My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 286

Episode Date: July 4, 2022

This week’s hometowns include a tattoo shop story and secret beer tunnels. 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. It's my favorite murder. This is the mini-sode. Welcome to the, welcome to the party. These are your stories. You sent them to us. We've printed them up. We've chosen them out of piles and piles. They're all good. Yep. Let's do it. Georgia.

These are the best. They're all good, but then some really stand out. Yeah. Oh, before we start this week's stories, I just want to mention this very important fact. We talked about fentanyl. Like, I think I'm the one that said it. Yeah. As our true skimmer of social media content and not a reader of things. 100%.

And we continued on with the complete fallacy that you can touch fentanyl and die. Me too. It's completely not true. And that's this, it's something I absorbed from looking at like that video of the cop on the ground. Yeah. And people making comments, but me just assuming I knew what it meant. Yeah. So fentanyl, you can't die by touching it. That's completely a lie.

Yeah. And there's a great John Oliver episode where he breaks it all down. Yeah. They say that the idea of touching fentanyl can harm you or get you high is a scare tactic spread by police to further stigmatize drug users and has virtually no scientific data backing it up. So good to know. Thanks to everyone for letting us know.

That is one of those like absorb it secondhand and then repeat it, which is always a mistake. Yeah. You can absorb misinformation through your, through your skin. It's, yes, and it is deadly. So, so there's our correction. Okay. Take it off. All right.

That one time my mom fought off a mob. Hello to all my friends over at my favorite murder. This is my hometown story all the way from Sydney, Australia, which you can tell because she put a U in favorite, which I love. That's right. Let's take it back to the mid 1980s. The AIDS epidemic had just broken out and my mom was one of three nurses employed as the first HIV nurses in Australia.

Wow. And that says amazing. Anyways, her job. Yeah. Her job was on the AIDS bus, an outreach bus where herself and her two colleagues would park themselves in Kings Cross, which was known for gay clubs next to the wall. A wall where sex workers, female, male and transgender would hang out and find work. As a team of three, they offered counseling to HIV positive men and transgender sex workers,

handed out free, clean condoms and clean needles for users to try to stop the spread. That's enough backstory. One night while working on the bus, a mob of homophobic and transphobic men approached the bus with weapons, with full intentions to hurt both my mom, her colleagues and the sex workers around the bus. Acting quickly, my mom ushered all of the sex workers into the bus with her colleagues and locked the door. This was a mini bus and there was a lot of people inside.

Everyone was cramped, uncomfortable and scared. The mob began to surround the bus, banging the outside with their weapons and yelling homophobic and transphobic remarks at them. They also started rocking the bus, attempting to push it over in an attempt to get inside. This is where my mom says she was the most scared. They were heavily outnumbered. She was worried they were all going to die. Now, this was the 1980s, so they had no phone on the bus to call the hospital across the

road from the bus or the police. Oh, and did I mention the security guard was, for some reason, not there? So my mom, being the incredible woman she is in her mid-20s, managed to sneak to the front of the bus and exit the front door without any of the mob noticing. She locked the door, snuck behind the mob and sprinted to the hospital where she got them to call the police. From my memory, I believe that she was able to sneak back inside the bus and get the workers to safety.

After that event, the bus had a walkie-talkie placed inside, so they had contact with the nearby hospital if anything serious was to happen again. I hope you all enjoyed. Thank you for all that you do. I've been listening since I was 14, where my older cousin introduced me to your podcast, and every time we see each other, we listen to it to fall asleep. Stay sexy and protect trans and gay lives at all costs.sheher. That's such an infuriating story.

Yes. And then such a beautiful story. Right. And it is like, yeah, what's wrong with people? What is fucking wrong with people? Well, this is a find the helpers story, and those helpers are heroes. So I think, yeah, it's bananas. But also, yeah, being brave enough, because also you can't do anything like an angry mob.

Right. It's not like anybody could be like, guys, hey, you just hear us out. You know what I mean? It's just so much past reason, past and feeling so justified because they have numbers behind them. Yeah. It's just so terrifying. Yeah. Jesus Christ.

Yeah. Good job to that lady. Dot. Dot is the girl who wrote in. That's the author. It's Dot's mom. Yeah. My first email here, this subject line is minisode276.

Okay. Hi, ladies, pets and MFM crew. In episode 276, you had the story of the bank teller and the counterfeit check. So I thought I'd give you a few tales of mine. I work within a fraud area for a bank. So have come across the weird and wacky during my investigations, including some people faking documents without using spell check, which was a certain giveaway to the time the customer declared himself to be a chemist.

When it turned out he was the local drug dealer. Bank tale, which is always a good one is the time when the police called to inquire about a customer's application for a mortgage. They wanted to know what they had declared for their source of income, along with how much the declared deposit was and what source the deposit was coming from, whether it's savings, gift, et cetera. During the conversation, we were asked to produce a witness statement and attend court to confirm that as a bank, we could not find the true source of the deposit acceptable

because it was from a hit contract. It turns out a friend of the mortgage customer's wife had been paid 10,000 pounds to shoot her husband. The plan was for the killer to jump out of a van when the husband walked past and shoot. So the day arrived with the killer in the van, he jumped out and point blank range pulled the trigger and missed. Lucky for the husband, he got away without injury and the wife and contract killer were paid, not seen a case like this in a while.

