My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 314

Episode Date: January 16, 2023

This week’s hometowns include dumb criminals and a holy cleansing of a home.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is actually happening is a podcast that features extraordinary true stories of life-changing events told by the people who live them. In a special five-part series called Point Blank, this is actually happening sheds a light on the forgotten spree killings of Rancho Tejama. So this is actually happening wherever you get your podcasts. Hello. And welcome to my favorite murder. The mini-soad.

Oh, yeah. That's right. Yeah. We're doing videoed for the fan cult in case you want to watch it. That's why I forgot my lines. That's right. Because we have makeup on. Just scaring at myself.

Oh, you want to go first this time? Sure. Okay. This is called We Love Dumb Criminals. True. It starts my favorite voices. I like many other murderinos find that every time you declare a new topic to send in for hometowns, I say to myself, dang, they're speaking to me.

I know I have a story. Today, I'd like to tell you about a cross-section of a United States Postal Service worker, drugs in my first apartment. Names have been changed because I'm assuming that the FBI was involved. Who knows? At the ripe old age of 20, I got my first apartment with a friend for 550 a month. Utilities included. When was that, 1945?

In the heart of a college town in the Midwest. Okay. That makes sense. We used to sit on the roof to steal the neighbor's internet to save a buck. We were living the dream. Yeah. Our boyfriend at the time, let's call him Frank, occupied our space constantly. I was annoyed, but didn't think anything of it until a mutual friend told me that he was

not only stealing weed out of our apartment, sorry, nope, he was not only selling weed out of our apartment. He was also getting it shipped to our apartment by a friend in California. This was 2009. Oh, shit. After some deliberation, I decided to turn a blind eye because I was a stoner at the time and getting high on his supply, hashtag priorities. Fast forward about seven years, Frank is working for the USPS.

Since he knew the patterns of the boxes with paraphernalia, usually from California, no return address, et cetera, he started scanning certain packages to mark them as delivered, but then he would keep them, taking out the pot or whatever other fun drugs he found and sell them to another coworker for him to sell to his buyers. It was a whole operation, obviously the people setting or receiving the packages weren't going to be looking into the fact that it wasn't delivered because we all know the first question on that hotline would be what did the package contain. It was the perfect operation if you ignore the fact that they were messing with a federal

system. Anyway, they got caught, two of the guys involved are serving time and Frank got off with probation because he unfortunately is a lucky bastard. Stay sexy and don't work for the USPS to traffic drugs, a fellow cat lover. I mean, it would be hard not to involve yourself in that system if you recognize the packages. Oh, for sure. That's like your specialty knowledge. Totally.

Kind of why I love that email. It's like, oh, that is fascinating. Some people are really good at certain things that happen to be illegal. Yeah. I don't love that. I mean, I don't love it, but it's just like, oh, that's how people live sometimes. Well, and also, I guess, for a long time, if you wanted to smoke pot and just like go to the movies, it was like high intrigue.

It was such a big pain in the ass. So yeah, I mean, this is 2009's a little borderline. Yeah. But in the Midwest, you can't get weed, like, right? Yeah, that's true. Yeah. It's very different. And yeah, it's such a pain to be able to kind of just get in there and be like, well,

you can't say anything. Yeah. Like, so many people take advantage in this world, Goldman Sachs. Sure. Whatever. Why does it always get to be the rich guys? Why can't the mailman get high on your supply? I just think that the moral of the story is you'll always get caught stealing from work.

So make sure that the feds won't get involved if you do get caught stealing. For real. Like, if you're going to fucking be dumb and steal, keep it low key. Yeah. And then you'll get a lot of nice and post-it notes, not federal involvement, I would say. And nothing that's going to stain your conscience. Right. You just want to be able to keep your side of the street clean.

Sure. Okay. Well, and speaking of which, let's go right into my email. Okay. The subject line of which is how to rob a bank. Oh, perfect. Greetings, ladies and gentlebems. Oh, I love that.

Ladies and gentlebems. That's it. Ladies and gentlebems is fucking so new. So now. Oh, it's so fresh. So hip. So original. Amazing.

