My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 280

Episode Date: May 23, 2022

This week’s hometowns include the importance of gun safety and a sister nicknamed “Satan.” 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-so. Hi. What's up? Are you ready to hear your own stories? Yep. I bet you are.

Otherwise, why would you have pressed play? Yeah. If you have other stuff to do, you can come back to this later. It's literally forever on the Internet. Yeah. We'll wait for you. You want to go first? Sure.

Okay. This is called resubmitting my grandma plus magician plus dumb kid hometown story. When I was in elementary school back in the 90s, I basically lived at my grandparents' house for a week or so every three months. At the time, my grandmom, Velma, amazing, was a secretary for a slightly sketchy guy who owned a few fast food joints in her small town. She mostly worked from home but also ran errands for him to the post office, bank and office supply store.

It was always a treat to join her for those trips. I especially love putting the checks in the sucky tube thing at the bank and getting lollipops in return. The fucking greatest. My parents didn't belong to that bank. Yeah. They told my friends whose parents did belong to that bank would need to go banking. Yeah.

It's just a pneumatic tube but it truly felt like it was like the year 2000 in 1980. One day, my grandmom had a swing by her boss' apartment to drop off some mail and take care of some things while he was out of town. I was happy to tag along. Now, the thing you should know about grandmom's boss is that in addition to owning some Burger Kings, he was also a magician on the side. Of course he was. Sure.

So I was disappointed that he wasn't going to be home to pull a coin from behind my ear. But while grandmom was busy going through papers and talking on the phone with her boss, I occupied myself with my favorite pastime, being nosy and snooping through people's things. Every kid's favorite thing. Specifically, I was on the lookout for a quote, magic coloring book. I was starting to feel that my search would be fruitless and then I found it. Not the magic coloring book, but a pistol. It must be a magic pistol that squirts water, or maybe flowers will pop out.

I gleefully picked it up, whipped around, and leveled the gun at my grandmom. As I was aiming for her head with my finger on the trigger, I said, grandmom, is this real? I needed to know if water or flowers would pop out of the gun when I pulled the trigger. I remember thinking how heavy the gun was. My finger tightened around the trigger as I asked again, do you think this is real? Only at that moment, my grandmom finally turned around and what did she see? A grinning nine-year-old girl with no front teeth aiming a real gun at her head with

a look of maniacal excitement. The expression of horror on her face has scarred me for life. I don't remember much after that, just bits and pieces, me crying hysterically in the car, her crying hysterically and yelling at her boss over the phone. Needless to say, I never went back to his apartment. I felt a lot of shame over the years due to this incident. It's only been since listening to your podcast and hearing some other murdering stories in the minisodes that have come to understand and accept that even relatively smart and

well-intentioned kids can be idiots. Because of course I thought that gun was a magic trick gun. As a kid, that made the most sense based on all of my experiences up until then. I wasn't stupid. I knew people didn't leave real guns laying around. That would be fucking stupid. That's exactly perfectly put. Yeah.

Unfortunately, we know that's not actually true. People do leave real guns laying around and that is fucking stupid. Thankfully, my trigger finger was weak and my grandmom acted fast. She is now a great-grandmother and still rocking it at 86 years old. As for me, I'm relatively well-adjusted. Stay sexy and lock up all the guns, Alisa. Alisa, you're so right. I love that she was able to take some of the blame off of herself.

We're all learning now, I think, through these minisodes that you're nine. You're nine. The adults are the ones that are supposed to be in charge. That's right. I mean, I just don't think there's that kind of freedom anymore, but it's like you should brief children if you're going into it, like, hey, keep your hands to yourself. Don't open a drawer. This is somebody else's house.

We're in and we're out. Or sit here. Here's a coloring book and some crayons. What is your project right now? You're not free-ranging over someone else's house. Yeah. Also, if it's somebody like a magician or a clown or a swimming instructor, try to think the way a kid would think of how things might work because you're now in the realm of magic

or whatever. What a horrifying close call. I know. Okay. The subject line of this is shortened. Lead abduction and badass grandma. Cast crew and menagerie. Long time fan.

I adore you guys. My hometown story is set in 1992 Barstow. You may know it. I think. Middle of the Mojave with nothing but bushes, truck stops and meth. There are more than a few juicy stories I can send you from this place, but this one packs a punch quite literally. I was just a few weeks old and my grandma Luanne was watching me.

Grandma Luanne is an eccentric boomer who chain smokes, constantly yells and cusses, rhymes randomly, saying things like, get back, Jack. It's hilarious. And once gave herself stitches to avoid her mother's punishment, a general badass. Like, I need that story. You cannot. Yeah. Please.

