My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 324

Episode Date: March 27, 2023

This week’s hometowns include racing the garage door and a sibling redemption story.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 writer. This is the mini-soad.

That's right. How many times can we explain this to you? It's so easy. We read emails. Everyone does it. We do it too. Out loud. It's great.

Should I go first this time? Yeah, go for it. Okay. Mine's a real hometown. It just starts. Hi. I'm going to skip the pleasantries, but just know I love y'all. I sent this story before, but I think I hope this will be the last time I have to send

it. Lol. Because of a massive procrastinator and have been meaning to write this since literally 2017, I present to you today a relic, a classic hometown. Nice. This story starts when I was in eighth grade in 2013 in a town located between Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas. I was at school one day when suddenly the principal announced on the intercom that we were in

full lockdown, repeating, this is not a drill. Surrounded by terrified preteens, I wondered what dramatic shit was going on to put the whole school on lockdown. Well I found out afterwards the dumpster fire of a story that went down. A prisoner was being transported from Miami to Nevada and had escaped the car where he was being watched by two detectives. The car had stopped at a Walmart in Grapevine, the one my family went to every week for groceries. And they were waiting on a third officer to assist with the transfer.

Without anyone noticing, the prisoner took out a broken and sharpened piece of his own eyeglasses and stabbed one of the guards with it. Before I go on, I'll tell you now that fortunately the officer survived. With shackles still on, he then made his escape. Somehow he was able to evade the police for four days. Until a homeowner in Grapevine, which is literally five minutes from my house, called the cops to report that his house had been broken into. When the officers arrived on the scene, they realized that this man was the glasses-wielding

criminal that they had been looking for. He was uncooperative and attempted to lunge at the officers. They then had no choice but to shoot him dead. Although I generally wouldn't cheer for death, this man was a monster. He was incarcerated for sexual assault, and now he had nearly killed an officer. The whole ordeal was so insane, I actually had to look it up to confirm that it wasn't some sort of fever dream. The violence and terror to a whole town caused by this ass hat finally caught up to him.

Anyways, thanks for letting me share my story, SSDGM Maddie She-Her. God, the idea of an escaped, like, sexual predator is very scary. Yeah, in a small town. That's horrifying. Yeah. And, well, sexual predator and a murderer. Yeah. This is also what you would call a classic hometown.

Now that I think about it, I'm not going to read you the subject line. It just starts. I am not even going to rewrite this story, because whoever wrote this entry for the Seattle Police Department Blotter did a Pulitzer Prize-winning job. In February 2021, I was looking at the Blotter to find out what some sirens nearby were about. When I came across a story about a crafty lady shopping at a thrift store, here's the rest. Quote, so this, I guess, is from the Seattle Police Department crime blotter.

Love it. Quote, around 3.30 p.m., a woman purchased a kit to crochet animal hats at a business within the 6,400 block of 8th Avenue, Northwest. When she opened the kit, there was a suspicious heavy item encased in yellow rubber, giving off an odd odor with 100% written on the outside. The woman immediately called 9-1-1. Officers responded and took possession of the suspicious package. This later confirmed the substance to be a kilogram of cocaine.

Oh, 100%. Holy shit. The package was placed into evidence. End quote. I think about this story often. The detail about the animal hats tickles me. Are they hats for animals or hats with animal designs? Stay sexy and keep crocheting animal hats, Imuna.

Wow. Pretty good, right? Yeah. Wow. 9-1-1's grandma found a lot of cocaine. She could have made a lot of money off that if it really was 100%, you know? High grade. She could have cut that shit with baby laxative and just sailed into the sunset of her.

