My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 348

Episode Date: September 11, 2023

This week’s hometowns include kids playing with big lizards and a heroic cat named Vincent.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! Hello! And welcome to my favorite murder! The mini-sode!

We reached the stories! There are your emails! Yeah, that's it! It's not easy. Why don't you go for a sister? Alright, let's see. The subject line of this email is 100-year-old funeral home treasure.

And it starts high-all. I hope you read this so I can tell my best friend, Hallie. We love you ladies. And then there's little typing smiley face, which is still my favorite emoji, the OG sideways smiley face. Simple. Simple, sincere. My father was a fourth generation funeral director who inherited the family's 100-year-old funeral home, which is a beautiful old brick building with white pillars out front. My brother who's taking over the family business

did not want to run it out of that location, so when my father passed away, we put it up for sale. That means we had to get rid of over 100 years' worth of stuff that my family had crammed into every nook and cranny for generations. Amazing. Georgia would have a field day with the antiques. Yeah.

Thank you. This very old funeral home had an appropriately creepy, unfernish basement. I don't know if it's true, but I was told that one of the small rooms housed the ashes of people who paid for their own cremations but but didn't have any family to claim their remains? I'll take them. Oh, no, no. No, it's fine. It's like, it's not, you're not thrifting.

Those are people. I'll take them, no. I'll put them up on my shelf. On my urn shelf. It's fine. So in this dark, dark water dripping somewhere raw brick walled basement that was possibly full of ghosts, we found a small hidden door under the stairs. It was packed full of stuff, old photo albums of people we don't even know, paperwork for funerals long past, stacks of newspapers, and tucked away in the back, a safe.

This was very exciting, except no one had the key. And after living in the building for years, my mom couldn't even imagine where such a key would be. Later that day, when my mom opened the ironing board cabinet, that vintage kind where the board folds out of the wall, a solitary key hung, obvious and proud off of the inside of that door, and she immediately knew it was for the safe. She swears she never saw the key before, so maybe it was a relative helping

her out. She also swears ghosts made the lights burn out all the time, but I think she didn't realize how often my dad was changing them when he was around. Oh, yeah. Anyway, she opened the safe and inside were old coin collections, which were all dated from the 1950s and earlier, so it's likely no one had been in that safe since then. I don't think any of it was worth a lot, but a hidden safe full of old coins is a proper treasure in my book. I agree.

Stay sexy and keep every key you ever find, V. Oh, the dream. There is in my office, our new house, a fucking locked old cabinet. This house is like from the 40s. There's no key. It's totally locked. I don't know what's in there. I don't know how to open it. Ooh. Yeah. Okay. Croat bar. I don't want to break it. Just break it.

Okay. I'll do it on camera. Yeah, that's right. There you go. There's your viral video that you've been looking for. I'll never want it as a viral video. Did you see the video of someone, they moved in and they were like, they tore off the wall and there were like hundreds of empty plastic Captain Morgan fifth bottles. It's like the bummerist bummer like in and the wall. Yeah. Yeah. Just like the plastic shitty ones, you know. Dang.

Yeah, it's not good. Okay. Lachke Kid's story. almost burnt down the house story. Oh, just starts ladies. It was the mid-late 90s and I was in about seventh or eighth grade. I had been listening to the hype on the radio for the Jingle Ball concert coming to Philly for weeks

and I had to have tickets. To my dismay, the show was sold out but if I was the 100th and second caller, I would get free tickets to the show as well as backstage passes for me and my friends. Remember those? I had to win. It was a weekend day, my mom was out,

and I was hanging out in my room, listening to the radio on my sweet stereo, waiting for when they made the announcement to call in. I had this tall wicker bookshelf with one of those cool 90s blow up chairs next to it where I was lounging and listening. I decided to get the vibe right. So I lit a candle and enjoyed the sweet smells of summer while I waited. Of course, we fucking had candles in our rooms as 12 year olds in the 90s, right?

Sure. Yeah. it's fine. Then it happened. They made the announcement that Color 102 would get those tickets. I booked it to my parents room where I dialed over and over again, getting only busy signals, praying that I'd get through and be the right color. That's when my older sister Jess walked in and asked,

what's that smell? To which I replied that I didn't smell anything and I didn't have time to help her because I was about to be called her 102. She walked out of the room and then I heard her screaming, Dana, what the fuck your room is on fire? I dropped the phone and ran to my room where I stood, absolutely frozen, staring at my wicker cabinet and golfed in flames. I didn't know what to do, and I literally just stood there, just sprung into action and grabbed a bucket from under the bathroom sink

and started running back and forth from the bathroom and putting out the flames. She did it. She was a fucking badass, firefighting sister, and probably saved our entire house. Oh my God, I know. This is where the panic really started to set in. Mom was going to fucking kill me.

