My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 317

Episode Date: February 6, 2023

This week’s hometowns include a special message from a Ouija Board and a hypocrite Grandma.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. We read you your stories.

You sent them. You might as well read them. Let's do it. We have an inbox full of your letters. And they're all about, oh, could be true crime. Could just be a lake you lived next to once you want to tell us about. I mean, true. I have a story about a lake someone lived next to.

Yes. Yes, the connection's been made. That's all we need. Amazing. Do you want to start? Yeah, I'll start with that one. Perfect. This is called Good Old Hometown, featuring a lake, a head, and alligators.

Okay. I'm sorry. That's weird that I just said that. It is. You didn't get one like that? I figured you must have gotten a lake one, too. No. That was, I truly pulled that out of the stream of consciousness.

Weird. That's right. You don't do podcasting for seven years without being able to do that shit. That's right. Okay. Hello, ladies. Steven, Alejandra, Pets, and every other beautiful murderer out there. Alejandra's getting mentions now.

We love it. That's right. I've always wanted to write in, but I didn't think I had anything good other than growing up in a very haunted house until I remembered that there was a fucking head discovered in the lake I grew up on. Oh, fuck. The name of the lake, ironically, is Bone Lake. My childhood best friend lived directly across the lake from me, and one day we were discussing

how weird the name of the lake was. Their older brother then told us that it was named after a woman's head was found in the lake years ago. I, being a young, impressionable child, brought this tail home to my mother in horror. She then explained that it got its name from being shaped like a bone, but the head story was also true. Just let me qualify that answer her mom said. You're still going to be scared shitless.

You're just going to be informed. Back in 1993, a resident on the lake thought he found a mannequin head floating in the lake and called the police. As we could guess, it turned out to be a real head. The woman's foot was also found in a different Minnesota lake. She's in the DNA DOE project, and they're still actively working 30 years later to identify her. Horrifying.

I know. Years later, a man who was running from the law also released his pet alligators into the lake. Did that rationalize my childhood fear of alligators swimming in the lake waiting to eat my dangling legs? I'm so fucking loopy. Still to this day, I will not go swimming in any lakes, rivers, oceans, or anything other than very well lit pools.

Anyway, stay sexy and stay the fuck out of lakes, Sarah, she, her. I'm blown away that I pulled the lake out of the lake. It's wild. Name something else and I'll see if I have it. Hot dogs. Hot dogs. No hot dogs. Okay.

No. I can't. We talk about this all the time, but still the idea that you're just like, what was he doing out fishing or driving by and then you find a human head. It's a human being. Well, he clearly didn't think it was a mannequin if he called the fucking cops immediately. Well, it's like, I think that the phrase should actually be hoped it was a mannequin. Because that's the truth of like, this just could be a funny, I'm mistaken in the most

interesting way. No. No. It's actually everyone's worst nightmare. Jesus. Awful. Awful. God, solve that.

Yeah. Cold case. Totally. Figure it out. One of this one is close to home hometown story. Hi, everyone. Well, and there's like six L's at the end of well, well, y'all said in Minnesota 288 to write in the stories that you talk about as soon as you hit that comfy couch.

So here we go. Does that sound familiar at all? Never. I'll get right into it. In April 2003, two masked men entered a bank in Maryland and ordered everyone to get down. While one of the masked men stood by the entrance of the bank with a gun, the other jumped over the counter and ordered the tellers to give him the money, stating that, quote, no one will get hurt.

Typical bank robbery in every movie. After the teller emptied the cash drawers, the two men left the bank. A shootout broke out while they fled and one of the men was hit in the arm. However, they fled somewhat successfully. The two men were friends and they had young children around the same age. After the shooting, possibly a day or two after, they took their young children to the local carnival. The daughter of one of the men asked why her dad's friend's arm was wrapped.

They gave her some bull excuse that you would give a six-year-old. Oh, and by the way, I'm not six-year-old. Hi. Hi. Oh, twist-a-roo. Oh, my God. Really good. Mid-email reveal.

Very good. Hi. The two men, one of them being my dad, were ultimately arrested after my bad-ass mom saw a video of one of the bank robbers leaning over the counter on the news. She said, and I quote, I knew immediately that was his ass crack, when you're with someone long enough, I guess, which I thought was hilarious. They were already in the process of getting a divorce and then it's like a dot, dot, dot. My dad was not the best guy.