Amazing work. Okay. My partner works for a local bank. So when you asked for banking stories, I asked him to spill. He's been in the bank multiple times during attempted robberies. It's more common than you'd think, especially considering that the branch he worked at is right beside a police station. This is in a sleepy southern town.

So you better believe that the police are thrilled when something is actually happening and they get to do literally anything. Each bank teller starts the day with $30,000 in their drawer. Shitty life pro tip. Do your robbing early in the day before their drawers get emptier. Smart. There you go. This message is not approved by the My Favorite Murder brand.

That's right. So the protocol is just hand over the money after pressing the silent alarm. The bank's money is insured by the federal government, so it's not worth people's lives to play games with robbers. The police will get there in three minutes tops anyways. All this is to say, this bank is not an ideal target for any robber with any common sense. Enter our four brave souls. It's 5.50 PM on a Friday, closing time for the bank.

Not a bad idea to rub the bank right at closing. Hopefully the staff will be slim and there won't be many, if any, customers inside. Sure the drawers won't be as full as possible, but once you combine the money from five bank drawers, not bad. This person is literally teaching people how to rob banks. Three men hop out of a Toyota Corolla right in front of the main entry doors wearing ski masks. They are armed and ready to go.

One man stays behind to be the getaway driver. Solid work for these chaps so far. They rush to the door, ready to get this thing going, only to find that the doors are mysteriously locked. But the bank isn't closed, you say. You're not wrong, but you're also not right. The bank's drive-through is open until 6. However, the lobby closes at 5.

Oh, someone just didn't go on Yelp and check the hours. Are you fucking kidding me? There are signs on the door stating this. I like to imagine they all stood around reading it before turning the one guy who came up with this plan and asking, what the fuck, Pat? Didn't you Google the business hours? Oh, my God. But of course, Pat didn't.

He picked to rob a bank right beside a police station after all. The three men ambled around the front doors for a minute because what else are you supposed to do when your grand robbery is immediately foiled? These men actually gave us an answer to that age-old question. You drive directly across the street to the gas station for a slurpee. I'll give you two guesses if the men took their ski masks off before going into the gas station and the first guest doesn't count. What?

Of course, they fucking didn't. They didn't take them off until they were already inside the gas station and getting weird looks. At least they left the guns in the car, I guess. Bless their hearts. This is the South. In August, it's hot. We don't have ski slopes.

People are nosy as hell. Wearing ski masks in the summer, you better believe the cops were called. Called from across the street. Yeah. Literally walked outside. Hey, cops. Jerry. Jerry.

Well, only a fashion crime was committed at the gas station. The police were very curious about the whole ski mask in the summer thing. The CCTV footage from the gas station showed the men coming directly from the bank. So the next day off to the bank, the cops went to ask what happened. The bank employees didn't even realize there had been an attempted robbery until they pulled up their CCTV and saw everything. The four men were arrested and charged with felonies for attempted robbery, all because they couldn't resist the siren song of the slurpee machine.

Stay sexy and always Google the business hours for yourself. Brittany, she, her. Brittany, thank you for teaching us how to rob a bank or how not to rob a bank, I guess. I think it was a don'ts. It was a real exercise in the don'ts of it, but that was a beautifully, that was a very long email and it was written so beautifully that it didn't feel like it. I totally agree. That was really well written.

Good job. Brittany, you're number one. Life is short and it's full of a lot of interesting questions. What does happiness really mean? How do I get the most out of my time here on earth and what really is the best cereal? These are the questions I seek to resolve on my weekly podcast, Life is Short with Justin Long. If you're looking for the answer to deep philosophical questions like what is the meaning of life,

I can't really help you, but I do believe that we really enrich our experience here by learning from others. That's why in each episode I like to talk with actors, musicians, artists, scientists, and many more types of people about how they get the most out of life. We explore how they felt during the highs and sometimes more importantly the lows of their careers. We discuss how they've been able to stay happy during some of the harder times, but if I'm being honest, it's mostly just fun chats between friends about the important stuff.

