My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM - Minisode 319

Episode Date: February 20, 2023

This week’s hometowns include ghost cats and a friendly car thief.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. Follow This Is Actually Happening wherever you get your podcasts. If you're a fan of historic true crime, I hope you're already following Tenfold More Wicked, hosted by Kate Winkler Dawson. But if you're not, you're in for a treat because Season 7 is underway right now. She's a true crime journalist, the co-host of Buried Bones with Paul Holes, and now she's back with Season 7 of Tenfold More Wicked, the Annihilator. The Annihilator takes us to 1800s Austin, Texas and introduces us to Eugene Burt, a man with a troubled past. After witnessing the aftermath of a crime committed by a notorious serial killer, Eugene Burt becomes a suspect and a murder 12 years later,

with virtually the same MO as the one he witnessed. Over the course of six episodes, Kate does a deep dive into this case, investigating the lives of the victims and the killers. Find out how they all made history. Stay tuned at the end of this episode for the Season 7 trailer of Tenfold More Wicked with Kate Winkler Dawson. And get new episodes of Tenfold More Wicked every Monday on Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. Goodbye! Hello! And welcome to my favorite murder, the mini-soad.

That's right. Here we go. Your story is read to you by S. Via email. That's right. Do you want to go first? Sure. Okay. This one is called, I lived in Dolly Ostrich's house.

And then I got a special note from Alejandra that says, Georgia note, you covered Dolly Ostrich in an MFM special bonus episode in 2019. Also, Dolly Ostrich's the one that the dollop did her when we were on the dollop the first time. That's right. She's the lady with the super low boobs. Okay. Well, here's a little info about it. Hello, friends. A while back I was listening to some older episodes, including the story of Dolly Ostrich.

You know it well. Rich housewives seduced a 17-year-old employee who takes up secret residence in their tiny attic for years as a self-proclaimed sex slave writing pulp fiction novels and only emerging, quote, pale and sweaty from the attic door to murder the gaslit husband with a pistol that would eventually be thrown into the La Brea Tar Pits by the wife's future ex-lover. Yes, that one. I paused mid-episode because I had to see what these eccentric characters looked like. After scrolling through the usual old-timey stuff, one image shummed out at me.

It was jarring. It was a photo of my old front door. Ooh. What the fuck? Yes. Is that creepy? Yeah. And then another one and another.

I let out a gasp as I learned that I had lived in the house where the murder took place. Holy, holy shit. This house, the one that Dolly carefully handpicked for its rare Los Angeles attic space. That's right. She was like looking for a space for her lover could live because he already lived in her attic in Wisconsin or wherever they lived before. Like it was that is the great. It's the craziest story.

It is. The Los Angeles house had been converted into several quirky studio apartments, one of which I rented for a few years. The place, albeit charming, always had an off vibe about it. Who knew such a piece of history was sitting right there in the glowing light of the foot clinic sign down the street. And then it says RIP, happy foot, sad foot, which is you are from LA. You know what we're talking about. Just legendary.

Now I know what you're thinking. Was the apartment haunted? Well, there was that one time I jumped up in bed in the middle of the night because music started blasting inside my room. Creepy, right? Truth be told, I had dozed off to a three hour long ocean waves track that was so quiet. It required the speakers to be at maximum volume, cue me, disoriented and nearly peeing myself, being jolted awake at 3 a.m. by the next random song from the music library, Tracy Chapman's fast car. It's an important detail.

All right. If that wasn't a ghost, surely the figures that appeared in my room in the middle of the night were right. Fred, Dolly, is that you? Nope. Just your average case of hypnagogic hallucinations. You heard that before? No. One of the many brands of night terrors I've suffered since childhood.

Oh, shit. Yeah. This official diagnosis came during a sleep study where the technician who was attaching tiny multicolored wires to my head, Frankenstein style, said that she believes I just have a gift and I can see dead people. Not cool. So it's not the apartment. It's me. After I excitedly told my husband about my brush with true crime history, he just looked at me and said,

you're so weird. Luckily, I had several murdering friends for backup to confirm that. Yes, I am weird. But also how fucking cool is it that I lived in a creepy home of good old Walburga and the Batman? Even a five nothing to show for it. Stay sexy and always check to see if your apartment has a sex addict. And then it says, Georgia, sorry, I couldn't resist. But I say addict now, don't I?

No, you just did it wrong. I did. Sex addict. Attic. Right. It ends at C. I get it. But it's he probably was a sex addict that lived in that attic.