My dad was in prison for the robbery from the time I was six until I was 18 and in 2015, he even tried to crush my high school graduation. In 2021, I received my criminal justice degree and couldn't be happier. There are times that I worry when people look up my last name, they will see who my father is, and that is why I don't use it. I didn't let a shitty upbringing change the outcome of my life. I'm currently engaged and living in a home that my fiance and I own together with our two dogs.

Thank you for continuously being the hilarious in-my-head friends that I listened to on a regular basis, you both have created such an amazing community and deserve endless gratitude. Stay sexy and don't take your six-year-old to the carnival after you just rubbed a bank, Harley. Oh my God, Harley. Wow, great email. I mean, that's kind of a great perspective to be able to hear from sometimes. Totally, totally.

Where it's just like, yeah, you can live whatever life you want, no matter who your parents are. Yeah. That's important for people to hear, and it is kind of funny. Wilds. Yes. Wild. Wow. She heard the mom recognize the dad's ass crack.

Hey, I'm Mike Corey, the host of Wanderers Against the Odds. In our next season, three friends backcountry skiing in Alaska disturb a hibernating bear and she attacks. The skiers must wait for help to arrive before one of them succumbs to his injuries. Welcome to Against the Odds on Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. This one's called My Husband Walked In on a Robbery. Hello, MFM everybody. I love you all.

I hope this one is worthy because it is such a strange experience. In 2016, we had a series of robberies in our boring suburban neighborhood in Oregon. My husband, who was in nursing school and just happened to have the day off, left our home to run some errands and left the back door unlocked. When he returned the garage door opener would not work. He went around to the side of the house and found a few items from the garage sitting outside the door. Before he knew what happened, a young girl slipped out the door and stood face to face

with him. She very quickly told him, your puppy got out and I brought him back. She asked about an item for sale that we had listed and my husband and his confusion did not figure out that she had just come from inside our house and might be robbing us. The girl just talked to her for a little while. It finally clicked with him. The item stacked up outside the door and he said, wait a minute. And then she took off running.

She ran down the street and gone to a car that was waiting and disappeared. He walked into the house and discovered that the garage door had been disarmed and our house had been staged. Each room had a laundry basket, not ours, filled with valuable items. Even my daughter's bedroom, my son's bedroom had been filled with the items that they were going to steal, electronics, TV, jewelry, all neatly piled up in a laundry basket outside each bedroom. Wow.

So they're like organized as fuck. It sounds like fully organized. Yeah. I mean, it would make sense. You have to kind of like have your act together. Yeah. So you can break in. Plus, if you see someone like you're a neighbor and someone's walking out with a laundry basket,

that's not that suspicious as much as like a TV. Especially a young woman. Exactly. So police recalled they came out very quickly and fingerprinted almost every surface of our house. I think they even fingerprinted our cat. They explained that staging is how people will rob homes efficiently. The getaway car will pull up last minute and all the laundry baskets will be taken out

the back door. Apparently, this has been happening quite a bit in the neighborhoods and nobody had seen who was doing it. They got fingerprints and because my husband stood face to face with this person and talked to her, he identified her in a lineup testified in court and we were considered victims in the crime. Because of that, in Oregon, maybe every place else, I don't know, we were notified every time something happened with the case and every time this young woman had a change in

status. We learned that she was very young and on drugs. She went to prison, went to drug and alcohol treatment, went to a halfway house and then was on a program to help her reintegrate. I believe they told us every time this happened because she knew where we lived and what we looked like. She later stated that getting caught was quote, the best thing that ever happened to me. Wow.

And although it felt very violating, my husband and I are glad that he was home that day not just to save our stuff, but apparently help her out too. And we never, ever left the back door unlocked ever again, ever, never. I'm a therapist and I love how you guys talk about mental health with such compassion and understanding, been listening since 2019, truly love you all, stay sexy and lock your damn doors. See. I mean, isn't that like best case scenario of somebody like going into the system and

then coming out off of drugs and like with a new lease on life, if only it could always be like that for anybody that's like doing that, that kind of victimless crime. Yeah. And how compassionate of these people who are like, yeah, we were victims of this crime, but we don't want you to be punished. You don't want people to be in the position to need to rob people's houses. That's the goal. Exactly.