If you had a sandwich named after you, what would be on it? So Life is Short wherever you get your podcasts. You can also listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. Well, here's number two of my story. This is called Death Bed. Hello, again. Recently you asked for death bed confessions. I know you don't remember.

As a hospice nurse, I've heard lots of final words and death bed statements. Usually they're actually pretty mundane from I need water and I'm okay. Sometimes I find charming like the guy who was watching his alma mater play football the night before he died and told his family, leave the game on. Some are disturbing like the woman who repeatedly asked nurses to reassure her that her abusive father wouldn't be in the afterlife when she got there. We all readily agreed he would not be where she was going or the man who said, oh no, the door is hot.

My very favorite was a patient who said, well, that's just beautiful. Oh. I know. As strange as it sounds, it's an honor and privilege to be part of guiding people to their other side and I'm proud of the work hospice nurses do. Jesus, seriously. Yeah. Thank you both for the work you do and know you're with me as I walk through these cases

every day. Also, once when I was an oncology nurse, a patient asked me if I listened to MFM and I said I reminded them of Karen, a true honor. Hey. Hey, sexy, don't go through the hot door, C. Oh, no, the door is hot. That's bad. I think the door is hot followed by, well, that's just beautiful. That got me.

Yeah. That got me. That was a good one of just some interesting information. That was great. I really liked that C and also the idea that, yeah, being a hospice nurses, the shit, it's very high level human being for each other that is beyond generous and also, you know, from the little I've listened to like Rom Dost at a lot of end of life, you know, being with people and all that kind of stuff.

It's like big experience. Yes, I can imagine. All right. The subject line of this email is a holy cleansing. Hello, Karen and Georgia. I can't imagine that you've asked for this, but let me tell you about the holy cleansing of my childhood home. Yes.

Yes. What you want is for people to get the vibe of how random all these are and then start suggesting their own. Absolutely. In typical older sibling fashion, my sister and I entertained ourselves by scaring our three younger siblings. We convinced them that a little boy named Timothy lived there before us and now haunted them.

No. You're evil. The name Timothy is so perfect. It is. It's so creepy. It is. Specifically, we told them that Timothy lived in the attic and would come down at night to play at the time.

We actually had squirrels in the attic, but we blamed them running around and noises coming from the attic on Timothy. We went even as far as tapping and scratching the walls, bed frame, et cetera, while they were getting ready for bed, making eerie ghost noises from the other side of the bedroom door. At some point, they started complaining about the ghost to my dad who repeatedly denied the existence of any ghost. We thought this was all in good fun until one day my nonreligious dad came home with

a bottle of holy water. For the next few days, my dad made a habit of spraying holy water around the house. That's when my sister and I realized we'd gone too far and stopped playing the part of Timothy. You made your playing. Dad believed in the ghost. Okay. Impressive.

We have yet to come clean to our dad about Timothy so I can only imagine what he felt when the house ceased being haunted after his holy water cleansing. Stay sexy and do bless your home to drive out ghost children, Elle. All right. That's hilarious. So funny. Okay. This one's just called, I Will Fight a Bear.

Hell yes. Since we are sending in anything, here you go. I'm a single mom and a few years back, we have finally moved into a new house. We have separate bedrooms. I put my son to bed and I'm absolutely on cloud nine. Of course, I have my baby monitor next to me in case he wakes up. I go outside, it's a beautiful desert night and I decide to smoke a little marijuana. Grinning from ear to ear, I'm thinking how amazing my life is at this moment.

I go inside to do some social media scrolling. All of a sudden, I hear growling. I fucking panic. I grab the first thing I can, a bottle of lotion and I'm ready to fight. I'm in my son's bedroom in milliseconds and there he is, sound asleep. What? I know I heard something. I know it.

I go back to my room, so confused. I'm trying to get my heart rate down. I start scrolling again and then I hear it again. Are you kidding me? It's my stupid stomach growling because my stoned ass is hungry. There's no bear. Thank you, amazing ladies, for everything you do. I own a cleaning company, so I've listened to the pod twice over, love ya, Andrea.

