My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 332

Episode Date: May 22, 2023

This week’s hometowns include a terrifying roller coaster ride and a big fan of Stephen King.  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is exactly right. Hello! And welcome to my favorite murder, the mini-soad. That's right. We read you emails. Yeah, you know how this goes. It's been years. It's your thing.

Should I go first? Yeah, go for it. Hometown Story, scary theme park story. Hi, Karen and Georgia. Great podcast. Thumbs up. Thank you. I was listening to a mini-episode, and heard Georgia state that she loves spooky,

slash, scary theme park stories, and I perked up. I've never been happier to have a near-death, traumatizing life event. So to preface this story, when I was in elementary slash junior high school, I was a fearless adrenaline junkie who loved theme park rides. These days, I hurt my neck by just looking in the wrong direction. My health things have changed. It was the summer after sixth grade, and one of my best friends was moving to another state. Her family invited me to a local theme park as one last hurrah before they left.

The day had been great, fun rides and yummy fair food. The day was winding down on my friend's little sister, let's call her Bailey, wanted to go on the main roller coaster, the tornado, one last time. Nobody else was up for it, so I volunteered to go with her. So we get through the line, get in our seats, and pull down the lock bar. The ride started, and I remember being annoyed because there were these two young boys in the back of the ride screaming. The ride just started.

It wasn't that exciting. They continued to scream, and I looked back, and to my dread, they were standing up. No. Yeah, I'm no genius, but standing up in a moving roller coaster is no bueno. So I pulled at the lap bar, and sure enough, it wasn't locked. Oh. At this point, everyone on the coaster noticed as well, and started screaming. We were trying to get the ride's operator's attention, an older gentleman,

who seemed to be staring off into space. We started going up the at least four story hill, and Bailey was losing her shit. She was screaming and crying, we're going to die. Katie, we're going to die. Somehow I was able to keep some of my composure, and through my arm in front of her and screamed back, we are not going to die. Calm down. We'll be fine.

Internally, I was convinced this was it. We weren't going to make it. Even if we didn't fly off the roller coaster while going downhill, there were several tight spirals afterwards. I even remember thinking about where we could potentially jump off the ride and potentially survive with some broken bones. Fuckin' me. I know.

This is a nightmare. Nightmare, and just a little kid. It seemed like an eternity before the ride suddenly stopped, just after the first car started going over the peak of the hill. Oh, no. Employees of the park ran up the hill, and with a screwdriver locked each bar into place. We were forced to finish the ride. No.

You imagine. No. Thankfully, to those two boys who raised hell, we survived. Later, we found out that it wasn't a malfunction of the lap bar. The ride operator simply forgot to switch on the lock. I'm sorry, sir. You're out of here. Sir?

Sir. Sir, work at the library. Yes, so we're quiet. Please. Awesome. People always ask me if I'm now terrified of roller coasters, and I simply respond, no. I just checked to make sure it's locked.

Yeah. I'm now 36 years old, and I remember that terrifying experience like it was yesterday. Thank you again for the lovely audio experience. Stay your awesome selves. Katie, she, her. Katie, thank you for like a story that Ashley gave, like pull a little tension in my shoulder right now.

I'm like, oh, my shoulder hurts because I immediately started imagining how I would just start pulling down on that bar, like how you're going to keep yourself in your seat. You'd have to hold on in the loops. Like I wonder if there's ever been like a whole, like cars of people who died. Like you always feel like you're one person falling out, but not like nobody was trapped in stories.

That's awful. It's so bad because you have to like, especially roller coasters, like go in loops. Like it's bare minimum that your bar is locked. Seriously. Even then you're not guaranteed anything. I know. It's bad enough.

Like, okay, good one. The subject line of this email is, my badass grandma made me stalk Stephen King. Oh, dear Karen Georgia and my favorite mustache. Amazing. Seven years. And they're the first person to have done that for Stephen. Amazing.

Okay. I've literally listened to all of your episodes over the past year and a half. Yes, I work from home. I get so sad when I scroll to only see the green check marks beside each episode and listeners searching for a little unchecked gem. I so know that feeling listening to podcasts. I did too. Anyway, this story is about my badass grandma, Pat.

Pat was a nurse, pilot, model. Your basic 1950s, I can do what I want woman. Grandma Pat grew up on the Jersey shore. She moved in with us when I was about five years old and she was in her late fifties. And then parentheses it says, but she seemed much older. She loved to have me curl her hair and then criticize me for how I did it. I'm sorry, six year old child. You fucked it up.

You fucked it up. Can you please focus? She would put on a full face of makeup every Christmas morning and then pretend like she just woke up. I love this woman. Always camera ready. Often she would peel an entire orange in one peel and then place the rind back in the fruit bowl and offer it to an unsuspecting guest and then cry with laughter when they dropped it. Oh my God.