That's the goal. That's funny though, because I remember I had a check stolen out of the mail when I lived in Burbank and I didn't even know it. I just got a letter from the post office being like, here's the eight people that were involved in this like check stealing ring at the post office. And then I kept getting updates about them being prosecuted, going to jail. And it brought me out where I just, all I could think about was like, why would you be stealing?

First of all, why would you be messing with the mail to federal crime? Don't you know that? And then now for this dumb thing that I bet you got barely any money for. Yeah. You can't get money that way. Yeah. That's a bummer. Yeah.

Also, it was like a dumb residual check. Yeah. It's like, you can have my $11 from the first thing I ever wrote on. God damn. Oh, this subject line is greetings from Shetland. Lighthearted. And it says, hello. After almost three years, I've managed to listen to every episode of MFM from the start.

Now that I'm up to date and I have to wait for new episodes, I realize how addicted I am. Right? According to my Spotify wrapped, I listened to you guys for 17,933 minutes this year, which seems like a lot to me. There's one listening. You're the only one that can do anything about it. Anywho, I come from Shetland, Scotland.

So when Karen mentioned a while ago that she'd seen the crime drama Shetland, oh yes, I'm up to date on the most recent episode even. It was pretty exciting that you knew we existed. I didn't think I'd ever have a story to send you because despite what the TV show might lead you to believe, fuck all happens here. A lot happens in the TV show. I actually think about it a lot because that's the crime show where every time they have to go somewhere, they like, oh, there was an explosion in this house.

There's always interstitial shots of a car driving on a road for a while because it's just way north north of Scotland. As fuck. Oh my God. Kind of great though. Very visually. Yeah. All right.

I'm 36 and in my lifetime, there have only been a couple of murders here that I'm aware of. However, my ma'am recently told me a story about a family member that I thought might make the cut. My great-grandmother Tini, short for Christina, not totally relevant to the story, I just really like her name, had a brother called Frank. In the 20s, Frank moved down to London and got married. Unfortunately, I don't know his wife's name.

And here's what these two did. Frank's wife would go out looking for a married man, the wealthier, the better. She would then flirt, seduce, and take this man home with her where Uncle Frank would be waiting. Frank would rob them. When he and his wife would blackmail the victims into keeping quiet, threatening to tell the victims' wives and families, they had tried to hook up with Frank's misses. It apparently worked for a while, but eventually they got done for it when somebody refused

to pay up and they ended up in jail. This story was considered so shameful that some members of the family in my mother's generation were never told of Frank's existence. So that's my story. Hope you guys enjoyed. Stay sexy and don't do an Uncle Frank agnus. And then in parentheses, it says, yep, that's my name. I love it.

Wow. I bet that did work for a while. That's a kind of a good scheme. It's also one I feel like you could rationalize where you're like, they're the ones doing something wrong. Yes, totally. Well, they shouldn't have gone home with me then if they didn't want consequences, whatever.

Yep. Okay. My last one's called New Year's Message from a Ouija board. Hello, Karen, Georgia, pets and crew. After a year and a half of judging parents who mentioned that their kids listened to MFM, I have discovered that hometown episodes can stop an argument between my almost eight and 10-year-old daughters with the flick of a finger on the podcast app. Oh.

Hallelujah. Full episodes remain off limits due to content, but they are fast churning through the magnificent back catalog of minisodes. Hey, guys. Hi, guys. Hi. Sorry, we still cuss in these ones. Hey, guys.

How's your sister? That's right. They have been dying to send in their hometown, and they got one. My parents have kept my childhood Ouija board in their house. We tried it out with my kids last summer, resulting in weeks of nightmares, so back down to the cellar it went. But when I visited at New Year's, the girls begged and begged to use it. And with the hours until midnight stretching long before us and encouraged by the purient

interests of their grandma, up came the Ouija board again. It provided tips on how to invest proceeds from an upcoming home sale. Lay down another mortgage. What to bet on in the New Year, letters we should use more in wordal guesses. And in a creepier part of the session, told us it wanted our secrets, but refused to say why. When my daughters took a turn on the planchette, the Ouija board really let out its best. They asked, do you have a special message for us?

And then it spelled out S-S-D-G-M. Can't be. Of course, we were like, I don't know. Of course, we weren't writing letters down and it took us a moment trying to spell it into vowel-less words to realize what the special message was. And in shockingly, they asked, are you a my favorite murder fan? And the board replied, M-F-M. No way.