What do I do? How do I hide this? Just and I started plotting. There was a whole burn through one of the wicker shelves. So we set up a few books across it and put picture frames on top of it. So it looked like the shelf was still there. We scrubbed ash, so it's from the shelves

and rearranged things to cover every synched part. Some burning embers had fallen off the bookshelf and burned a large hole in my carpet. We found a weird flower-shaped area rug and moved it over there placing it perfectly on top. We made a pact, never to tell mom. To my relief, she didn't notice it and it seemed like I got away with it. These are the like sister moments where they're like actually cool and they know that you'll be in so much trouble that it's not even gonna be entertaining for them anymore. Right. And they like bond with you and like help you.

Yes. Yeah. My sister absolutely would have laughed and been like, good luck. My sister would come through on certain things where she's like, you owe me, but like, this isn't worth me watching you get spanned. So let's look.

It's going to be so bad that I actually feel mercy for you right now. Exactly. I cut to like five years later. I was a freshman in college and no longer living at home. I got a call from my mom in which she was freaking out at me about why there is a giant burn mark in my bedroom carpet. I came clean with the whole story. She couldn't punish me now, right?

Apparently our cleaning lady was cleaning my room and moved the rug and found my burn carpet and ratted me out. Just and I thought it was absolutely hilarious at this point. My mom was pissed, but again, what could she do about it now? To this day, just and I still rock out to that Eve's six-song inside out when the lyrics go burn, burn like a wicker cabinet. Stay sexy and don't burn the house down to win concert tickets off the radio, Dana. Truly. If you want your room to smell good, use hope hurry, there's a million things you can use that aren't candles. We say this a lot. It might not be Dana's fault that her mom or her parents let the seventh or eighth grader have a candle in her room. You know what I mean? Without kind of going through and being like, so this candle can't be near these curtains, it can't be near this

dried plant, it certainly can't be near a wicker cabinet. Yeah. Like what? No, what are you doing? I don't blame her at all. I want you to picture Steve Jobs tinkering with a computer in his garage. Walt Disney drawing cartoons for his high school newspaper. Every big moment starts with a big dream, but what happens when that dream turns out to be an even bigger failure? Each week on Wondery's new podcast, The Big Flop, host Misha Brown is joined by different comedians to chronicle some of the biggest failures and blunders in pop culture history. Each episode will have you thinking, why in the world did this get made? From box office flops like Cats the Movie, to Action Park, New Jersey's infamous theme

park that had countless injuries, many lawsuits, and rides so wild it became known as Class Action Park. that had countless injuries, many lawsuits, and rides so wild it became known as Class Action Park, or Quibi, that short form video platform with an even shorter lifespan. It's a story of a spectacular failure with lots of surprises along the way. Enjoy the big flop on the Wonder App or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to the big flop early and add free on Wonder E Plus. Get started with your free trial at 1-3-dot-com-slashplus. Okay. The subject line of this is parenting Florida style. Hi ladies, my husband and

I are both Midwesterners who, for reasons outside of our control, found ourselves living and raising our children in central Florida. When our kids were young, we lived across the street from a field where we would walk our dog, play frisbee, etc. At the back of the field was a creek in a small wooded area where we would see turtles, owls, and osprey. When my daughter was about eight, she and her friend came back from the creek, excitedly talking about the big lizards that they had been playing with. As we her friend came back from the creek, excitedly talking about the big lizards that they'd been playing with. As we have millions of lizards in Florida, it was vaguely perplexed by their excitement,

but I figured they'd just have a fun time, and I said, oh, that's nice girls. A few days later, my daughter had a different friend over and asked if they could go over the creek to play with the lizards. Um, sure, have fun. I said, and when they came back, they were again pink-faced and so excited. But that time, my daughter had come home without one shoe, as it had gotten stuck in the mud where they were playing with the big lizards, and she couldn't find it in the water. Ew, that's yucky deer.

Don't worry about the shoe, I said. I considered myself an exceptionally astute and protective mother, so I was concerned about the possible bacteria or parasites in the creek. A few days later, my daughter was again talking about the big lizards, and she wanted to go back and play with them some more. Finally, my distracted brain caught up, and I decided to inquire about the word big, as our lizards in Florida are quite small. But really how big could they possibly be? Which is what I asked her finally. How big are those lizards dear? In response, my daughter thought for a moment and then to my horse stuck out her little arm and said, um, a little

longer than my arm probably? What? Oh God. I immediately jumped up, got my laptop, googled some images, and then said, honey, do the lizards look like this to which she replied, yes, just like that, stripy. And that's when I realized that all this time my daughter and her various friends had been playing with a nest of baby fucking alligators in the creek across from. baby fucking alligators in the creek across from. In a nest. In a nest. Like, the look at that word makes it so much like, oh, it's so dead.