And if you have any stories of someone giving themselves stitches, we need that story. That description. Doesn't make sense. She basically assumes that the grandmother was a child giving herself stitches to get out of being punished. Right. Or did she make herself need stitches to get out of being punished? Yeah.

Did you cut your knee, like, fall down intentionally and then you ended up getting stitches? Right. But the idea of giving yourself stitches is really intense. A lot of questions. Okay. Anyway. Okay. She was doing office work late in the evening at the apartment she managed and lived at

with baby me asleep a few feet away. Her ex-boyfriend came in and was trying to get back together. She had broken up with him because her friend's baby always cried around him and grandma Luanne faithfully trusted the opinions of dogs and babies. Her ex had been in and out of prison for various crimes and was involved in some pretty dark stuff. He had some teardrop tattoos by his eye and his nickname bandit tattooed across his forehead. Hi.

I kind of really hope this person changed the name on the forehead for the sake of the story. Right? Right. At some point, bandit mentions that he wants my grandma and the baby to come live with him in the mountains so they could raise me as their own. This escalated as my grandma stood between him and me explaining why that was a terrible idea and obviously out of the question.

He continued to insist and she continued to decline. When she tried to get him to leave, he punches her in the head and knocking her out. She tells me that she remembers thinking we would never be seen again if she did not get up. Luckily, when she fell, she felt her hand touching the baseball bat behind the door. And then in parentheses, it says, the protective weapon of choice in my family. She still has no idea how she managed to get up, swinging wildly and screaming at the top of her lungs.

One thing about tweakers, there's always someone awake and prepared for action. Help came quickly. Oh my God. That's so true. A band of meth heads that were like, we're here for you. Yeah. They've just been like sitting in their lazy bars with their nails dug in waiting for any noise to call them into action.

Help came quickly. Bandit ran off and I was safely given to a family member next door. Amazingly, I slept through the whole thing. Yeah, right. Grandma Luann was taken to the hospital and ended up with some minor injuries. I'm told you could see Bandit's fistprint with his telltale missing ring finger on her face for a while. Oh my God.

She recounts being frantic in the ER, afraid that he was coming for her and that he would kill everyone in his way. Coincidentally or not, there was someone shooting at another ambulance in the area around the same time. Stay sexy and maybe don't date guys named Bandit. Alexis, she heard. Oh my God, the idea of grandma dating an ex-con is like with tattoos on his face is like kind of hot.

I mean, you know, what it is, it tells me maybe some people got married young early in the family. Right. That was maybe the trend. So it wasn't like a classic grandma. Right. Maybe it was one of those kind of young gum chewing. Are you the mom or the grandma situation?

Right. I don't know why. Gum chewing is in it. It's just what I pictured. Oh, that's heavy. Okay. Looking for a better cooking routine? With meal planning, shopping and prepping handled, Hello Fresh has you covered.

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I am so sick of takeout. I miss cooking so much I haven't lifted a knife or a pan since like 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. 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. 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. This is another bad ass grandparent story hello to everyone, but especially Mimi who shares my name and seems like a cool bitch. I have been trying to find a relevant way to write in about my great grandparents since grandparents stories became a thing on this podcast, but I could never quite put something together until a few weeks ago when my grandpa met me for lunch and told me this story.

His side of the family is from northern Michigan, which is mostly populated by farmers and GM car factory workers way back in the day. My great grandpa, my grandpa's dad worked for a GM factory making car parts and he was an incredible worker and a great man. Back then your prospects would be determined by being a good person and he was the best of them. He came from nothing and worked really hard and eventually got offered the deal of a lifetime. The owner of the GM plant wanted to go into business with him.

He offered to sell my great grandpa half of the company so they could be equal co-owners. In the time of old cars, this would have made my family very, very wealthy. Unfortunately someone heard about this deal and didn't want it to go down. About two weeks after signing preliminary paperwork, the owner of the GM plant was found dead in his house along with his entire family. Oh God. The police were never able to catch the person who did it, but they left the paperwork confirming the sale to my great grandfather strewn over the bodies so the motive was clear.

A few lawyers came and told my great grandpa that he still had the right to purchase his part of the company, but after hearing the story of his friend's murder, he burned the paperwork, packed his bags and never went back. They moved to a beautiful house out in the country where my grandparents still lived to this day. Five generations of my family have spent summers on that land. They worked hard and raised a great family. They never got rich, but they were always rich in all the things that mattered.

Some people would take the risk for the money, but my great grandparents valued the right things and that has been passed all the way down to my children. I hope I can be half as amazing as they are. Also their names are Joe and Alice. Stay sexy and burn the paperwork, Mimi. That's horrifying. Yeah. That's such an old-timey story of like, yeah, the whole family got killed because of this

and they never found it moving on, never found out who did it. Never found out who did it and then, oh, who did end up running that plant? Huh. Never asked those people? Huh. Anyway. Yeah. Robert Barron's.