That's right. It's true on so many levels. Love and Angelina Martirino. She, her. I mean, sorry. Would your husband be stoked if he found out that he was living in Babe Ruth's house? Like it's not fucking. It's not weird.

It is a famous story and it is. It's more interesting than being able to hit a bunch of home runs in a row in the 30s or whenever he did that because it's the weirdest element of human behavior. This woman who was all charisma and whatever else sex appeal. Manipulation. Yeah. Confidence maybe. But she got a young, a very young man to secretly live in her house for years and years.

It's wild. It's so wild. You live in the same house. What are the chances? You could go up into that attic and stand there if you want. I mean, that's incredible. Yeah. That's sex addict in the, in the sex addict.

Great one. Thank you for writing that in. I, I'm excited and you don't even live there anymore. I'm not going to read you the subject line of this one. It just starts, I've got another theme park story for you. One summer in college, I was a ride operator at the Southern California amusement park specifically in the little kid family friendly area. There were about 15 small rides in that section, including a mini roller coaster that we literally

had to stop by pulling a lever to engage the break, stop it too late and there was no choice but to send them around the truck again. That was parenthetical and I was trained on all of them. So one day I'm working at the Ferris wheel in the position that's at the control panel. The ride is full and currently moving at full speed. Suddenly I noticed a kid, maybe 10 or so, has somehow entered through the exit gate that was supposed to be locked and is coming up the path towards the moving ride. Oh no.

Yeah. I of course panic. My first thought is that I need to stop the ride before the kid can get any closer. So I hit the emergency stop button because that makes sense, right? But for whatever stupid reason, emergency stop wasn't set up to actually stop the ride. Oh my God. It's like an elevator door close button where it's just like, just makes you feel a little safer. What the fuck?

It's completely a placebo, but on a roller coaster. Yeah. Instead, I lost all control of the ride and it went into a free spin instead. Oh. What the fuck? This is, I was going to ask, why didn't you name the theme park? And it's like, oh, I see. Liable.

My small joystick that was supposed to send the wheel forwards or backwards is absolutely useless. So now instead of stopping as I'd intended, it has now picked up speed and is going even faster. Oh God. I'm sweating. I just skimmed this one. I didn't realize.

And absolutely no time in my training was I warned that this would happen. I bet not. In the literal seconds between me hitting the button and realizing the ride was now accelerating, the kid inside the exit gate disappeared, gone to who knows where. Great. My coworker soon realizes something is wrong, but seeing as we have a ferris wheel standing between us that is spinning faster and faster than the fucking night. Jesus.

It's hard for me to yell over to her to try to explain. Whatever happened next is a blur. Eventually the ride lost momentum and came to a stop on its own, but I still had no control over it. We had to wait for maintenance to come out and reset the system. And during all of this, I'm stuck at the control panel right next to the guests who are justifiably upset and demanding to be let off and kids who are crying. Oh, you're gay.

Once I finally regain control, there's a specific way to unload a ferris wheel so it remains balanced. But some guests were so angry that my supervisor told me to let them get off early before it was their basket's turn. Oh no. This threw off the balance, making it more difficult for me to control and a jerkier ride for the poor guests that we're still waiting. That's right because you have to get off like a ferris wheel still has to go around for

people to get off person by person. You don't let one side of the wheel off entirely, otherwise it's not balanced, I didn't think about that. Yes. Yeah. You can't. It's like every other car or something. Oh my God.

Suddenly there's geometry involved and it's horrifying. I know. I know. I don't know what, if anything, the park offered these guests as an attempt at compensation, but I was told by multiple parents that their kids were traumatized. Yeah. Yeah. I have to explain to some administrative manager what happened and thankfully they

didn't find me at fault for anything, but I did make sure to avoid the ferris wheel for the rest of the summer. Say sexy and don't hit the emergency stop button, R, she, her. Oh, that's awful. It's so bad. It's so scary. I don't know why I love an amusement park like horror stories so much. Don't you think part of the fear and the excitement of riding a roller coaster is the idea that

these are just things made by people and run by people. Teenagers. Yeah. There's true risk involved. Yeah. It like justifies my fear of them. So I feel good about that. Yeah.

You're right. Jill Evans has it all. A big house, fast car, and a great career as a decorated police sergeant in Wales. But when it comes to love, she can never seem to get things right. And after multiple failed engagements, Jill's starting to think it's never going to happen for her. That is until she connects online with a charming, handsome, successful man named Dean Jenkins. From the outside, there may be some red flags, but Jill doesn't care.