That's right. With her animal hats on or her hats on her animals, we don't really know. She could actually single-handedly mass produce animal hats from there on out if she had done it differently. She could retire on that shit. Okay. She didn't. 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? 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? Although life is short wherever you get your podcasts, you can also listen ad-free on the

Amazon Music or Wondery app. They lived series, a garage door story. Oh. Thank you for your words and funny antics as I drive to and from the school where I teach disrespectful high schoolers all day. I was recently listening to many, so 252, yes, I am behind, but I am one of those late comers who's been catching up diligently from episode one. One of the stories you read discussed someone getting crushed by the garage door, and this

finally gave me something to write in about. Yes, I lived after being crushed by the garage door. I was in middle school, maybe sixth or seventh grade, and my twin sister and I would ride our bikes to school each morning. We would walk the bikes out of the garage and set them in the driveway. One of us would then walk back out to the garage to press the button to close the door. Unlike smart children who would maybe walk back through the house and exit the front door, we, on a daily basis, would race out of the garage door before it closed.

I want to say something that's not for kids to decide. That's like something your parents should have forced you to do, you know? Yeah, have some sort of say on, although I have to say that's how we did it, too. Absolutely. Every kid did that, yeah. But there's some garage doors that if you pass by that laser, it'll stop, so you can't do it. I feel like old garage doors didn't have that though, right?

Right, I think so. This task never failed us until one day it was my turn to press the button and run one morning. I pressed the button and began to race against the door when something caught my attention and I very quickly turned around to look at it. I still to this day have no idea what distracted me because nothing was there or out of sorts. But those few, what felt like milliseconds, cost me precious moments. As I ducked under the garage door, it caught the top of my backpack and pulled me back

to the ground. Now, imagine the position you have to sit in to do the V-sit and reach for the presidential fitness test in PE class. No. Legs flat on the ground, straight out in front of you and you are folding yourself in half forward to try and reach those toes. That's what I look like, but a large mechanical door was pushing my neck to the ground so that she was being folded in half.

No. Yeah. Thankfully, the store had sensors, poor, probably the first edition of sensors, so that helped me. I also heard my sister screaming and she pulled the door up in a feeble attempt to free me. Maybe it was the sensors or maybe her free-fishing middle school strength, but the door started to rise. My sleep-derived, delirious father who just got off his night shift job was mildly concerned

and sent us off to school anyways. I was shaking from the experience and cried the whole bike ride to school that morning. The day went as normal until I got home that evening and I was standing in front of my mother talking to her. She asked, why are you standing sideways like you're leaning to the right? I looked in a mirror and noticed I was from the waist up, leaning to the right and had no idea. I know.

Thanks to a few chiropractor appointments later, I was good as new. However, we never stopped racing the garage door until our parents got a button installed on the outside so this wouldn't happen again. Stay sexy and get more flexible so the garage door doesn't mess you up as bad next time. Patty. That's right, Patty. That's the perfect Gen X response, which is, it's my fault I need to improve somehow. Also the idea that this girl got smashed in half by a garage door, her sister pulled

the door up, that's how she escaped and the dad's like, get on your bike and ride yourself to school. Go to school. Yeah, I need to sleep. What did it take in the 70s and 80s for parents to intervene in their children's fucking daily life? They had to do something bad and then somehow the parents were paying attention. Yes.

You know what I mean? Exactly. Or you had to have like bone showing. You had to have your skeleton on the outside before they were like, you know what? This is important. I better drive you to school. And then it's, what did you do? That's awesome.

Yes. If you're going to race the door, then you need to be fast. Yeah. And flexible. Okay. The subject line of this is the time I stopped an art heist, sort of. Hey, y'all, let's get to it. This story happened early last year as I started a new job at an art gallery.

Keep in mind this is a regional gallery. It's big in the area and we do a lot of high standard exhibitions, but we are by no means at a national standard. No Picasso's or Monet's here. So I'm working on the desk one quiet afternoon and I see this shady old guy has walked past our staff entrance multiple times. On the security cameras, we watch him take a small metal object that looks like a watch battery out of his pocket, pull out a tube of glue and glue it onto the wall above the

staff card swiper thing to get into the building. Obviously red flags all around. Then he moves toward the front of the building and starts to glue more things to the building. It's go time. I'm on it. I run out the staff door and head out and use my best, no, I'm the boss here, voice and ask him, can I help you mate? Quick note, in Australia, people often use mate in situations that someone's doing the

wrong thing or all around being a fuck with. He tells me he works with our security company and he's just installing some new hardware. Says the old guy wearing footy shorts and thongs and as a high vis work shirt that's torn and covered in grease on a Sunday afternoon with no notice. And then in all caps it says, not today, thief. I ask for his ID and he tells me he doesn't have his work ID with him. So I ask for his driver's license and I take it off him while he looks totally perplexed by me.

