My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 285

Episode Date: June 27, 2022

This week’s hometowns include a first-person sinkhole experience and multiple dizzy bats.For more information on how to take action after the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, visit https://choice.crd.co/. 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. Hey everybody, before we start the episode today, we want to take a moment to address the June 24, 2022 Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. This decision stripped away the right to have a safe and legal abortion.

Everyone should have the freedom to decide what's best for themselves and for their families, including when it comes to ending a pregnancy. This decision has dire consequences for individual health and safety, and could have harsh repercussions for other landmark decisions. Restricting access to comprehensive reproductive care, including abortion, threatens the health and independence of all Americans. Learn more by visiting choice.crd.co. That's choice.crd.co. And if you're able to support others, please consider donating to abortion funds.

And thank you to Ariel Nysenblatt, the founder of Earbuds Podcast Collective, for starting this movement of podcasters making this announcement at the top of their podcasts in a time where people really are looking for help, looking for unity, looking to know what to do. This is an amazing movement to show how many there are of us, and how important coming together and unifying over this very important topic is. We encourage you to speak up, take care, and spread the word. Hello, and welcome to my favorite murder.

This is the many so. It's many. We read you your stories. You want to go first? Sure. Let's just get right into it. Hey, let's do it. No time like the present. That's right.

No time like the present for a sinkhole story. Hey. A subject line of this email is the sinkhole incident of 2003. Okay. Long time listener like obsessive slash have no life slash. I've listened to every episode six times. Hey. Like you.

We like you. Yeah. A full salute to you. And first time caller. I've had several stories I've wanted to share with you both over the years, and finally decided on a quote unquote Karen classic, the sinkhole incident of 2003. Child of divorce here, living mainly with my father for the better part of two years in a suburban town in Montreal, Canada,

where supervision was close to non-existent. We kids had free range running wild and causing havoc. In parentheses, it was great. My best friend Jess and I were dirty, dirty kids. We were eight years old and we love to muck shit up. We lived on a cute little street, white picket fence looking, and our address was 911, Murderito from the get-go. Am I right?

There's so many parentheticals in this email that I'm just going to stop saying them. There was a crescent on our street, little island-like thing in the middle of the road, mainly covered in grass with a fire hydrant smack in the middle. One day we noticed the crescent was considerably muddy compared to other days. We thought nothing of it and carried on with our game of picking sticks and chasing squirrels further down the road. Canada is riveting, isn't it? A little while later, we heard screams coming from the crescent.

We looked over to see our neighbor Lauren standing in the middle of the muddy crescent screaming for help. We ran toward her, ignoring the fact that she was violently shaking her hands in a no-don't-come-this-way fashion. As Jess and I ran onto the crescent and got closer to Lauren, we immediately started sinking fast. First person, sinkhole. Mud filled our little billy boots and we instantly started sinking,

each stride looking more and more like a slow motion scene from a poorly-directed action film. Suddenly, we were stuck. The mud was too thick and gooey for our thin eight-year-old legs. Jess managed to crouch down and dig for her boot, pulling it off and using it as a shovel to dig her other leg out. As an eight-year-old, it's the genius engineering. She then proceeded to get Lauren out, huffing and puffing, pulling her out by her armpits.

All the while, I was sinking, sinking fast. I was up to my waist in mud when I started dramatically crying and screaming for help. There was nothing Jess and Lauren could do. They were safe on the pavement by this time and didn't want to reemerge themselves in the sinkhole of mud. I started screen-crying for my dad, who was about 20 yards away at our house. In parentheses, it says, the length of a bowling alley, I Googled it. Trying to keep this as short as I can, but it's important to add in that my dad,

who allowed us free range, also expected us to get ourselves out of every sticky situation we got ourselves into. He also smokes a lot of pot and it's just your typical happy-go-lucky-life-is-a-hunky-dory type of fella. He heard my screams and being the good old dad that he is, came over, saw me, now ribbed deep in mud, laughed, and turned around and walked back home. No. Okay, there's a limit to getting yourself out of problems. And I think that's when it hits your armpits. Yeah, when mud is coming close to your face and engulfing it.

I obviously started crying even harder now. I accepted my fate thinking I was going to die. My first thought, who would feed my tomagotchis? A few seconds later, my dad came back with a shovel. He stood at the edge of the crescent and threw it to me while saying, dig yourself out. This sent myself and my best friend Jess into hysterical tears and my dad, of course, got a real chuckle out of it. I tried to dig, covered in tears and snot, and then finally he and three other dads on the block who put their beers down for five minutes wrangled me out of the mud as I sobbed.