He is the one. And just six months in, Jill finds out she is pregnant, and they make plans to spend the rest of their lives together. But the night after Halloween, Jill receives a shocking text that will change everything. And what she reads threatens to take away her dreams of happiness, her career, and maybe even her freedom. Wondering a novel's new podcast, Stolen Hearts, tells the intricate love story of Jill and Dean and how opposites really do attract.

Follow Stolen Hearts on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. And hey, Prime members, you can binge the entire series ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Goodbye. Goodbye. This one's called Ghost Cats. Hello, humans, cats, and puppers. I have a story I wanted to send in for a while now and finally have.

Not a murder story, but it may still be creepy. When I was very young, my family and I had a cat named Scratchy. I was about four or five when we had to put her down and didn't quite understand it. We also had another cat, but I'll get to that later. After Scratchy was put down, I started seeing a small cat-shaped shadow sliding under my bed. Now, since both our cats were black, I of course thought it was Raven, who was our other cat.

I would pat the bed and make my normal sounds, cat people will know what I mean, and would whisper her name since it was always at night. After about three seconds, I would peek under my bed, only to find nothing there. I would embark on a small journey to my parents' room, only to find Raven curled up asleep, snoring on my mother's pillow. I would also feel something jump onto and walk across my bed with small, light paws. This still happens today. A couple years go by, and I'm 13.

My cat Raven has fallen seriously ill due to kidney failure and sadly had to be put down. The night after, I and my mother hurt an all-too-familiar meow. It came from the closet Raven would always sleep in. Then two nights after, I heard it in the hall. I would feel something jump onto my bed around 10 p.m., which was when she'd lay with me. Then feel it leave. I've never been scared, only comforted with the fact that they still watch over me. And then this part, I'm 14 now.

And even though it's been so long, both of them still show up to say hi every so often. That's a 14-year-old murdering now. I got a kick. Telling us ghost stories. I know. We will both be 15 on March 8th. No matter what, they will be remembered as long as I'm still breathing. Thanks for reading.

Stay sexy and watch out for ghost cats, K.K. Hey, K.K. K.K., that's like you. K.K. When I say to K.K. what Kevin Klein said to me when I met him, pointing at me, K.K., pointing at himself, K.K., the most exciting celebrity interaction I've ever had. I love it. I think those things that we absorb when we have pets, especially precious pets like Raven,

where when they jump on your bed and then you know they're there, or they brush under your hand or all those things. That ghost cat letting you know that they're there by doing those things that you love. It's like how much do you love when your cat jumps on your bed and you're like, oh, they're going to curl up behind my knees and then we're going to cuddle up. I love that idea that K.K. still gets to experience that. I love that.

Also sorry for all this wearing, K.K., tell your mom. Okay. This is also a feel good one. Hello, everyone, including all of the animals. I always think of writing to you, but I don't speak English and translating long stories about my hometown murders is too difficult for my level of English. Wow, it's perfect so far. So instead, I'll just tell you about a weird social phenomenon that happens in my country

and how little me took advantage of it. Oh, and by the way, in the title of this email, this person is from Argentina, so they indicate that. I just realized that's crucial. Last week, I found out that the beach clapping is not something that happens everywhere. So let me tell you what it is with an anecdote. What? Okay.

The beach clapping. When I was four years old, we went to the beach and everyone was looking at my baby brother eat sand, touch the sea for the first time and do all the baby things. Middle child me was just vibing and trying to get every bit of attention I could. One day I go to the shore alone to play. I think they mean so I go. I don't think it's one day, right? Same day, I would imagine.

And then in parentheses, it says, I know the nineties and the beach was super crowded. I stayed there long enough that when I wanted to go back to where my parents were, I got disoriented and walked by the water in the opposite direction. After a while, I started panicking and crying. A group of 20 something guys got near me and asked me if I was lost. I told them yes and one of them immediately grabbed me, put me on his shoulders and started clapping. At first I was confused and scared, but soon enough all the guys started making jokes to

me and saying nice things and told me everything would be fine and then they would buy me an ice cream. Oh my God. They were walking while clapping and then the people around us started clapping too and those people started walking with us. Everyone clapping, everyone looking at me. I love it. After like 15 minutes of walking, we found my parents, my mom was crying and hugged me.