Andrea, come on, you have to prepare if you're going to get high. She was so hungry, her stomach, she mistook her stomach for a bear. Yeah. That's right. It's intense. Yeah. You really can send anything. Yes, we want it all.

Kind of just any experience you have around the house. Yeah. The subject line is good vibes, go story. I should probably just start like this. I should probably be doing work and yet here we are. My six-year-old daughter recently has surgery and I was a bit anxious about the whole anesthesia and surgery thing, but it needed to be done. As I dropped her off in the pre-op room, she was super excited to be in the hospital because

it's where her dad works and we know many of the other attending physicians. She was taken back and I was comforted in knowing and trusting most of the people that were in the room with her that morning. As I had about two hours to kill, I wandered around the hospital campus, grabbed a nice latte and plopped down on a shaded bench to binge listen to a podcast. I turned my head to notice the random bench I was sitting on was dedicated to the brother of a good friend. Her brother Dave was a young physician at the hospital who was tragically killed a few

years ago. He was struck by a minivan and a poorly lit intersection while running into work. I immediately snapped a picture and texted her saying I was hanging out with Dave while my daughter had surgery this morning. She immediately responded and as we chatted, I learned that she had a similar procedure done at the exact same age. She also jokingly mentioned that if Dave was watching over the procedure, it would be perfect as he was always an overachiever.

This conversation was a great distraction and 45 minutes quickly flew by when I was called by the recovery nurse and told everything went great. Note, this was about an hour quicker than estimated. Dave is always the overachiever, right? As I walked into the post op room, I saw my husband had beaten me there. As he worked there, I'm sure he was anxiously following her procedure and glad that he could pop over as she was in recovery. While our daughter was waking up from the anesthesia, I mentioned the bench and how

it felt like a great sign. My husband immediately asked, who is that again? As he never remembers anyone. So I pulled up my social media and showed him the picture of Dave. My daughter was now coming out of her drunken anesthesia induced haze. She was merrily enjoying her obligatory post op popsicle. When she leaned over with a huge knowing grin on her face and loudly whispered, that was the nice doctor holding my hand during surgery.

Oh, no. Right. Right. Yeah. My husband and I looked at each other with wide eyes and broke eye contact, both thinking it had to be the drugs. I arched my eyebrow and shook my head, telling her that wasn't possible, but she was adamant. This man in the photo was the nice doctor that was with her and talking to her the entire

time that she was in surgery. She was not mistaken. It was him. Since we knew she was put under and was not awake in the room, we suspected maybe she saw another tall Caucasian male doctor and was, you know, her memory was fuzzy. My hubs asked his coworkers who all was in the room and strangely enough, there was not a single living Caucasian male in the OR that day. Oh my God.

What are the odds? The afterlife is a topic that the logical scientists in me has never been able to suss out. The idea of heaven, hell, ghosts, or just a better place is something that feels like an impossible fantasy. The voice of reason in my head always says, you die, you return to earth, it's the circle of life. Cue the Lion King song and there is nothing else.

Reason tells me that no one is watching over us. Sorry, that got me. And then there's incredible moments like this that cannot be explained. At that moment, I cannot deny that it did bring me incredible comfort, and perhaps this is the true intention after all. Stay sexy and believe in ghosts or do what you want, Abby. Oh my God. Fucking Dave was there.

Sorry, Dave was there. Sorry, Dave was there. They were so there holding her hand. Oh my God. I love that the little girl had just like a, a conspire, like you're cat, sorry. I love that that little girl had like a little smile on her face. Yeah, she's like, that is him. He was there.

Where else would she get that? That really got me. That was really, really beautiful. That got me good. Yeah. Great job, Abby. Great job, Abby. Guys, send your afterlife stories in or your coincidental afterlife thingies, ghosty

stories in it. My favorite murder at Gmail, please. We want to hear them. Also, please don't forget to stay sexy. And don't get murdered. 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 Marin McLashen and 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 myfavoritmurder. Goodbye. Goodbye. Listen, follow, leave us a review on Amazon Music, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get

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