Turns out the pipes from the fire hydrant in the crescent had burst, causing it to turn into a sink hole and sink hole-esque mud lake, thus leading to us idiot kids sinking. Jess's other boot is still stuck beneath and now dry crescent. And we constantly laugh about how my dad joked about leaving me for dead. So stay sexy. And if you find a muddy sink hole, make sure your dad isn't three beers in a joint deep before calling for help. Bye, Cassidy. Oh, Cassidy, that's a good one.

Yeah, sink hole first person and a little quicksandy thrown in for a good measure, which is fun. The great, there's a really good popular tweet and I can't remember who wrote it that was like, I really thought that quicksand was going to be a bigger part of my adult life when I was a kid, which is so funny because it's true. One of those top things to look out for, but no, it's gone. It's gone. It's not an issue. This is called an army surgeon, a room full of traumatized children and a wedding. Hi, and welcome to my email. I'm from a small town about an hour from Seattle in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains.

The only things we have to brag about are the second best state fairgrounds and a supermax prison that is on the same hill as my former high school. Seriously, I watch the prisoners work out in the yard every day for a year instead of paying attention in geometry class. Hell yeah. We had a cemetery outside of our algebra class and I stared at it constantly. Yeah. Our school colors were black and orange and everyone wore costume prison jumpsuits to football games, which got us number one in the state for school spirit and also number one in fucked-up-edness. Okay, on to the story.

In addition to weird prison town stuff, I was raised strictly Mormon. When I was 13, they held a youth group event for all the teens in town where a member of the church had just returned from his deployment in Afghanistan and was invited to share about his experiences. I don't know why they thought that was a good idea for extremely sheltered youths or why it was a church event at all because I don't think Jesus would have sanctioned it. The man was an army surgeon and he proudly presented us with a PowerPoint filled with photos of all the people he got to operate on in the field. Slide after slide of mangled limbs and naked bodies with shrapnel wounds. These are 13-year-old Mormons. Yeah. My sharpest memory of that day is when the 18-year-old boy next to me ran out and threw up in a trash can after we saw a guy whose legs had been blown off by a grenade and ended up dying.

The worst part is that none of the youth group leaders did anything, even when the kids started screaming and throwing up. They just let him do his thing and traumatized us forever. I'd been an extremely sensitive kid and I firmly believed that desensitizing experience is why I'm such a morbid murderer now today. Cut to seven years later, I break my collarbone and who else is my surgeon but fucking army surgeon guy? He actually remembered me and I kind of just awkwardly laughed. He fixed me up and sent me on my way and I was happy to never think about him again. I succeeded in that quest until I met a quite Icelandic guy at a house party. I noticed he has a gnarly arm scar and I asked about it.

I am not subtle. Come to find out he had a horrible snowboarding accident the year before and was airlifted to the hospital in my hometown and the same army surgeon fixed his wrist, ribs and punctured lung. Wow. He had been in the hospital in my hometown for a month while I drove past every day. It was such a weird connection and we really start hitting it off. Today that Icelandic guy and I have been married for one and a half years, have a dog, just got his green card and will finally be able to visit Iceland and meet his family. Maybe the army surgeon didn't directly introduce us but it sure feels like fate. Stay sexy and don't let army surgeons show a bunch of kids gory pictures or maybe do because maybe they'll end up marrying a sexy European exo-exo Jess.

What was the thinking of the value, aside from maybe having fear of guns or fear of combat? I don't know. That seems wild. What's the theory that that is going to help any kid? There's no justification there and it'll make people not want to join the army after that, which isn't what you want to do either. Or maybe because he went through it, it is what he wants to do. Maybe it was kind of like an anti without saying it. I mean, we just can't know.

He writes us a letter and tells us what he was thinking. I mean, man, that's intense. Also, it's not like high school seniors because I understand when it's like, okay, you've gotten your license or you're now 18 and this is a possibility or like, I don't know. Don't you have to tie it into something that is of value? Perhaps not. 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.

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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, the subject line of this email is librarian ghost story. Great. Another, what I would say combo email. Yeah. Good afternoon friends and colleagues. Friends and colleagues.

