My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 343

Episode Date: August 7, 2023

This week’s hometowns include a train derailment disaster and a serial killer at a summer camp.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. Mike Williams set off on a hunting trip into the swamps of North Florida, where it was thought he met his fate by a group of hungry alligators, except that's not what happened. And after the uncovering of a secret love triangle, the truth would finally be revealed. Listen to over my dead body gone hunting early and add-free on Wondering Plus. Hello! And welcome to my favorite murder! The mini-sode. There it is! The title!

Ding ding ding! Are you ready? Are you ready? Um, you first me first. Whatever you want. What do you feel? Let's see, what do I have at the end? Do you have a good heartwarming one at the end of one of them?

Oh, is it a tear-jerker? No, it's funny. Okay, whatever. I don't know what that means. You go first. I have a little bit of a tear-jerker. So I go then you go and then I go and then you go. You'll be lost. I'll be lost.

Okay. All right, so I'll go first. This is the only thing I've only been doing this for seven years. Here's the new thing we didn't know we need. This one's called trained derailment. Oh, yeah. Hello Karen Georgia and company insert, you're gonna love this, insert mushing,

gushing and blushing. Or is mine just kind of gross. Or mushy, mushing, gushing and blushing. That is kind of gross. Oh, that's better, because then also rhymes. Yeah, that's the idea. Mushing, boo. Gluing, mushing.

Mushing, bushing, and bushing. Uh-huh. I'm a long time. Listen to our first time writer, inner 26 year old child from Montana. I live in the quote city, nearby Ennis, which was mentioned in another murdering a story about Quake Lake.

Hearing his story, I knew I had a right in about my hometown and how I almost went up in flames. I have ADHD, so keeping the nagging squirrels in their respective places is a challenge apologies if this is long. My story starts before I was born in Belts, Montana, 1976. A little preface here, my grandparents owned two houses. One was in the small town of Belt,

and the second was 20 miles away in the back country where the ranch still sits today. Think deliverance. Which was a great reference to you. Sure. You're home. It's the day after Thanksgiving, my grandpa and two of my uncles had gone up to the ranch to tend to the cows

as calving was about to start. My grandma and my dad, who was 17 at the time, stayed in town for the day to get supplies to meet up with the rest of the family at the ranch later on. Around 3pm, my grandma and dad were walking over the bridge to the grocery store slash gas station when a blast that could be heard from miles away erupted shaking the sleepy town awake. A tanker car from Burlington, Northern Locomotive, hauling propane, had jumped the track as it was crossing the viaduct on the main road into town, landing directly below. Thousands of pounds of pressurized propane exploded from the first car,

spilling into the road and down into the town. The second car struck a 500-gallon gas tank at the Farmers Union co-op situated near the train tracks. An ignited mixture of propane and gasoline was quickly racing towards the heart of the downtown belt. My grandma, dad, and the rest of the community were scrambling to get people to safety and prevent the fire from traveling and causing more damage. Luckily, the highway department, having just loaded their trucks with sand for the roads, as it had just snowed the night before, caught wind of the explosion

and were in route. Ooh! A sand dike was quickly built diverting the mixture into Belt Creek, which ran along through the center of town. According to my grandma, when the disaster was relatively under control, my grandpa and uncles reappeared. They heard the explosion and came back into town to see what happened. My grandpa found my grandma and dad and muttered, what the hell? Loaded the family up and headed back to the ranch, as Chorris needed to be done. He was a delicate flower. In the aftermath, two people were killed, 22 were injured, 200 were evacuated, and at least a dozen houses and structures were lost, slashed damaged, and belt creek was heavily contaminated. The probable cause was determined to be the failure of an overloaded rail section,

which originated in the undetected transverse fixture that it says dot dot dot whatever that means. Had it not snowed the night before, the town of belt would not have survived. Thanks mother nature and your impeccable timing. That's my story. If you ever read this, I will scream, cry, and throw up. Thank you for everything you do in advocating for all of us and pushing the tough conversations that need to be had. Stay sexy and watch out for those overloaded rail sections.