You hate Ouija boards. The relatability of the Ouija's taste has cured all of our game board from the beyond scaries. Thanks for making it more comfortable for my kids to reach into the mist. Stay sexy and keep the Ouija board for the next generation, Sarah, Kala, and Sydney. Sarah, Kala, and Sydney, thanks for listening. I think that scares me, although I just watched a TikTok where a guy talks about, it's you talking to your own subconscious.

Definitely. And that's basically why the things come out that come out. And so if you're going to be super just real scientific about it and not woo-woo in any way, it's, you know, we're in there. We're in their brains. Yeah. We are. We're our own ghosts.

Yes. Now, really quick, is the word she used in the description, purient, P-R-U-R-I-E-N-T? It's P-R-U-R-I-E-N-T. What is that? Purient. Well, I looked it up because I thought it meant extracurricular. And it's, in obscenity law, a morbid degrading or excessive interest in sexual matters. So I guess she's talking about the morbid, like it's a morbid interest.

Definitely. I had never heard that before. I'd heard the word, but didn't really know what it meant. And so I was like, oh, I thought it meant extracurricular, but almost every definition starts with the sexual part. So I'm like, wait, wait, what? Sexual grandma? Oh, well, which leads us to my final email, the subject line being hypocrite grandma.

Oh, shit. Crazy. It's happening. Hey, murder mates, new listener from Australia, although only the minisodes so far as I have a tenuous grasp of any faith in humans. And I think the longer episodes just might be the end of that. So they also only listen to minisodes. Try the survivor ones that Karen does.

You'll like those. Oh, yeah. That'll actually build your faith in humanity. Right. Totally. Not my stories. Your stories. Okay, so jumping straight into my bad grandma story and then a parentheses, it says, if

I've learned anything from the 200 plus minisodes I've listened to, it's just to keep it fucking moving. Okay. So my grandma lived in a city about a two hour flight from us and would come to stay every Christmas for about six weeks. It is summer here and we have our long school holiday break during December and January. My parents worked full time so she would come and look after us during the holidays. One particularly hot, humid day, my grandmother tonight decided to catch a bus to the local

shopping area to have a wander and lunch in the comfort of air conditioning. This was the 80s, so no air conditioning in our house. You just kind of sucked it up back then. We trekked to the bus stop and stood waiting for a bus in the hot sun at the unsheltered bus stop and my grandma was from a much cooler climate, so it was dying in the heat. While we were standing there, she was giving my 12 year old self a lecture about never getting into cars with strangers while I stood there rolling my preteen eyes. About two minutes after this rant, a car pulls up at the bus stop and offers us a lift to

the shops. Without hesitation, she accepts the offer and orders me to get into the car. We sat in silence through the ride while I glared at her in disbelief. When we arrived and got out of the car, she looked at me and said, now, don't ever do that and turned on her heel and strode towards the shopping center. I stood there shaking my head in disbelief. We went shopping and ate lunch and never spoke of this again and I never did get into the car with strangers again.

And then it says, P.S., her name was Ethel Agnes May Francis Ann, but was known to all of us as Lady Bird as my mom didn't feel comfortable calling her by her first name when she married my dad. So she gave her this nickname and it stuck. She was a badass who brought up two kids alone with no money after her husband died young and often took in other family members and their children when they were down on their luck. Thanks for keeping me entertained during my long commute.

You guys are amazing. And there's no name. Aw. Cute. Thank you, Ethel Agnes May Francis Ann's granddaughter. Lady Bird's granddaughter? Lady Bird's granddaughter. Would have been an easier way to say it.

My mom loved to say, do what I say, not what I do. Yeah. My mom always fucking said that. It's so annoying. That's right. That's the perfect outclose. Yeah. Yeah.

That was a good batch. It really was. Yeah. Very strong showing. Totally. Thanks, guys. Yeah. Send us your stories, whatever they may be.

Oh, and stay sexy. Oh, and don't get murdered. Goodbye. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie? Yeah. 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 McClashen and Sarah Blair Jenkins. Email your hometowns and fucking hurrays to myfavoritmurder at gmail.com. I show an Instagram and Facebook at myfavoritmurder and Twitter at myfavemurder. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.

Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. You've been listening ad free on Wendery Plus.