Robert Barron's. Robert Barron's. Okay. So the subject line of this email is Filipino folklore and funeral superstitions. And then it just starts, target audience reached in all caps. I just listened to Minnesota 267 and I am all caps, ecstatic that Filipino folklore stories and crazy immigrant superstitions were requested. I could tell you about the Mananungal, which is a disembodied vampire bat creature who

separates from their lower half to prey on sleeping pregnant women and children. No. Ew. Why does it have to be all of those things? I know. It's so many things. And the parentheses, it says, yikes, thought, thankfully, my uncle taught me how to defend myself against one.

They are vulnerable to salt and garlic, like most vampires, but the only way to defeat one is to find its lower half, season it with the aforementioned, and season it with the aforementioned condiments or light it on fire. This way the upper half can't return to the lower half and it'll die in the sunlight. Oh, sure. That makes sense. Right. Then there's the aswang.

And then it says aswang in parentheses and says, it's phonetic, but I thought I'd help anyway, which is much appreciated, which is a catch all term for witches, ghouls or evil creatures. There was an old woman that lived down the street from us that was suspected of kidnapping pets or rounding up feral animals from the streets to perform ritual sacrifice. She was highly suspected to be an aswang, and while my sister claims she stole our dog, I was more relieved that she didn't target children. The most interesting part of Filipino superstitions to me are our beliefs about funerals.

There's essentially an entire rulebook that dictates what you can and can't do after someone passes away, and none of them really hold that much water. For example, we have to cover mirrors with a cloth to prevent seeing the deceased in our reflection, which is an omen of death. That's also Jewish. Yeah. Jewish tradition, right? Yeah.

Different reasons. Yeah. You're also encouraged not to go straight home after a funeral and instead pass by a mall or a restaurant so that the spirits don't follow you home. Drop the spirit at the mall. Hey, here's 20 bucks. Go to Target. Go get yourself a promise.

Knock yourself out. Leave us alone. No. Here's a TGI Fridays. I was going to say, that must be why my family all stops at bars on the way to and from funerals. Smart. At this whole time, you didn't know. Lastly, you should not take photos of the deceased in their caskets, which is kind of

like, why do you want to? Yeah, it is weird that we do that sometimes. My sister did this unknowingly at my grandfather's funeral and was thoroughly scolded by my mom, but the worst of it really came a few weeks later when we tried to get the photos developed. The photo place returned one role, saying it was completely overexposed and could not be developed. That role contained my grandfather's photos. The other role contained ghoulishly faded photos of my family at the funeral.

I'm so glad to know there are Filipino murderinos. You can always count on us to have a lot of pride and build communities wherever we go. My family immigrated to the US when I was four and my mom was a badass ICU nurse who single-handedly made an amazing life for us here. Hell yes. There are a million stories of her ridiculous superstitions and stern hand in raising me, but that's an email for another time, maramingpagmamahal, which means lots of love, and then there's no name.

Oh, I love hearing about other people's superstitions and their family folklore. Right? Yes, send those, you guys. So good. So good. Wow. Love it. Okay, here's my last one.

I'm not going to tell you the title, but it does have one of my favorite things I realized recently when it says, light-hearted, question mark. That's always my... That says podcast in a nutshell. Yeah, light-hearted, maybe. Not really. Yeah. Hello, all.

Insert all the wonderful things people say here. Let me set the scene. It's summertime. There's a pool in my backyard and my best friend lives on the other side of a small field. We're nine. It's 80 degrees out. We are ready. I run across the short field to get her, and we start our brisk walk back to the oasis.

In my very early stages of murdering onus, I stop and say, hey, isn't that an arm over there? My friend looks and says, no, it's probably just a branch, and it says it's never a branch. I shrug, and we continue on. The next several hours are a blur of Marco Polo, mermaids, and nine-year-old gossip. Walking back to her house, exhausted from the sun, we are stopped by her dad. Girls, did you see Mr. Stage today? We both shake our heads and remember the arm.

Apparently, our 87-year-old neighbor was bringing grass clippings to the end of the street. He slipped and fell into a shallow ditch. He saw us walk by, pool ready, and shouted our names while waving his arm. Mr. Stage was found a short time later by my friend's dad. He was fine and lived on to his 90s, but our moms never missed an opportunity to ask us if we remember when we left an old man in a ditch to die. Oh, my God. Stay sexy, and remember, it's never a branch, Leslie, she, her.