Birdie shee her. Birdie, that is so scary. It also reminds me, I just immediately thought, there's a Chris Pine, I think Morgan Freeman movie, runaway train. Oh, right, yeah. Which is what it may be, think of, but same idea where it's like,

first of all, the idea that that's propane and gas mix. That's so scary. Like, it's like a fire a fire bomb rolling towards your town. Yeah, it's, oh, good lord. Yeah, that was a good one. Okay. Well, I'm gonna up it, I'm gonna up at a notch. The subject of this email is serial killer

at my summer camp. Hello my favorite ladies, pets and moustaches, and just for your information, Georgia, that favorite has a you in it. So we, I think we know a little bit about who is writing to us, we got it. Long time listener, first time writer, I could honestly write a book about how much you both mean

to me, but that's not why we're here. Are we? Let's get into this. I grew up in a tiny town of Godavitch, Ontario. There's no phonetic help there, so I'm probably mispronouncing that, but it looks like Godavitch, Ontario. It's a beach town of around 8,000 people

located on Lake Huron. When I was a kid, my parents never sent me to summer camps since we basically lived on a beach. I begged for years to go, and at the age of 10, they finally gave in. I was enrolled in a summer camp located about 20 minutes from home. My parents figured that if I got homesick or hated it, they could come pick me up. The camp itself was only one week long, but boy was that... But boy was that a week I'll never forget.

The first few days were totally normal, swimming, archery, crafts, and my favorite part of the day, evening campfire. Basically, we'd all sit around a campfire and sing camp songs. I think it was on the third or fourth night where things got weird. Usually, campfire would be about 30 to 45 minutes long. After this, we'd all go to our cabins for the evening and get ready for bed. This night, the campfire seemed never ending. I swear, we sang 40 verses of Kumbaya.

The fire kept going as it got darker and darker outside. I think we were all beginning to think something was wrong, especially when the camp director came out to talk to us. She told us that we had, quote, new rules to follow. They were, one, you must get a counselor to go to the bathroom with you at night. Two, you must never be alone. Always travel with a buddy. Three, you must stay in sight of a counselor at all times.

Holy shit. I thought it was weird, but I just figured there was a bear or a wild animal on the loose. The rest of the week was normal with the exception of these rules. Saturday comes around and my family picks me up. I was excited to get in the car and tell my family all about my week. I don't even think I had the time to close the car door before my brother says there's a serial killer on the loose. I laughed and thought he was just being my dumb older brother trying to scare me. I told my parents to tell him to stop it, but they didn't. Instead my mom goes, we can

talk about this when we get home, but your brother's right. I of course started crying, but more importantly, it was pissed that my parents didn't come and pick me up. Yeah. That were my child. I'd be like, be right there. Yeah. That's not how I was raised.

Maybe like, oh, you're fine. Right. Why would they want you of all people? Vicious. Yeah. Any opportunity to put you in your place. When I got home, my parents locked all the doors and my dad put baseball bats in all our bedrooms.

The murderers' name was Jesse Emerson. He was convicted of three counts of murder in the second degree in 2008. Apparently, many parents called the camp to let them know. A serial killer was on the loose, but the camp ultimately decided that they didn't need to send kids home

and that we'd be fine. Very weird choice in all caps. I honestly don't think it is a weird choice. I mean, I guess if it wasn't like at camp already, if it was just like in the area. No, no, I think it's a weird choice. I think, well, it would be interesting to know the facts of how close this situation was to this camp.

Totally. That must have been a consideration, but also like if I worked at that camp, it'd be like, well, everyone paid and we're all here already. Like, completely, it can see that logic. Yeah. Absolutely. Especially if it was like a bunch of 18-year-olds, which most camps usually are about very young people. He was finally caught, and eight days later, and arrested, he's currently serving 25 years in prison. Although this story is terrifying to think about, it's what got me into two crime, isn't that always the way.