The guys that helped me stayed there and played with me all afternoon and they kept their promise of buying me an ice cream. It was the best day ever. Yeah. The Argentinian beach clapping is to inform people that a child is missing and so the parents can find them more easily. It is a communal effort that is simply accepted by every Argentinian. If a kid is missing at the beach, everyone just stops what we're doing and we clap to

find their parents and I think it is beautiful. I do too. Oh my God. This next sentence is so perfect. Guess who quote unquote got lost two times more that summer. Oh, fuck yeah you did. So I love you girls and thank you for all that you do for minorities. While we were fighting for the right to abortion in my country, we took statistics of the EEUU

as an example. It is crazy to me how after we won that fight, that right was taken away from you. Yeah, crazy to me too. All I can say is please do what you can to help those who will need your help. Okay, Maggie. Love it. Don't be very sexy and don't let saggy balls make decisions that mostly affect women. Well put.

Goodbye exclamation point, Maggie. Oh my God, I didn't see that coming. Oh my God. I was like, huh? Oh, I love that. Maggie, that was a perfect, first of all, separate from, don't worry about English as a second language. You've got it.

And secondly, that was a perfect mini-sode email. It had everything we love. Totally. Oh, that's so smart and sweet. I love that. Clapping. Beach clapping. Argentinian beach clapping.

Fuck yeah. Let's adopt that here. Now, if it was in America and there was like guys circling up around you saying I'll buy you ice cream as a child, it's like run, run, run, but Argentina's got a different situation going on. Yeah. Thank God. Oh, I love that.

And everyone around like picked up on it. So they joined in. Yeah. Then the kids kind of distracted and like, you know, having a good time and it's not super traumatic. It's like a parade all of a sudden. Guess who got lost two more times at Super. So good.

All right. Here's my last one. The title is I am an unusual murderino. I am deaf. Hi, folks. That's exactly right. At some point during a recent mini-sode, you raised the challenge of people emailing in who think they're fairly unusual in terms of demographics, or at least I think that

happened. So I picked up the gauntlet to email in, I have been a listener of this podcast for almost three years now and I am deaf. Hell yeah. To explain deafness is a spectrum. I don't have total hearing loss called profound deafness. I'm in the category above that severe hearing loss. This means that without help, I can only hear sounds if they're about the same volume as

a vacuum cleaner. To counter this, I have hearing aids and my hearing aids have Bluetooth, so essentially they can double as an extremely expensive set of AirPods. It's not unusual for deaf folks with some residual hearing to listen to podcasts. So I'm probably not as unusual as I initially claimed. And you two ladies have some of the clearest voices out of all the podcasts I have tried to listen to. Oh my God.

Very deaf friendly. Yes. Doesn't that feel good? I was a little bit. I wasn't born deaf. I started to lose my hearing during the pandemic. And then it says, unrelated to COVID. When telling a tattoo artist, she got really worried because she thought deafness was a

side effect of the disease. It's not just a coincidence. But I didn't realize how bad my hearing loss was until I got to university. Somehow I had just convinced myself my hearing wasn't going. People were just being boring. Smiley emoji. Losing my hearing during the pandemic means some of the last things I heard well was my neighbor practicing the same song on ukulele over and over again during lockdown.

Oh my. No. And my other neighbor shouting over the fence for them to shut the fuck up. Good times. Yes. Being deaf isn't a bad thing. A lot of hearing people feel bad for deaf folk. And I wanted to say that actually we're doing fine.

Deafness has a strong culture and our own languages. The communities formed around deafness are very close. For a lot of us being able to choose what we can hear and what we don't want to hear is superior to regular old hearing. Yes. I bet it is. Uh-huh. It says I will frequently take my hearing aids out if a really boring conversation is

happening and I don't have to listen to babies screaming in public. Oh my God. There's a saying within the deaf community, deaf people can do everything you can do except hear. Also a side fact for Georgia and Steven, cats will respond to deaf people differently. Cats of deaf people learn that meowing doesn't get them what they want. So they will find other ways to communicate either by coming up to you or hitting you with a paw so you pay attention to them.

Very cute. My cats are starting to learn this with me, which means I get stared at very intensely whenever I don't feed them on time. Anyway, just wanted to email in. I'm sure I'll find other reasons to email if this doesn't get read. Have a good day. Bunny, they, them. Bunny?