Friends and colleagues with a period at the end. I love it. As requested, I'm a librarian with a story to tell. I'm Madeline and you can use my name. I started out my librarianship during my undergrad studies. I was essentially an underpaid and overappreciated researcher assistant. Shout out to Gemma, our researcher. Yeah. To students and faculty members who needed help finding books, articles, et cetera for their academic work.

I'll miss the days when someone would come up to me while I was reading and looking all together unapproachable to ask something completely bizarre like, Hey, do you have any books about the sex lives of the ancient Egyptian gods? And the answer was probably yeah. But anyway, in our massive five story library containing millions of printed materials, there was definitely a ghost. The basement level housed special collections where I assume the ghost came from. We had some weird old shit. This, when I was reading this email, I was like, yes, I want that life. Yeah.

Can I have a list of all the weird old shit? And here's here's a short one. Stone tablets, ancient crowns, medieval books and furniture, printed firsthand accounts of local folklore, haunted as fuck to be sure. One day as I was walking to the most remote restroom downstairs in government documents. And then in parentheses, it says no one goes to government documents willingly. I saw an older gentleman in the stacks. Gov docks are complicated and most people need help finding what they're looking for. I, being the greatest employee this library has ever seen, started approaching the man to see if he needed help as he was rounding the corner to start down the next row.

I lost sight of him behind the stack and went to follow. He was not there. There is literally nowhere he could have gone, no doors or hallways. I looked around for him thinking I was getting punked, pissed because I just went down there to hide in my secret bathroom. Work secret bathrooms, man. For real. Yeah. Just go and take 10 minutes and just stand around.

Sit. Just have a sit. Have some quiet time. Yeah. I gave up as the base of my skull started having this weird pinching feeling. I walked back upstairs, my left eye stopped working as if I had stared at the sun for too long and my vision was replaced by a painful white halo just in my left eye. Within 10 minutes, I had the worst migraine I've ever had in my life and I had to have my friend pick me up. It didn't go away for about six hours and I tried to stay out of Gov docks from then on.

Yeah. Let me know if you want to hear about the old guy we banned from our library for stalking my coworker and asking her to be a part of his polygamist afterlife scheme. Oh, no. You know, typical Mormon ship. Stay sexy and shh. Madeline. Wow. It sounds like a seizure, like what you experience when you have a seizure kind of, doesn't it?

It doesn't. Not to correct you, it doesn't. But what is weird to me is that we, my roommate and I, when we lived in the haunted house in Sacramento, I've never had a migraine in my life. I hadn't before and I've never since. We had migraines in that bedroom. One day we both woke up. I woke up with like, I couldn't see my head hurt so bad. And then suddenly she had the same feeling and we both literally laid in our beds in our room, which is where I had the ghost experience all day.

And like when a car would go by, we'd both start crying because it hurts so bad to hear sounds. And I think that idea that it could be connected to otherworldly beings or something. Spectral anomaly. Could be cool. Could be cool. Could be. This one just says, this, the title is, Oh, you want stories about stitches? Which I guess we've asked for and sounds great.

Yes, we do. This one just starts, Hey, what's up friends from my headphones? I would gush about y'all and the pets, but there's a story to tell. And that's kind of embarrassing anyway, right? I tried to tell you the story about my aunt marrying a murderer. I tried to tell you about my high school classmate who became a murderer, but maybe my story about stitches will win. Imagine this. It was 75 degrees out in mid-April 2016 in the Midwest and you are in college.

My college had this yearly event called Grand Prix. The overall gist of it was the two weeks before the finals. There was an entire week of darting. Then it says day drinking in the front yard of a frat. And the week ended with a race of cars that students built. Sounds totally safe. So that's the Grand Prix. So 75 degrees Fahrenheit during Grand Prix week and actual dream come true for a Midwest college student.

It was the end of my freshman year. So it was my first Grand Prix week and my friends and I committed to drinking just enough every day of the week to not need our stomachs pumped. Also, we were 19. If I attempted to participate in just one day of Grand Prix week now, I would be out of commission for weeks. This year, there were a lot of undercover police walking around campus with dogs so that drunk girls would go to pet the dog and get a public intox. Or they were finding houses for drinking in the front yard. So during Grand Prix week, all of the frats would put up large fences around their yard so that not just anyone could look into their yard and ticket them. Don't stop drinking.