Nothing like a killer almost invading your summer camp to get a little murderino inside me to emerge. I love you two ladies so much, you're the highlight of my very long work commutes and I feel like you're my two cool older sisters that I never had. Stay sexy and maybe pick up your kid early from summer camp if there's a killer on the loose?

Emma, she, her. Emma, I flatly disagree. I agree. Two grays on your side. I'm on your side. That is like bordering on neglect, I would say. And very traumatizing. But only after the fact.

Yeah. Does it count as being trauma if it's just a learned thing after the fact and nothing actually happens to you? I don't know, yeah, because it's not a threat anymore, right? I mean, why not take that opportunity to be grateful? How about the trauma is that your parents didn't care enough to come get you. They were too busy to come pick up from extreme danger. Oh, I missed camp, okay.

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You can listen to Don't Panic early and add free on Wondry Plus. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. This is called the SWAT team, bomb squad, and my dad. Gels, Paws, and everyone else in between. And it says, you asked, you really didn't. And you shall receive dads and bomb stories. This is a tad long, but I promise it's worth it. My dad used to work at an undisclosed power supply company

where he worked predominantly at the power plant facility. If you know anything about most power plants, they are heavily gated and you cannot just get in for funsies. So think top-level secure work. Well, the workers were trained to report anything suspicious to a supervisor. The supervisor realized that was not happening as things were left everywhere unattended and he became fed up. So everyone received a

stern talking to you about being more aware of their surroundings, blah, blah, blah, and that he may start testing them. Now to the juice. One day my dad was working a shift by himself. He was writing around the plants, checking things out, you know, making sure nothing had exploded. Eventually, he entered a very secure part of the plant that no one was allowed to be in, except for select people, like employees and contractors. There, he found an ominous bag. This bag should not have been there, and my dad was positive. No one entered this area as he had been the only one around the facility. So he started to wonder if this was one of those tests. Trying not to get in trouble, he reported it to the supervisor who was completely unaware of a mysterious bag of that nature and informed my dad to evacuate the area immediately.

The supervisor informed local authorities and within minutes, the SWAT team and bomb squad was at the power plant. Think of people in full body armor, armored vehicles and weapons. Dropping in on a line from above. Ooh, so strong and capable. Spotty, swatty. My dad had to guide them to the Lonson bag where he witnessed the SWAT team and bomb squad

secure an impenetrable dome on top of the bag and explode all of the contents within. Oh, everyone was sure it was a bomb and that the plant was just saved. That was until a contractor who was there earlier came back looking for his purple lunch bag that he had accidentally left behind. You fool.

Yes, my dad blew up someone's lunch. Oh well, stay sexy and don't leave weird bags laying around in secure environments, AJW. Oh well. Oh well, that's fine. Oh, shit. That's, you know what I was thinking? As you were telling that, I was just like, this is crazy and it's like someone trying

to blow up a power plant that's so horrifying. And then it just like, what if it was the dad's bag and he forgot he left it there? It's just because I was trying to like run scenarios in my head. Oh how embarrassing Okay, the the subject line is a little long but worth it the subject line of this one is unsolved shoe phone haunting Dear murder folk when I was 11 in the mid late 90s my parents were We're in our freshly wall-to-wall carpeted basement, watching a Denzel Washington movie from the dollar video. I was upstairs in their bedroom, talking

to my girlfriend, Michelle, on the shoe phone. Not sure if anyone else remembers this phone phenomenon, but I remember thinking our shoe phone was the peak of cultural revelance. I remember the shoe phone? I don't remember a shoe phone. I remember we had a duck phone and there was the hamburger phone. Shoes phone was like just a red high heel shoe. Oh, yes. And it was not great for a phone shape. Yes.

But it was kind of, you know, it was just glamorous. Back then, like we didn't have anything so just a shoe phone was like, would blow doors. Like that sports illustrated football phone was famous for like 10 years. Garfield phone. Garfield. I mean, just, it's just, it's what we had. Guys, that's what we had back then to look forward to. We had other objects turned into phones. And basically it was like, you had to be excited about a shoe. Yeah. And all I did was make calls in coming and outcoming and outgoing.