Those are just a few of my favorite memories. Onto the story. I grew up in Bangor, Maine, home of Stephen King. Amazing. Right? He actually lived very close to us in a big red Victorian house with a wrought iron fence adorned with iron spiders, webs and bats. And then it says scary. We would trick or treat at his house only for the full size candy bars he would give out.

Just fucking. It's a real mark of character, Stephen King, that you give out full size candy bars on Halloween. Absolutely. God bless. Otherwise, we would stay away from that fucking frightening house. Grandma Pat was obsessed with Stephen King. He would walk to the library almost every day right by our house. Pat knew his schedule.

Often she would make me play catch in our front yard only to throw the ball out into the road where I would ultimately have to chase the ball. Into his path. Oh my God. Genius. Then she would blame me and apologize just to get to talk to him. She would force me to the library insisting that I needed to read more. And then we would spend the day in the adult section watching Stephen King. So she was stalking him.

I mean, that's what it's called. Fully stalking, using a child as a prop to stalk, to aid in a bet. And then it says, I don't think I ever checked out a book. My grandma even made me watch Pat's Cemetery in it to quote unquote prep me for our King encounters. The two most scarring movies to watch as a child. The two, well, I guess many of them are, but two definitely that are about children experiencing horrifying things. Yeah, terrifying. And then it says, these are just a few of my favorite memories.

My grandma passed unexpectedly at 64 years old of a stroke. We buried her in the actual pet cemetery. The perfect resting spot for my murdering grandma. My grandma has visited me a few times in my dreams, always telling me how proud she is and offering encouraging words like, Don't fucking worry about that shit. And you've got this because you're an intelligent, incredible, strong woman. Oh, I love that so much. The King may have unintentionally provided my grandma with her inner strength, but I know I get mine from her.

Oh, this is such a funny, goofy story that then is like, oh, thanks for stabbing me in the heart. Yeah. Yeah. Stay sexy and help your grandma stalk the king of horror. And I love that. I love that she was 50 too. Like somehow that is like, I picture my grandma, my little old lady grandma. And now I realize she was like 60.

Yes. It's not that fucking old at all. It's not, it's not at all. It's not at all now. But when you're a child, they're fucking like Missusla. It's crazy. Okay. This is called MFM Saved Me From Sex Trafficking.

Jesus. Hey guys, I've been listening to your podcast since 2019 when a friend of mine said it was necessary for dog walks, lol. Let's get into my story. Last year around New Year's, my then boyfriend, now husband, his dog and my dog decided to put our relationship to the ultimate test and rent an RV and drive from Scottsdale, Arizona to Hilton Head, South Carolina. And all the way back to the good old OC, California. My hometown is testing California in search for the best barbecue in the south portion of the USA. Sounds like a dream. Amazing trip.

At the beginning of the trip, we have multiple days of 11 hour driving days to get across New Mexico and Texas. And I turned on like three straight hours of MFM. My husband after three hours said he didn't like all the murder talk and insisted we listen to random stand up comedy for the next few days. I get it when you need like a pallet cleanser. Absolutely. After our stories. Yes, God. Fast forward to the end of our trip.

After 26 glorious days on the road, we decided that staying in the plains of West Texas where my husband's whole family is from was fun just for a plate of Tex-Mex, but not fun enough to set up camp. So we met up with family members for lunch and decided to book it all the way from Midland to Las Cruces to get a good chunk of the drive done on our way to OC. After a few minutes into our six hour drive, my husband says, fine, you're right. I do love MFM. Can we listen to more? Hey. Hey. And I eagerly played four straight hours of minisodes.

He says he doesn't like the girl gossip in between the originals. Excuse me. Shut up. And we drove laughing and enjoying the podcast the whole way. Shortly after he passed by El Paso at 6pm, my husband said he was starving and needed me to look up a local barbecue pit for some food before the last leg of the drive. We found one not far out of El Paso and we parked across the street from the restaurant in a dark empty Chase Bank parking lot. My husband is a real estate agent and had to finish up some paperwork to sell a house for a client. So I offered to take the dogs outside for a good walk and let them go to the bathroom.

I listened to another minisode while I sniffed literally every inch of this Chase Bank, probably 25 minutes, and then walked back to the RV, took their leashes off and walked into the restaurant to get a table for us while my husband finished up the paperwork and shortly after I met me inside. After eating, we walked back to the RV and when we opened the door and sat in the driver's seat, there was a red rose under our windshield wiper. I looked at my husband and we both turned sheet white and he immediately said, lock your fucking door and put your seatbelt on. He drove probably 60 miles per hour out of this parking lot and onto the freeway entrance nearby with a very angry but also terrified look on his face. As we were leaping the parking lot, I noticed two very old shitty cars with blacked out windows sitting in the parking lot very close to us, facing our RV with men in the front seat. As we drove away, I looked up the meaning of this and saw that a red rose indicates a solo female traveler and is used to lure the female out of the car so the traffickers can grab her from behind with a chloroform towel to abduct. So you see, they think the girl sees the red rose, you don't believe it? Well, there's some of these. I've definitely heard a lot of versions of this and there's some that have been entirely debunked.