The name he gave me didn't match the name on his license. I walk back to the desk, scan and copy his license and tell my coworker to call security. I've done it. I've saved the gallery and caught the guy. I have his real name and walked him to a spot so we would have a perfect shot of him in our security cameras. That'll probably promote me, definitely give me a raise. But as it would turn out, Rex didn't just work for the security company.

He owned it. When we called security, they told us the owner was in the area and had patched us through to his mobile. He had just been in town to grab a few things from a shop across the road and thought he would install the new sensors while he was in town. Everyone called him Rex but that wasn't his legal name, not the unusual here to be honest. Was this super embarrassing? Yes.

He did, however, tell me that if I ever wanted a job in security, he could use someone as thorough as me. Stay sexy and always be ready for go time. Capital G, capital T. Maddie, she heard. Maddie, I think you're on in the right here. Like. Entirely. Hey, look, if that's your job, you do your job.

You give no one the benefit of the doubt. Absolutely. I love it. It's art. It's not stolen. No. My last one is called Mom Prank Gone Wrong because you asked. Dear MFM, I've submitted this story before but now that you've deliberately asked for

pranks gone wrong, I'm going to try again. You went out of your way to ask for pranks gone wrong. It says in italics deliberately. Years ago when my sons were about 7 and 11, we went through a weird family phase of loving to scare each other. We were always hiding behind doors and around corners to jump out and scream in each other's faces. I don't know how people live like that.

I don't understand. You just kind of get, you have to get high off of it because that's your coping mechanism from just having to live in that kind of shock all the time. Got it. The closer we all came to heart attacks, the better. One day my husband and I hatched a plan to scare my 11-year-old Charlie. I was going to hide in his bedroom closet while he was brushing his teeth before bed and my husband would somehow get him to open the closet door and then I jumped out.

It says, trust me, I know it sounds horrible now. I don't think it's fair for the parents to scheme together. You know what I mean? Although if that's the understanding in the family, then it's not as weird as us coming in being like, my mother would never jump up at all, much less jump out of a closet at me. It's like they're used to it. Okay.

I quietly slipped into the closet, crouched down and peeked out through the slats in the closet door. I waited and waited and waited. As many times as my husband tried to get Charlie to open the closet, all his efforts were too subtle and totally futile. Eventually, my darling husband just shrugged and said, okay, good night. Left the room, closed the door and all caps turned off the lights with me still hiding in the closet.

The prank had suddenly taken a very dark turn and panic set in. After silently cursing my husband, I figured there was only one way out through the slats as I saw Charlie reach for a book on his bedside table. I attempted the most gentle boo as I slowly slid his closet door open since friends, he lost it. What I thought was a book in his hand was actually a picture frame that was ultimately thrown to the floor in a panic smashing. He fell to the ground in terror, rolling around in the broken glass, crying and screaming

and coating his pajamas with broken glass. After cleaning him up and calming him down, I cuddled with him on his bed, held a cool cloth to his forehead and apologized a thousand times over. I looked him in the eyes and said, I know you don't believe me now, but I promise you that one day we will laugh about this. I can't say that I haven't traumatized him for life, but Charlie is almost 20 years old and we laugh about this all the time. He's still talking to you.

Yeah. He has long forgiven me. Have I forgiven my husband for stirring me in the closet? Oh, hell no. No. Stay sexy and stay out of your kid's closet after dark, Jay from Toronto. It's so evil. It truly went wrong.

It's just, you know what? It's a good thing to consider. It's like, you have the best intentions when you're doing your fun prank on a child. What if it doesn't go the way you assume? Oh, heartbreaking. Oh, real quick in the dark. Hi, Boo. Boo.