That's it. Okay. Continuing on with this story. I decided about a shoe. Yeah, and all I did was make calls in coming and out coming and out coming. That's it. Okay. Continuing on with this story, girlfriend Michelle was home alone at the time, not unusual for a rural Illinois tween in the 90s. Michelle had one single non-shoe phone in her house and it was the kitchen wall phone kind with the long curly cord. She sounded anxious when I picked up because she heard a thump while she was in the shower.

Frankly, Michelle was always a scooch. It says a scooch, but I think they mean a scoch dramatic, but it's a scooch. I mean, it's funnier. It's always a scooch dramatic. I figured my job as boyfriend was to be supportive and reassure her that everything was fine, blah, blah, blah. We had maybe a 45-minute conversation about school, Dawson's Creek, et cetera, very innocent relationship, likely in part because I turned out to be gay. It's like when I first started reading that, I was just like, oh, yeah, okay, yes. Got it. Got it. Suddenly Michelle got quiet and she said she heard something again. I was thinking God, more attention-seeking behavior. But after 10 minutes, but after 10 more minutes of talking, I heard it too, an

audible thump on her end of the call. After a prolonged silence, I shakily said, Michelle, what was that? And she whispered, I don't know. Before I could say anything else, there was a third voice on the line. It's the boogie man. It sounded robotic somehow, or like two or three voices were speaking simultaneously. I have no idea. Whatever it was, it sounded malevolent. Michelle yelled, what the fuck was that? We were both overwhelmed with panic. I could hear her crying. Everything was chaos. And then while Michelle and I screamed hysterically, the voice started laughing. A terrible guttural sound, unlike anything I've heard in my life. I was beside myself. Despite Michelle's

protests that I shouldn't leave her alone, I set the shoe phone down and tripped ran down the stairs to tell my parents who were still calmly watching Denzel in the basement. They were non-plusted best, listening to their child deliver an impassioned tear-soaked plea that his friend was going to be murdered by the boogieman if we didn't do something right now, goddamn it. I picked the phone back up and the line had gone dead. Mom laymely mumbled something like, if you're going to walk over there, be back by 10. I most certainly was not going over there to end up like Michelle, who I had no doubt was already dead. I called her back several times, but she didn't pick up. I called some of our friends,

and finally after an hour of calling and screen crying to two board parents, engrossed in much ado about nothing, the phone rang. It was Michelle. Apparently, she sprinted out of her house and ran to the neighbor's house in tears to wait for her mom. A nice neighbor man she had never met went through the house with a baseball bat. No one was there. To this day, Michelle Swear, she was not pranking me, and she has regularly told me that she wouldn't be mad if I just fessed up.

Besides, she only had one landline in her house, and the boogeyman sounded like they were on the line with us. At my house, there was a second phone in the kitchen, but my parents weren't practical jokers, and they likely would have given up the ruse when they saw me screaming and crying and flailing for over an hour. I've had a lot of time to room it in on this,

and it seems to me that there are three possibilities. Option one, someone with advanced technology and or some connection to the local telephone company could listen in on phone conversations and happen to terrorize two 11-year-olds at the exact moment that something fell down in Michelle's house. Option two, either Michelle or my parents have been lying for 30 years. Please let it be number two. And one of them is secretly an amazing actor and possessed a voice changer that they

used once and never again. Maybe Michelle had me on three way with said voice changer person, possible I guess, but 11 year old Michelle struggled to keep a secret for 30 minutes, much less 30 years. Option three, something sinister was with us on the phone that night. Stay sexy and don't answer the footwear, Chris, he, him. And then it says, PS, this is gonna get you. My fiance, Jordan and I bonded over our love of your podcast when we first met four years ago. Thanks for bringing a couple Midwestern gays together. Oh my God. Can we go to your wedding, please?