P.S., whenever my Siamese cat Blanche hears Elvis at the sign-off, she meows back to him. I mean, that's really nice about Blanche, very sweet, but it's not going to cover up what you and your friend did and how you've coldly walked away from a man in a shallow ditch. It's with an arm. It must be a branch. No, this is an arm. A branch with fingers waving at you, calling your names.

But see, that is a perfect example of how powerful swimming is when you are a child. You cannot. What? Who cares? It's going to take so long to fix this. Can we just? Just let's go swimming. It's a branch.

That's not our responsibility, we're nine. Okay, here's my last one. It says, a sweet story about my sister. Hello to everyone, especially whoever's screening this email to see if it makes it. You do an amazing job, and there's, you do an amazing job there behind the scenes. So let me just tell you how appreciated your work is. Alejandra. Alejandra.

And then it says, the bribe will arrive shortly. And then she picked. So Alejandra can be bought. Yes. Everyone, please remember that. Anyway, it was tough narrowing down the stories about my siblings. We grew up in a small mining town where basically anything goes. Let me begin by explaining to you why we lovingly refer to my sister as Satan.

It started back in the late 70s when she got married, moved into her home with her husband, and received her very first PO box. It was box 666. This was innocent enough and not her doing, so no one thought to call her Satan just yet. Much later when her mother-in-law was literally on her deathbed and her mother-in-law being a tiny Mexican, very Catholic lady whose home was covered with crosses, pictures of Jesus, statues of saints, and a literal black velvet mural of the Last Supper. Wow, I want that.

Yes. My grandmother had a painting in her bedroom of Jesus. It was like an oil painting of Jesus that was really big, and it was the one where his heart is, you see his heart, and it's wrapped in thorns and it's on fire. And I used to go sit on her bed and just stare, I'd be like, check this shit out, like, what is going on? Why are you guys so dark? You guys are like, goth.

It's bananas. We're so goth. It's true. It's like, you're supposed to think about how he died for you, how she suffered for you. You are sinning like a fucking slob, and this guy is the one that, like, the reason you can sin and then get away with it is because of him. So go sit in grandma's room and take a look at that picture for a while.

Wow. Okay, anyway. So my sister was coming over to take her shift watching her. So remember, she was literally on, the mother-in-law literally on her deathbed. Oh, yeah, yeah. Her sister's coming over to take her shift watching her. My sister, who has a smoker's voice, rivaling George Burns, this is some old references from that movie.

Yeah. Stepped into the house and yelled, Lupe, how are you? To which her mother-in-law, again, literally on her deathbed, shakily replied, Satan, is that you? That was a good one, Karen, that boy. Right? Tiny Mexican Catholic lady. Oh my God.

That's what it, perhaps, could sound like. I love that Satan sounds like George Burns. It's amazing. Yeah. Those were great. Those were great. Okay. So she says, please don't, you know, don't judge.

I can just imagine poor Lupe lying in bed clutching her rosary and reaching for the peanut butter jar that held her holy water. After that incident, we began connecting the dots and jokingly referring to my sister as Satan. Fast forward a couple of years. My sister's sitting in Easter Mass when suddenly her husband looks at her and panic fills his face. He begins smacking the side of her head.

Yes, my friends, her hair had caught on fire in church. What? It was after this that the humor left our voices when we called her Satan and reverence crept in. Wow. Then there was the one time where she had too many Long Island ice teas and she got kicked out of church bingo, but that could happen to anyone, I think. They served Long Islands in church bingo?

Church bingo. Either they served them or she had it in like a thermos. Like, another sip of coffee. Yeah, but that could happen to anyone, I mean. But that could happen to anyone, I think. So of course, I really don't think that my sister is Satan and then there's a question mark in parentheses. But my family does love to share the stories and have a hearty laugh at her expense while

we carefully watch her out of the corners of our eyes. Love you all so much. Thanks for being a bright spot in the world. Stay sexy and keep a close eye on your siblings. One of them may be the dark lord of the underworld. And this one doesn't have a name on it either. Come on, you guys. Just make up a name.

We need to know. Please. How about just signed? Satan's sister. Satan's sister. Yeah. Wow. I love that so much.

I love family folklore, guys. We want to know the origins of the bananas names people call you or someone in your family who like all the bad luck happens to you all the time. People kind of stay away from you because of that. Satan? Is that you? She thought the devil was coming for her. I called out her name.

Loupe, how's it going? Loupe. I'm here for you. Loupe, it's my shift. All right. Well. Thanks for your stories. Yeah, guys.

Good job. Oh, stay sexy. Oh, 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 Steven Ray Morris. Our researcher is Gemma Harris. Email your hometowns and fucking her a's to myfavoritmurder at gmail.com. Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at myfavoritmurder and Twitter at myfavoritmurder. 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 in ad free by subscribing to Wondry Plus in the Wondry app.

Goodbye. Bye.