You have one more? Yes, I do. I'm not going to read you the subject line. It just starts, hey, friendarinos, I have a secondhand story for you today. So for the sake of anonymity, I've changed the names. Here it goes. In high school, my older sister was somewhat of a delinquent. She sold drugs, mainly marijuana for some extra cash, and rolled with a crew of dudes

from another local high school. She partied a lot and even moved out at one point during her senior year with said group of equally rebellious dudes. She was rock and roll. She sounds fun. Here's to hardcore older sisters who were just trying to get through teenhood in the late aughts. Anywho's, there was another drug dealer in our town who rolled with a different group

of people who was notorious for being a scammer. We'll call him Jack. Think ripping people off with astronomically high prices, selling unknowing teens oregano instead of weed and the like. One time, Jack hit up my sister to sell him an ounce of weed. They met up in the park late one night with their respective crews. Jack paid my sister $80 in cash for the weed, and they each went on their merry ways. The next day, my sister went to Safeway, and as she was checking out, she tried to pay

for her items with the cash from the drug deal. The store clerk informed her that they were counterfeit bills and wouldn't let her check out. She tried the cash at Starbucks instead, but she received the same response. And then in parentheses, it says, shout out to my sister for trying to make lemonade and scam the big corporations, I guess. Once she deemed that the bills were useless, she messaged Jack, telling him something along the lines of, give me my actual money or my boys will come and fuck you up.

Clearly, she got the audacious gene. Eventually, after some back and forth, Jack agreed to meet her at a coffee shop in broad daylight to give her the money. The time and place seemed odd to my sister, but since it was just a cash exchange, she went ahead and decided to meet him there, only arriving at the coffee shop to find that he was AOL. As she was about to go on another texting rampage, someone abruptly tapped her on the shoulder.

She turned around to see a little old lady who asked her, are you here for Jack? Startled, she replied yes. The old woman explained she was Jack's grandmother and would be giving my sister the money, but not before she gave her a little talking to. Awkwardly, the old woman sat my sister down and told her, I know what you're doing and what you're doing is shit. She went on to tell her that she had been a teacher of 30 years and hated to see young people waste their potential selling drugs.

She told her she could turn out like one of her star students if she'd just stopped being a drug dealer. My sister sat there stunned after receiving this unexpected slap on the wrist from Jack's grandmother. The woman then pulled out her checkbook, wrote my sister a check for $80 and left the table without saying a word. Thankfully the check was authentic and my sister got her payment. Of course, my sister had a zillion questions running through her head, namely why would

such a disapproving grandma still pay off her grandson's drug debt. Regardless, everything worked out in the end and my sister knew not to sell or buy from Jack anymore. And maybe something Jack's grandmother told my sister that day stuck with her because my sister cleaned up her act in the years that followed and is now a sober software developer making six figures. I am super fucking proud of my big sis and maybe if it wouldn't have been for that counterfeit drug deal and that chance grandma encounter, things would have turned out differently.

Right? Yes. Anyway, I hope you like my story and thank you for everything you do. I've been listening to the pod since 2017 and you guys are my besties. And then there's five S's and less than with a three, which looks like a heart. Of you all, XOXO S. Oh my God. It just shows you that it like that was a stranger.

She didn't have to take the time to talk to her, but she knew that there was potential there. Oh my God. She told her like, you could do whatever you want. I can tell I'm a teacher and maybe it really did ring a little bell inside of that drug dealing girl said. Oh my God. Amazing.

It worked. I love that story. I know, right? Yes. Send us your redemption stories. Let's have redemption stories. Let's have older sister redemption stories or older sibling. Let's have the sibling black sheep redemption story.

I'm one. Right? Same. I was the black sheep until literally seven years ago when we started this podcast. It's a great story arc. And now we're like, top of the, you're top of the Kilgara pack. I'm top of the Heartstark pack. Come on.

There's nothing like the black sheep turning it all around. That's right. Send us in my favorite murder at Gmail. And stay sexy. And don't get murdered. 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 researchers are Marin McClasham and Sarah Blair Jenkins. Email your hometowns and fucking hurrays to myfavoritmurder at gmail.com. Follow the show and Instagram and Facebook at my favorite murder and Twitter at myfavemurder. Goodbye. Goodbye.

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