I mean, it's like somebody somewhere, our own separate version of that. I love it. That was amazing. And I'm getting this little memory. I had a very rebellious brother, older, bratty brother who was into weird electronics, like CB radios who go to radio shack and buy the weird things.

And I remember him maybe being able to tap into someone else's phone line Yeah, the outside box. Yeah, so maybe he the person banged on the wall and then did that And I was just fucking with them. Yeah, maybe it was I'm so I would love to know like how many cousins Michelle had or what the or a neighbor kid, but also if there was just some creepy purve that was trying to scare her. Yeah.

So creepy. So creepy. And then I love that it turns everyone against each other. It's like just a minute. You admit it. You admit it. Okay. This one's a deathbed confession, lighthearted.

Hmm. Okay, well hello and welcome to my email. In mini-sode 295, you asked for deathbed confessions and I knew this was my moment after binge listening to the podcast the past six months. My grandpa, who was alive and well, shared this deathbed confession with my sister and I. I guess this is the type of story you tell your pre-teen granddaughter is to fill the low-income

conversation between doing your daily crossword puzzle and watching the golf channel. My grandpa's friend had gone to the hospital to say his final goodbye to one of his best friends. During this visit, the dying friend handed him a sealed-on envelope with instructions to not open it until he was at his funeral. The days passed, the inevitable happened, and my grandpa's friend found himself at the funeral with said envelope. Seated with two of his friends, who he had told about the envelope, fingers surely trembling with anticipation, he opened the envelope to find a piece of paper with a single sentence scrolled on it. It read, I'm not really dead and when you walk by my coffin,

I'm going to reach out and grab you. Pranked from the other fucking side. Pranked. But he was really dead, right? Yes. He was really dead. Oh my god. I love that man. I love that man. And it's funniest. Kind of a dad joke too, which is like so great.

It's a grandpa joke. He took a moment to write. I'm gonna grab you. I'm gonna grab you. I'm not really dead. My grandpa passed away a few years later. Sans deathbed confession. As a now adult, I treasure these memories, moments,

and stories, and find one of the best ways to honor them is to share them. So I am sharing them with you. I hope my grandpa's story brings a smile to your day and sparks that memory of your own. Thank you for creating a space to share stories. Amy, she, her. I mean, thank you, Amy, because that is truly one of my faves.

I've ever heard it's so funny. The idea that somebody would be thinking about like, this is so, they're thinking about other people. They're the ones dying and they're like, here's what this is gonna be so hilarious and they're gonna think there's some secret in there. Yeah. It's so good.

It's so good. It's so good. And it does, like you're right. That's I think that's why we do this and we like it so much. Yeah. Is because it does honor those people. It honors those like the best funniest stories and the best memories you have about whoever was in your life. Yeah, these are stories that you normally would never tell. They're not like or maybe you tell them at a party or you just kept them in the family. But now we can share them with everyone and give everyone a laugh or a you tell them at a party, or you just kept them in the family. But now we can share them with everyone

and give everyone a laugh or a cry. That was a good one. Mushing and gushing, whatever. Mushing and booshing and booshing and booshing. Okay. Oh, so along those same lines, I'm not going to read you the subject line. It just starts, hey ladies,

and then it breathes, it says, and I use that term loosely. Thank you. Nice one. Thank you. Good start. Okay, prior to my mom's death, she was pretty much confined to her house except on the weekends when I would pick her up and she would stay with me.