I've not attended court since and I don't think I ever will come across a case where I have to declare that as a bank, we could not accept a contract killing payment as deposit. If you're hiring someone to do any job, make sure they're capable before payment. Stay sexy and don't get murdered. Wow. Oh, how awful. Also, that's kind of fascinating line of like the fraud department at a bank, those stories must be insane, everybody that has them because it's truly every call you're getting is people

being like, I don't know about this. This person just randomly has $10,000 cash. What's going on? Yeah. Can you look into it? Nothing. 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. 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. OK, this just starts. Hi. I worked as the gatekeeper, a.k.a. the front desk person at a tattoo shop from 2017 until 2020. Basically my job was to gather information from clients, get price quotes from the tatters

and make appointments. It was one of the best jobs I've ever had with the coolest boss in the world. What's up, Craig? Craig. The shop sits on a main road in Kentucky at the top of a little neighborhood and across from a gold star chili. One mellow day at the shop, a woman walked in and chatted me up about all kinds of tattoos she wanted.

This is pretty normal. People like to come in and dream out loud to me about tattoos and hear prices and just generally waste my time. At least this day there was time to be wasted, so I just humored her. I answered all her questions, ran around and quoted every tattoo idea she gave. Sometimes she would just sit on a bench in front of my desk and stare at her phone before asking me about a different tattoo. She ran to the bathroom a few times as well.

I began to feel suspicious around the third time she excused herself to the bathroom, but it was a full day at the shop with all five tatters tattooing tattoos. So I felt safe until she approached my desk and was like, I know what I want, but it's on a bumper sticker on my car outside. Come with me and tell me how much it will be. I told her to take a picture of it. She said her camera was broken and I just needed to follow her outside. Her camera was broken in her phone.

You know how that works when just her camera breaks on your phone all the time, all forever. I told her I'll need to grab a tattoo artist to look since I'm not authorized to quote tattoos by myself. I walked up to Pato, the beefiest of the tattooers, and then it says, sorry everyone else, but you know it's true. And quickly filled him in. When I turned around, she was gone. Pato rushed outside, jumped into his truck and found her behind the shop about two houses

down hanging around a car clear of any bumper stickers with a group of four or five guys. Mind you, our 10 car parking lots surrounding the shop stood empty. Hearing this, I felt sick. It doesn't seem like it, but there's lots of sex trafficking and drugs in that area. Who knows what their intentions were. I have lots of tattoo shop stories from someone tipping with mysterious quote water in a dark bottle insisting on the receiver to drink it, to revenge pranks going a little too far. Also, we just went on a ghost tour of Over the Rhine in Cincinnati.

The history of 1313 Vine Street would be a cool topic to cover. I just had a baby last year, Ruby Rose, and y'all are reliable companions when I need to hear voices of other adults. Stay sexy and never follow a stranger to a second location, Jess, she, her. Ever, ever, ever, like what a sketchy request. Well, also, I think it's very indicative if like somebody asks you to do that and then you're just like, yeah, I can't leave my desk. Can you just go take a picture?

And then it's like, no, here's a weird excuse, come outside, come outside. Like that the goal is not, I'm trying to get an opinion from you. The goal is I need you to leave this building with me. Right. Yeah. Question weird shit. Like question the third time this person went to the bathroom is smart because it's like, that is weird behavior.

Yep. Maybe she's has a UTI, but maybe she has nefarious intentions. Who knows. If you have a UTI, you're not going around and fucking around tattoo shops for half an hour. You are staying home. You absolutely are. I mean, I just love when we get to hear the stories where the person didn't buy it and

was like, no, and goodbye. And then verified that the person was lying. Yeah. Which is cool. Yeah. Yeah. It's not rampant insanity. No.

Paranoia. It's like your paranoia is right. Unfortunately. Okay. This subject line is grandma's frame Jesus art to keep you up at night. Hey, MFM crew of all the drafts in my inbox to you. This is the one I'm hitting send on Karen. You mentioned a Jesus picture with a thorn heart in the mini-sode.

I'm listening to as I type this and it all comes flooding back. Growing up, my grandparents lived in the boot heel of Missouri. What felt like a world away from my home in St. Louis, I always wish they would move closer but lose their Jesus art along the way. I should explain. Each summer we take a trip down to their home and spend several days on the local lake. That part was a dream. But when the sun went set, it was so fucking true and real.

But when the sun would begin to set, panic would begin to rise. You see, grandma was a tiny Italian, very Catholic woman that loved her Jesus art. I'd never failed that I was the lucky one assigned to the bedroom with the Jesus heart. The one my nightmares are still sometimes made of. Me, the child that snuck into my parents' bed every night until seven, that's when they started paying me to sleep in my own bed, got the dying Jesus room by myself. Right behind grandma's bed on the wall was a picture of Jesus, thorn crown in head, hold hands out to the side, blood everywhere.