Same thing with there used to be zip tie on the handle. But this is a person who's telling her firsthand experience of looking at people and seeing that there are other people kind of sitting there for no reason in shitty cars watching her thing. So who knows? And she had looked alone in the beginning because he was still in the car. Yes, entirely. I came to learn that El Paso was one of the largest trafficking borders in the country and that was most definitely the agenda. We drove straight through Las Cruces and all the way back to Scottsdale, Arizona to our driveway. My husband was too scared to stop the RV so our five hour trip ended up being an 11 hour drive. Still to this day, he brings it up and says if we hadn't been listening to Karen and Georgia for hours on end, I wouldn't have had my guard up about that rose and most likely would have gotten out to grab that rose.

Yeah. Thank you for your wonderful show and making us both slightly neurotic about getting murdered or abducted. At the end of the day, it saved me from God knows what. My husband is now a huge fan and we love listening to your show on all of our road trips. I'm sure you're wondering what the best barbecue was over 10 states. Houston, Texas took first place with a restaurant called Pit Room. Dallas was an easy number two. Stay sexy and don't grab the rose off your windshield, Sydney. I mean, Sydney, that's unbelievable. I mean, like the whole thing is just look, whether it's a specific thing, whether it's like a trend, whether it's whatever. It gets people to pay attention to their surroundings, to pay attention to the fact that if you are doing something with your dogs by yourself, you might be seen. And, you know, who knows, there's no minus as long as people keep it in perspective of like this is possible or it's not like looking that up and seeing what it actually could mean and what the facts are.

Yeah. That's all. Yeah, for sure. You know, it just makes me think of there was a there was some influencer and I can't remember if it was like an Instagram thing or whatever, but it took place in Petaluma. She was from Sonoma, I think, but she was in a parking lot in front of a Michaels in Petaluma. And she got on and started like doing a live stream about how there were traffickers in a parking lot there. She was talking about just like two locals that she basically didn't like the looks of. And it was this thing that like at first people, she was like, I just really scared and did it and did this whole thing.

And she made the whole fucking thing up and was doing basically this, you know, like I was in peril for clout. Wow. So the everything obviously has to get taken with a grain of salt and things have gone so far beyond like, you know, every everything has become that kind of like urban legend type of thing where where people are so concerned because sex trafficking is a real thing. It's an issue and it's a problem. Yeah. So it's like, keep your eyes out for it. Make sure keep your hackles up a little bit for sure. Yeah.

And do your research and also, you know, convert your husband's to sorry, I told you to shut up husband of Sydney. You know me. Yeah. You know me. That's what I'm like. I'm that one. Okay. This one.

This one I love. I'm not going to read you the subject line. It just says in Fairbanks, Alaska, someone thought it was a great idea to build the local correctional center, the town jail and the outdoor youth soccer field. Directly next to each other. Oh my God. One random summer evening in the early aughts when I was maybe nine or 10, my soccer team was one of the last ones at the complex playing that night. Out of nowhere, a man comes running onto our field being chased by multiple cops on foot, followed by cop cars flying onto the grass, lights and sirens ablaze. Oh my God.

This man was then tackled and handcuffed right on our field in the middle of our soccer game. I don't know how people knew this or if it was just our parents assumptions. But the story was that the man had escaped from that correctional facility and went running for being nine and 10 year old girls. We all handled it pretty well and we're excited about the drama. I only remember one girl crying and being upset, but it was her birthday. So that's understandable. If memory serves correctly, the cops quickly packed up and left and we went on with our game. Shout out to Eclipse 95 DD.

Just like just end this subject line was prisoner escape, lighthearted, short and sweet. I love that. Yeah, what do you do? You just keep keep playing. You're not going to force it because of this reason. No. And you and kind of it's just like, well, I think we're fine. Yeah.

Obviously it's been handled. That happened. You know, just the one, the one gal whose birthday got lightly ruined. But it was her birthday. It was her birthday. All right. Got to go in a money machine. Got another one.

Dear Karen and Georgia, I can't believe I finally have something to share with you. I always thought when I wrote in, it would be about my distant relative who somehow managed to drown in a bucket. But unfortunately, I can't get enough details out of my mom to make a story of that. I was just listening to me. So 325 in which a listener wrote about her 21 year old friend who got to go into a money booth at a casino in Colorado. Well, ladies at my Catholic grade school outside of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, we had an assembly every year in which child after child had the opportunity to try their luck in a money booth. Everybody. Or as we called it, the money machine.