I spoke to her several times a day and would stop by almost every day to check on her. On a Wednesday, I called her several times and she did not answer the phone. After work, I stopped by her house and tried to use my key to get in, but she had the deadbolt lock enabled. In parentheses, it says, a big no-no, because I could knock it in. I banged on the door and some of the windows

and finally, after about 20 minutes, she opened the front door looking a hot mess. After I fussed at her about the lock and not answering the phone, she told me that she'd been sleeping all day. As I wased at her about the lock and not answering the phone, she told me that she'd been sleeping all day. As I was leaving, she said, oh, by the way, your sister and dad came by. Shocked, since both had been dead for several years, I calmly asked her what they wanted or said. Oh, my God. I'm playing along thinking she had a dream. She said, well, they said they were there

to pick her up. My response was, well, you're still here, so what happened? And she said, I told them that there were some things that I needed to tell you and show you and that I'm in a need a couple days. She died on Friday. I think it's pretty cool that someone you know comes to pick you up. You know I have that story, right? About my mom watching our next door neighbor die in her front room because she had breast cancer

and she watched, it was so sad and it was so hard. My mom was a nurse and so there was like a day nurse and then my mom was like the night nurse and just sat with her and she woke up one night and after our neighbor had been silent for like weeks because she was just like, yeah, dying of cancer and ravaged, she woke up hearing her voice. And she looked up and our next door neighbor was looking out the sliding glass door, like with this beautiful smile on her face, like reaching toward the door and talking.

And then it was the middle of the night. So she kind of fell back to sleep. Like she stopped. My mom fell back asleep. They woke up in the morning. Our neighbor died. And our neighbor's mother lived in a mobile home next door to their house. And so my mom was talking to our neighbor's mother. We called her Nani, talking to her. And nanny said, it's so weird. My sister from Wisconsin called me this morning and said, I had this dream. So our neighbor Joyce, her father Jack died when she was 18 years old.

The aunt calls nanny and says, I had this dream that Jack went up to the back porch of Joyce's house and went and got her and took her. And my and Nani's telling my mom this and my mom is like, I saw that happen. Oh my God. I all the chills. Isn't that and my mom was like out of the Catholic church at this point. She was all science. She was like not about that stuff. And she was like, I witnessed that. Like her dad came and got her. Oh my God.

To be a witness to that. Oh, that's so tragic, yeah. I really apologize because I bailed out of the middle of this email to tell my own story and that story. No, no, you're so good. Go ahead. But it is exactly what we say,

because that idea, like we all are so stuck in this plane of existence of like the real world and life and how hard whatever and it's like just the just a simple concept true or not. Yeah, that the people who have loved you and gone before you come back to get you. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my Elvis coming to get me. Wow. It's waking me up. Like I want a cookie, get up.

And you're like pushing him off the bed because you forget. Oh. Okay, here's the rest of this email. Sorry. Seven months later, when the only thing left in her house was a hideous gold sofa and one paper clip. I went by the house and was sitting on that gold sofa

having a good cry and was startled when she spoke to me. She directed me to a specific place in her bedroom and told me to lift up a specific corner of that rug that was in the room and there were ten one hundred dollar bills laying there. I talked to her every night before going to sleep because I know that she can hear me. I always encourage her to visit and when she, I'll send another email. Thanks for all you do. I'm so jealous that you know Paul Holes. Keep it coming.

How are you ever gonna replace Stephen? Cheryl in Texas. Oh my God, Cheryl, how dare you with the tear-jerkers all around? Like, how dare you? How dare you poke every nerve and possible motion that we have like seriously? Cheryl in Texas, you powerhouse. You made my eyes watery.

That is hard to fucking do. She doesn't get to break through all these meds to get me to like be cry is hard and you fucking did it. Cheryl, I mean, on an episode with a bunch of great ones. Yeah, perhaps the greatest. Yeah. Send us your stories like that or like near death stories that someone, and they, someone told you like what they saw

or like those kind of, I want to hear those. Please send them to my favorite murder at Gmail. Yeah. And thanks for being here with us. I mean, God, those were good. Stay sexy. And don't get murdered. KAY!

Yeah. Elvis, do you want a cookie? Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! This has been an exactly right production.

Our producer is Alejandra Keck. This episode was edited and mixed by Liana Squalaggi. Email your hometowns and fucking arrays to my favorite murder at gmail.com. Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at my favorite murder and Twitter at my favorite murder. Goodbye! Listen, follow, leave a say review on Amazon Music, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, prime members, did you know that you can listen to my favorite murder early and

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