Just make it less obvious. Build a 10-foot fence and go for it. Enter my friend Carter. He lived in this frat house and was tasked with installing the fence after he had already been drinking for quite some time that day. Carter had thought it was a great idea to hit one 2x4 post in using another 2x4 post. Oh, Carter. Clonk, clonk. You know what I mean? Yeah. Well, one of those 2x4s had split and a large piece hit him in the face causing a nickel-sized hole under his bottom lip.

Me, already multiple dizzy bats in, that's when you put your forehead on the bat and run around like baseball, said, I'm pre-med. I can give you stitches. So suddenly there I am kneeling over Carter on a frat house pool table using McCormick's sewing needle and ice to give this poor kid stitches on his fucking face. Sorry, McCormick's spices? No, McCormick's alcohol. I think. I think McCormick's like the pouring whiskey. I think it's a whiskey. Oh, okay. Good, good, good. Because that would hurt her. A little steak powder on there.

Yeah, exactly. Just a tenderizer, a little bit of a meat tenderizer. By the end, I actually did a decent job and everyone gave me high fives and they even gave me a free t-shirt. Then one of the kids who had been watching this whole debacle looked at me funny and said, wait, you're, you aren't pre-med. You're in my major. That's correct, ladies. I actually majored in construction management. I just shrugged and said, I watch a lot of Grey's Anatomy. And that seemed to be enough for everyone who was there. In the end, Carter's face healed up just fine.

I got a lot of likes on my tweet about it and I would still randomly get messages about it for the next couple years. Now I go to sleep at 9 p.m. sharp and still watch Grey's Anatomy. Stay sexy and please see a plastic surgeon for face lacerations, Kristen. The balls of a 19 year old shit-hout-faced person. Just epic, epic, borderline unbelievable but so detailed it absolutely clearly. It's the truth. That idea of like, I'm drunk and I'm pretty sure I can take care of this for you. I got this, yeah. Oh, story of my life. And it's like, the I got this when you deeply don't got it.

But it's just like, sometimes the hubris carries you through. Man, sometimes I get a little, I feel a little shame about not having graduated college when people are like, where'd you go to college? I'm like, I didn't. And then you got to remember that like, this is what college was like for most people. So we didn't miss anything. No shame in 2022. There's no reason for it in any direction. Absolutely. It's just like when Chris Fairbanks told me something he did that he was really embarrassed about at a party.

And it was the day after the Oscars. He acted weird at an Oscars party and I go, Chris, no one cares the slap. No one will ever think about what you did again because of what happened on TV. Someone does it more awkward at an Oscar party than you ever will. And it's called slap across the face. You got to look for those escape routes where you can go, oh yeah, I don't have to worry about that. Yeah. Sure. There's other ones, but this one, take it off the list. Yeah.

All right. My last email, the subject line is Scotch Plains, New Jersey. Hi Karen and Georgia. I was just listening to this week's episode 329 while doing some therapeutic cleaning. During Karen's story about Larry Ray and the Sarah Lawrence dorm dad, she mentioned Scotch Plains, New Jersey as the site of his nightclub. I grew up in Scotch Plains, so I'm writing in because Karen said I had to. Clearly Alejandra is picking these and giving them to us if like my name is in one or your name is in one. Oh, I love it. I have one. I love it. My first thought after hearing my hometown was Scotch Plains had a nightclub with two question marks.

Then I realized I was in elementary school at the time, so my knowledge of what happened in town past 8pm is pretty limited. I also asked my mom, but she had not heard of it either. I'm thinking raising two girls while my dad worked full-time in NYC didn't leave her much time for clubbing. A quick Google search showed that Club Malibu was located on Tarrell Road. Since I didn't spend any time there, I looked up an article from 2003 that mentions the building was knocked down. The club had closed in 1999 shortly after a fatal shooting occurred in the parking lot. After that club lost its liquor license.

After hearing about reinstating the liquor license occurred, Larry Ray sued a business partner for failure to pay $100,000. Sounds like it was a stand-up guy all around. So I wonder if he was involved in that shooting. Oh, sure, maybe. Like timeline-wise. Yeah, weird. Yeah, because that was in 1999. Interesting. I don't mean who knows.

