second, do the only thing I knew just might work. I curled up on the not the comfiest hospital recliner, put a blanket over my head, air pods in my ears and turned on your voices. I'm not kidding. It was just like getting an out of and drip straight to the soul. All in all, it was probably only five minutes before the midwife came back in the room and we all got back to the task at hand. But those minutes brought me back down to something resembling baseline and baseline meant being able to show up for my partner wholeheartedly. Fast forward, Georgia June was born in an unplanned C section and is as healthy as could be.

Thank you for being part of our birth story and bringing Georgia's namesake laugh into the world. You both have a gift. Thank you for sharing it with the world. We appreciate you more than you could know. All our love, Iris, Mary, Georgia and Muzzy. Oh, are you proud to have a baby with your name? Well, you know, I know it's not for me, but I'm born in June too. So Georgia June. So it is for you. I don't think so. I think it's just they like the name Georgia. The subject line is a little sinkhole story, lighthearted and short. Hello, Georgia, Karen,

pets and our beautiful Steven. I want to start off by saying how much I love you guys. I've been listening for about two years now and I want to thank you. You guys started my passion for true crime and helped me get through the pandemic. Also, being 14 is not fun sometimes. So being able to listen to you guys rant about the judicial system or T Stephen always brightens my day. And then the parentheses, it says, yes, I started listening at 12. I'm totally fine. Don't worry. Oh my Lord. Can I just also we say being 14 is hard most of the time. So I support you. Yes, everyone goes through it. Remember everyone else is having a horrible time too, not just you. It feels it's very isolating and lonely and you feel like it's just you,

but it's everybody. That's for any age, really. True. Okay, a little backstory. My family and I moved into a new house last year because I have six people in a four bedroom house. It's not ideal for two teens, a nine year old and an 11 year old. Also shout out to my twin Alex who introduced me to you guys. She's awesome about Alex. About three months ago, my dad randomly mentioned that there was an article that he came across that Lex and I might find interesting. The article contained an account of a sinkhole opening in 1957. It turns out we live on the very edge of a repaired sinkhole. Bye. What a discovery. I remember me and my sister just started screaming. Teenage girls. We just started screaming since this is basically our dream.

The full story is that in 1957, 120 foot wide and 60 foot hole opened up in the ground. Can you imagine just rolling out of bed going to brush your teeth and then looking out the window and there's just a fucking sinkhole out your window? Hey, watch your mouth. Young lady. Hey. Anyway, this city discovered the reason for the sinkhole was because a really large sewer pipe broke and caused the road to just collapse. I am not a sinkholeologist, so I have no idea how that even happens. Miraculously, no one was killed or injured. About 10 houses had to be evacuated though and the repairs took two years. And then in parentheses, it says hopefully they had insurance.

No, you sue the fucking city. That's your insurance. If you have a house and you don't have insurance, yeah. Also a 14 year old worry about insurances. It's a lot. It's precious. My smile is just getting bigger by the moment. It only swallowed a light pole in a tree, no cars or anything, which is somewhat disappointing. Not that I wanted death, just not as exciting. Love you ladies to death. Please never stop making this podcast. Y'all are awesome. The next time you guys have a Seattle live show, hit me up. I'm so fucking wiggly. Andy, she, her. Oh, Andy. Andy and Lexie.

The twins. The twins have to come to our live Seattle show. That's right, but they have to have parent permission slips. Hit me up. Hit me up. Hey, Andy, it's Karen. I wanted to know. You'd come to our show. Hey, I'm a grown woman. Come to our show. Hey, my last one is called not a joke. Actual Stephen King correspondence. Oh, Karen, Georgia and the MFM fam. Look, listen up, you two. I've done just about everything under the sun to try to get either one of you to acknowledge my existence and this true crime written universe of ours from Twitter to Instagram.

I've tried it all. If either of you were on the cameo app, let's just say that I would have paid for my own personal birthday shout out at this point in my life, but don't worry because I've got some brand new shit to tell you about. Anyways, I recently escorted my own nosy ass into my dad's office in my childhood home to escort to perform a long overdue and unwarranted search from there. I proceeded to open any and every drawer in the room. I had remembered hearing tidbits from my not so quiet Portuguese nugget of a mother in the past that before I was born, my dad owned a handful of obscure bookstores in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. I even found a box of crispy brand new, sorry, I mean new 40 years ago, plastic shopping bags with the name

of one of his stores printed on them called chapter one. Oh, good name for a bookstore, right? Sure. At this point, I knew my mom wasn't making shit up. During my raid, I found a type written envelope addressed to my dad to one of his stores in Danvers, Massachusetts. In the upper left hand corner of the envelope, there was one very familiar last name hint from Maine that every murderino knows and loves. My stomach dropped. It said King. That's right. All caps. Stephen King himself typed a letter to my dad and then proceeded to sign the fucking letter. Apparently, my dad had written Mr. King a letter in 1981 personally inviting him to the Danvers stores grand opening in the coming months. Unfortunately, in the letter, he regrets to

inform my dad that he will be on vacation with his family during the weekend of the event. So he'd be unable to attend. Like a true legend, he wished my dad well and stated that he would keep my dad's store in mind if he decided to go on a book tour for the release of any of his upcoming novels. Oh, this coming May of 2022 will be 14 years since my dad passed away out of nowhere in late 2007. Doctors found that he had an aggressive tumor growing on a non functional part of his liver. When they went to remove it, they discovered that the tumor wasn't operable. I was 17 years old when it happened. I miss him terribly and think about him all the time. He was an extremely smart person and I'm so glad he decided to keep that letter stowed away in his

office all of these years for his prime 31 year old murdering a daughter to find one day and totally geek out over. Stay sexy and make sure you include a return address when you mail a letter to a world famous author, Megan. P.S. Obviously, I'm no handwriting expert, but preliminary Google research shows that the signature in the letter to my dad shows consistency with verified Stephen King autographs that I was able to find for purchase online. Verify. Verify. Trust but verify. Megan must verify at all times. That's really exciting because also it's a huge loss and then it's almost like a part of your dad's personal life that also is exciting to you too. It's a shared interest and one of the great authors of our time. Totally, especially for a murderer now.

Yeah, that's fair. I love it. All right. Well, we did it. We did it again. Send us your stories, please. My favorite murder at gmail.com and until that time, please 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 Jay Elias and Hailey Gray. Email your hometowns and fucking hurrays to myfavoritmurder at gmail.com. Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at myfavoritmurder and Twitter at myfavemurder. Listen, follow and leave us a review on Amazon

Music, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget, you can listen to new episodes one week early on Amazon Music or early and ad free by subscribing to Wondry Plus in the Wondry app. Goodbye.