Great dreams to me, right? Cut to 2020. In the time since, my grandparents moved back to St. Louis, Jesus in tow, grandpa passed and then grandma. Before grandma passed away, she was certain to let my parents know that there was one really special item that she wanted me to have. You guessed it, Jesus. Traumatic, sentimental, horrifying, but ultimately sweet, I guess.

Jesus, do I miss them dearly? Stay sexy and really consider your guest remark, Amy. I love that. I love that. It seems like grandma thought she liked it and that's why she put her in there. Amy always wants that room. Let's put her in there every time. She loves the burning heart of Jesus.

The one my grandma had had all the things she just named, plus there were thorns around his actual heart and there was a little flame coming out of it. Like that fucking shit on fire too? He's going through enough. He's gone through so much for you. Just accept him into your heart, please. Your flaming heart, please. Okay, this one's called playing opossum, lighthearted.

Hey, murder aunties. In 2020, I was one of those people that rings your doorbell and makes you pretend you're not home. That's right. I worked for the Democratic Party, marking folks on a roster as, quote, planning to vote. One day after noting another voter was, quote, not home, I hear a car pull up in the driveway, idle, then turn off. When I round the corner, I see a 40-something man slumped in the driver's seat, keys in

hand, and door ajar. I walk up and awkwardly say, sir, excuse me, are you okay, sir? Looking around for anyone to weigh in, I tried these phrases a few more times with no luck. I could see his chest rising and falling subtly, so I decided not to touch him. I walked across the street agreeing with myself that if he hadn't moved after I was done with the next house, I'd call someone. Mid-knock, I hear a car door close behind me. Whipping around, I see this dude casually walking inside his home like nothing happened.

He literally played dead on me. I stood there staring at his house for a while before heading to the next one on my list. Part of me wishes I had overreacted and called 911, but maybe he'd commit harder and make the EMTs bring him back to life. Stay sexy, and if you want people holding clipboards to leave you alone, just pretend you're asleep. Love Grace, she, her. The guy pretended to be asleep so he wouldn't have to talk to someone with a clipboard.

Brilliant. Okay. But saving that specification for the very end of the email, this whole time I was like, what? So she'd get close to him and he was going to grab her? I'm thinking of all these sinister things, he didn't want to talk to some rando that's knocking on his door. That's it.

That's it. I fucking respect it. Yeah. Good for you. Good for you. Yeah, that's funny. That is funny. I mean, I just do that.

I'm on my phone. Pretend to be on my phone thing. No. Right. Sorry. I got that. I got that. Pointing, pointing, pointing.

Okay. Here's my last one. St. Louis sinkholes and beer. Two of your favorites. Two of your favorites. I mean, come on. Oh, beer. Hello, Al.

Last month, there was a sinkhole in downtown St. Louis. Turns out there are a lot of cellars, caves, and tunnels under the streets of St. Louis. What? I know. Listen to this. This sinkhole created a passage to them. Missouri sewer linked it to an old beer tunnel from the 1800s that was used by Winklemire Brewery.

The brewer was located on Market Street from the 1850s to the 1890s. The brewery used the natural springs and the caves to keep beer cold during the summers. There's a fucking phantom of the opera world underneath this brewery. It's like a giant cooler. Yeah. They also use these tunnels to help deliver beer to different parts of the city. What? It's a little town.

Oh my God. Your comes your bucket of beer, John. What kind of, is it a canoe? Maybe. Is it a flat raft with kegs on it? Mm-hmm. It's all of those things and more. And are the people that drive those little boats, do they become like mole people where

their skin gets very pale and their eyes get super used to their flight? No, no. They just use five-year-olds because it's the 18-year-old. Yes, that's right. Yes. Or five-year-old orphans. Right. When the brewery closed, they tried to close the tunnels by blasting them and filling them

with debris. But due to construction around the area, some areas weren't quote-unquote strongly blasted because they didn't want to cause structural damage to the new builds. Smart thinking, 1800s. Was exploding things the only option at this point? Ever. Okay. The sewer department's looking into ways to stop this from happening again.

But at this point, they're unable to do anything for fear of damaging the buildings around these caverns and tunnels. Just for the people who don't know St. Louis, this is downtown where Bush Stadium is, the Enterprise Center. And yes, Stifle Theater, where you all came when you toured. Yay! We love St. Louis. I believe that theater was the place where the guy was sitting in the front row wearing

the feather boa and doing the light hallelujah hands. Yes. I should have named him on the recent fan cult video when we got asked, what's our favorite memory? Yeah. That really is up there. Top two. He was wearing it and out for the party.

He was into it and he was treating it like church, which for me is a great, that is actually what I've been looking for all my life. I love it. So don't be surprised when you turn on the TV and hear St. Louis was swallowed by a huge sinkhole. Stay sexy and watch out for sinkholes caused by secret beer tunnels and caverns. Jen. Great advice, Jen.

Yeah. Send us your sinkhole weird stories and other whatever the hell you feel like stories. Cavern stories. Cavern stories. Underground tunnel stories. Mole people. Yeah. Any of that mystery.

And stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Bye. Bye. 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 and Instagram and Facebook at myfavoritmurder and Twitter at myfavemurder. Goodbye.