I mean, someone knows, but it's not us. Other than Club Malibu, my mom reminded me of a couple other places in Scotch Plains, including Colorado Cafe, once home to the only mechanical bull in New Jersey, and Love Bar, which had a reputation that people who liked to swing went there. Mom, how do you know about that one? Also, what if you were from out of town and you were like, oh, let's go to this nice bar. This'll be fun. Robantic.

So maybe Scotch Plains was a little more than a boring little suburb of New York City. Thank you both for putting together a great podcast that I love to listen to each week. Love to Steven and all of the pets, Chelsea, she, her. Ah. That's the Scotch Plains report. Yeah, I like a quick report of the details, the goings on of places we've covered. Brilliant. Same.

Brilliant. This is a geography podcast after all. This is one of the coincidence ones. Okay. Hello, lovely humans. The world is insanely small, so here I am to throw my coincidence story into the void. Or, I guess, not the void if you're actually reading this. Here goes.

In middle and high school, I went to summer camp in Connecticut. Kids attended from all over New England because, you know, who can resist the draw of musical theater, Jesus Camp? I sure couldn't. Current lack of religious affiliation aside, I made some delightful and formative friendships there, and one of those is where my coincidence starts. Our camp friend group traveled constantly from many reunions, hometown tours, and questionable 17-year-old shenanigans. On one of those trips, the summer before college, I was at my friend Becky's house getting ready and needed a belt to complete my ensemble. She pulled one from the pile on the floor and handed it to me, mentioning that it wasn't hers,

and the friend she had borrowed it from had probably forgotten about it so I could have it. Fast forward a couple months, and I'm in a 200-person art and media class at my college where they asked us to form project groups. Thankfully, I knew one girl in class. We had met at auditions for a dance team on campus. Since I knew she was an art major, I ran over, touted my organizational skills and desperation for an A, and crossed my fingers they had a spot left. Luckily, they did. She introduced me broadly to the group, and one of the other girls, my acquaintance's randomly assigned roommate, Kay, mentioned she was also from Connecticut. My small state pride overcame my social anxiety and we got to chatting.

Where in Connecticut are you from? Oh, did you go to a specific high school name here? Wait, do you know Becky? She's my best friend since preschool. Why? Putting two and two together, I replied, I think I'm wearing your belt. Not awkward at all. A totally normal thing to say.

I'm not sure it's the fact that I was truly wearing the stranger's belt in a random class at a 20,000-person university made that particular situation better or worse, but it is one of my favorite coincidences of my life. After that, we bounced around college, social circles, lost touch for a while, the three of us wound up living together, yes, Becky too, and now Kay is in my wedding party later this year. It still makes me laugh to think about how the universe just dumps people in our path that make us who we are, oversized 2010 belts and all. Unrelated, but since I know y'all love Grandma's, my awesome kick-ass Graham passed away last week at a ripe and sassy 93. She was born into the Great Depression, got a master's degree in the 40s, raised five kids, and finally gets to square dance with my grandpa again after almost 30 years without him.

I'm one of her 15 grandchildren, and we all gathered recently to celebrate her bright, grateful, generous, love-filled life. Cheers to you, Millie. Stay sexy and never underestimate the power of a good belt, Amy, she, her. What a power email. Yeah. First of all, I love that coincidence. Here's the thing, what was the girl's reaction? Yeah.

She must have been like, sorry, what? Like, how crazy is that? Yeah, I thought she was wearing it in that moment too. Like, who wears the same belt every day, you know what I mean? Like, you don't. Right, it's beyond. But then also, her grandmother, Millie, got a master's degree in the 40s. While raising five kids.

She might as well have built a high-rise building with her own hands, that's crazy. Square dancing. So difficult, and so amazing. Square dancing with your husband. With her husband, and she's living to 93, man. There's like, it's bittersweet, but that's a life well lived. That's, yay. Gorgeous.

Good job. Send us any and all stories that you think that we would like. That's really the rule at this point, or would hate, you know what I mean? Like, nothing in between. Right? Right. Don't try to just keep us at the status quo. No one wants to stay there.

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 Crichton. Our producer is Alejandra Keck.

This episode was engineered and mixed by Stephen Ray Morris. Our researcher is Gemma Harris. Email your hometowns and fucking hurrays to myfavoritmurder at gmail.com. Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at myfavoritmurder and Twitter at myfavemurder. Goodbye. Listen, follow, leave us a review on Amazon Music, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, Prime members, did you know that you can listen to my favorite murder early and add free on Amazon Music? Download the Amazon Music app today.

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