This opportunity was offered as an incentive for selling a certain amount of magazine subscriptions in the annual fundraiser for our school. The money machine was a highly sought after prize, second only to the limo lunch in which students got to get picked up at the school in a limo and be taken to lunch at a nearby pizza hut. What? It was the late nineties and limos were considered the height of luxury. I guess that is really exciting. Right? With like you pick your six best friends or whatever. Oh my God.

And go to pizza hut. I can't. But it was like a sit down dining restaurant before. Yeah, that's right. I think didn't they have a big salad bar in the middle? Salad bar. Yeah, like a sizzler. Yeah.

My older brother Andy and I went door to door in our neighborhood, which was strictly prohibited by the school. For a reason because they want to get kidnapped, selling magazines, subscriptions to friendly neighbors and strangers alike in pursuit of our turn in the money machine. We met our quota and weeks later, it was the day of the assembly and I finally got my chance in the money machine. It was hard as hell. All caps. Here's a caveat. I don't know if this is true of all money machines, but in this particular machine, we needed to not only grab the money from the air, but also slide each bill. That was captured through a small collection slot.

What? This process ate up a lot of valuable time as Gale force wins pelted my nine year old frame. He asked me to stick each dollar in through the slot. No, that's not fair. I know. It's not fair. Also, it should be a fist sized slot. Totally.

If anything. A tiny child fist sized slot for sure. I guess that wouldn't be a slot then it would be a hole. It would just be a hole. Something. A hole. A hole. A hole.

A hole. A hole. A hole. A hole. A hole. A hole. A hole. You say your bills into my inner cardigan pockets the way you so eloquently described if only.

I wish I remembered the exact amount. But if I had to guess, I'd say it probably came away with about $7 which in today's money is $12 and 82 cents. Well done. Yes. Love you all and thanks for reading. Fridja, what a life you've lived. I mean, you broke the rules, you got it done, you got in there. You peaked at nine, though.

How do you feel about that? I mean, what money booth type equivalent is in your future? I don't know. Look and top that. I'm not going to read the subject line. Hi, y'all. You put out a call for jury duty stories. And though this one is not nearly as exciting as the Whitey-Bulger story,

it's a pretty interesting anecdote to share at parties. By the by, I got a jury duty notification. You did? Yeah. And then I went and signed up real fast because I've never done jury duty. Oh, wow. I went and signed up real fast for it.

And then realized it was right when we're taking vacation. Oh, no. I signed up, I freaked out, and then I called my sister and she's like, yeah, you just go on there and ask for a, what do you call it, a different role over there. Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's exciting. So now I have jury duty in July and I really can't wait

to be like, well, I do have a true crime podcast, but I think I could do a great job for you. OK, anyway, this is not about me. This is about this email, which is about jury duty. OK, in 2012, I was 21 and living with my parents when I received a jury duty summons in the mail. And here's where the coincidence starts. My mom also got a jury duty summons.

Weird, right? What are the odds? I don't know, I'm asking. In parentheses, it says probably very slim, but it gets weirder. When jury duty summonses are sent out, there are several different groups within the larger group of everyone who got a letter.

My understanding is that everyone is sorted entirely at random. Every night, we called the number to see if we'd have to appear, and every night, it was a no until the last one. To make a long story short, through several random rounds of elimination, my mom and I ended up being in the final 18 people.

What? After each elimination, we just kept glancing at each other, like, how is this happening? The judge took us through a standard line of questioning to determine if we would be a good fit for this case. He talked to me first, and then a few others before landing on my mom's name on the list. He paused, looked up, and said, Kimberly,

are you any relation to Elizabeth? To which my mom replied, she's my daughter. Gasp's in the courtroom. The judge looked at the prosecution and defense and asked if they had any qualms with a mother and daughter on the jury. They said no. What?

And that's how my mom and I ended up serving as jurors on the same case. Oh, my god. It is also my hope that that will be the most dramatic thing to ever happen to me in a courtroom. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. I'm sure you will be curious about the case itself, but it was a pretty straightforward cocaine

bust, nothing too salacious. Anyways, stay sexy and don't sell someone else's cocaine. It's against the law, Lizzie. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Wow. I mean, don't sell your own cocaine too, I would suggest. Not yours, not someone else's. No, yeah.

Don't hold it as a favor. Right. Just stay away. Just say, oh, I'm sorry, I have an allergic reaction to that. Exactly. Stay away. Stay away. That was a good one.

Great job, everyone. Yeah, another great batch. They just keep coming. I'm so grateful. Truly, truly. Yeah, thanks for your emails and stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye.

Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie? Ah. This has been an Exactly Right production. Our producer is Alejandra Keck. And this episode was engineered and mixed by Stephen Ray Morris. Stephen, email your hometowns and fucking hurrays

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