Yeah. I think that's the first bunny we've ever had send in an email. I think you're right. Yeah. I love that. Bunny, thank you for that highly informative, very, like, I love learning that information. I love people being able to say, like, don't worry about us. That's such a great watch your attitude about other people and their abilities.

I mean, that was great. Yeah. Very informative. I think we all learned something. Yeah. Here's my last one. It just starts, your last mini-sode about the roommate's boyfriend and his USPS marijuana trade triggered too many memories from my early to late-ish and twenties.

While I have a couple of those to share, another story came to mind. This is probably around 2010 and my boyfriend at the time was living in one of those large historical apartment houses that young post graduates lived in for cheap directly next to the quote, unquote, bar scene. At one point, the more serious tenant we'll call him Bill had his car stolen. This is upsetting for all of us to hear since we were pretty reckless and didn't deal with much crime. A day or so later, Bill randomly busts into a party yelling at my boyfriend and the other

guy saying, it's not funny, this is BS, FU, FU and where you came from, et cetera. It's funny that a person would give that shorthand, like, we don't swear on this podcast every other fucking word. But it's like two, they can't actually write it. It's like, you're not allowed to write God, you can only, you can't write black. And also a super angry, like, young 20s dude that walks in like, hey, this is BS, FU, like, okay, Bill, apparently a day or two after Bill reported his car stolen, it appeared back across the street.

When the car was returned, it was with a note that said, got out of work super late, could not get a cab, I borrowed your car to the bus station, sorry for the inconvenience, you really shouldn't leave your keys in your car. Oh, my God, Bill wasn't such denial that a stranger would do this that he assumed it was the other guys in the house playing a joke on him. This was a huge argument for a while until the cops were called again and informed everyone that this actually happened more than you think. And with bars closing at 4am and the lack of public transportation, and then parentheses

that says this was pre-ride share, people got desperate. I guess that's why they call Buffalo the quote, city of good neighbors. Anyways, I'm in New Orleans now, cheers to the good times when your car could get stolen and returned instead of being found burned out under a bridge. Catherine. Wow. How hilarious. What a friendly car thief.

Yeah, just like, hey, sorry, I had to. Yeah. Yeah. It was important, I had to. Okay. So polite, I love that. Yeah. Good job, everyone.

Please send us your hometowns, whatever they, that means to you, whatever they may be at my favorite murder, Gmail. I mean, you could really base what you're going to send us on all of the emails we got on this episode, because they were all A plus five stars. I would say. Totally. Great writing, great job. Great writing, great attitudes, good information, a little bit of fear, a lot of love, stay

sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie? Yeah. He appears to have been charming. Everybody who observed him with his family said that he constantly, you know, kissed Annie and played with the children and just was a wonderful family man.

For all accounts, they were a loving family. I'm Kate Linkler Dawson, a true crime historian, an author, and the host of Tenfold, More Wicked, on Exactly Right. For this season, our seventh will be in late 1800s, Austin, Texas. This is a story about a complicated man. A lot of people will describe him as a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde type of situation. But in reality, Eugene Burt was kind of a shyster. He had some pretty shady business dealings where he screwed over his brothers.

He would lie and they would keep bailing him out. He didn't have to face consequences. It's about the woman who loved him and her growing suspicions. She expressed to her mother that Eugene's behavior was getting a little odd, that she would wake up to find him standing over her watching her sleep. The only person that said he was acting strangely on that day of the murders was his housekeeper. It's about a serial killer who may have put a teenager on the path to murder. Such a bizarre and traumatic set of facts for a 15-year-old to experience, certainly

could influence someone who is already predisposed to an unbalanced situation. Think about this then, ten years go by and this is seething and percolating in him. Maybe it just becomes too much. And it's about understanding why four people ended up dead. There is some cause, something that drove him crazy. What was it? Was it just his mother and father because his two brothers didn't kill anybody? I don't think that's inherited in families' desire to murder.

I'm Kate Winkler-Dawson and this is season seven of Tenfold More Wicked. Season seven of Tenfold More Wicked premieres on January 30th on Exactly Right. New episodes every Monday. Follow the show on Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Tenfold More Wicked early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. This has been an Exactly Right production. Our senior producer is Hannah Kyle-Cryton.

Our producer is Alejandra Keck. This episode was engineered and mixed by Stephen Ray Morris. Our researchers are Maren McClashen and Sarah Blair Jenkins. 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. Listen, follow, leave us a review on Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, 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? Follow the Amazon Music app today. You can support My Favorite Murder by filling out a survey at Wondery.com.