Okay. Of course, I told her they were very dangerous and that she should not play with them anymore, which she protested. She said they were very nice. Yeah. She did listen to me, but it haunts me to this day to think of the girls playing with baby alligators

who are fiercely protected by their mothers until they are at least a year old. Yeah, that's the problem. That's the problem. Where was the enormous child-champing mama? All those times the girls had been over there. We definitely dodged a bullet and I was glad I never had to explain to the other PTO moms what had happened to their daughters. And the sign-off is just fucking Florida, Julia. What did like mine trips

ago from the Midwest to Florida? Like you just don't think about stuff like lizard size. No, but I think you would have to focus, I mean, and I'm sure that Julia did every single time after that, but that idea where it's like, I wonder if their cheeks were all pink and they were all excited because they like, they would snap at them and they would like get away

and then pet them some more like. Cute. So hilarious. So good. Unnast to anything, leave me alone for real. OK, I'm not going to read you the title of this one. It's just called Designated Driver, let's say. Hello, hello.

My name's Riley, and I'm writing to you from the GTA Greater Toronto area. Oh, let's jump into it. This story was told to be by my parents' neighbor, Rick. Picture a seven-foot tall Lithuanian man in his 60s in overalls with a beer in his hand. Yeah. That's who you want as your fucking neighbor, right? Yeah.

Him and his wife own two goats, one horse, and one mini horse. They are very close family friends, so I don't think they will be mad at me for telling the world about this. This story starts off in the mid 80s. Rick and his friends were partying at a friend's farm. There was a bunch of guys including his one friend

that's blind and doesn't drink. This friend would come hang out at parties despite the fact that he was sober. And it says, remember kids, you don't have to be drunk to have fun. All of the guys lived quite far away, it's the country, so when it came time to drive home, they decided it was best to all pile into one car instead of driving separately in their own cars. Shit hit the fan when they got pulled over by a cop.

I guess they were swirling all over the road and it was super late. When the cop asked the driver for his license, the guy said that he didn't have one. I'm blind, sir, said the driver. Oh, apparently Rick and his friends were operating the gas and telling the blind friend when to break and wear to steer. Wow. The cop couldn't charge him for drunk driving because he was sober.

I don't even think he got in trouble for driving without a license. I'm guessing the officer didn't know what to do and probably couldn't help but laugh at the situation. No one got in trouble and the story was in the paper on Monday. I love everything you girls do. Stay sexy, cheers, ride from Canada. I kind of love that story

because they perfectly game the system. It was like, we're not breaking a law and we're not driving drunk. You know, we're actually being safe. We should be awarded for this. I mean, yeah, they should definitely be rewarded for sure. Well, the friend should be rewarded who was actually doing the driving. Absolutely. But that is hilarious. This last one is, first and last, Ambien experience. actually doing the driving, but that is hilarious.

This last one is first and last Ambian experience from mom. Hello. Last week someone submitted their sleep walking story and it reminded me of my sleep walking adjacent story about my mom's first time taking Ambian that makes me laugh every time I think about it. A few years ago, my mom was having a really hard time staying asleep, so as last resort, her doctor prescribed her Ambien. For anyone unaware, Ambien makes you fall asleep, but it can also make you completely black out and sleepwalk. Because of this, we had very clear instructions that she was supposed to be supervised, especially since this was her first time taking it.

Okay, so here's how it went. she was supposed to be supervised, especially since this was her first time taking it. Okay, so here's how it went. At 6 p.m., my mom took the dosage of Ambien. About 30 minutes later, I could tell that she was feeling the effect of the Ambien because she did something that she'd never done before. She demanded a salad. We aren't really a salad family,

so we were not prepared for this demand. Well, when my dad said that we didn't have salad, my mom started crying. Between sob, she begged him for a salad. Confused and panicked, my dad ran to the kitchen to prep a makeshift salad. By now, it's about 7 p.m. and my dad is my mom sitting on the couch

with a bowl of salad. She seems normal now and is just eating her salad and watching TV. So now my dad apparently did not understand what supervise meant. He thought he could leave quickly to walk my sisters and I to school for an event. We lived across the street from the school, so this takes about 5 to 10 minutes. He figured nothing could happen in 10 minutes, and then my mom seemed content. So he left her unsupervised to walk us over.

When he got back 10 minutes later, he arrived to what can only be described as a salad crime scene, salad on the couch, on the floor, on the dogs, on every piece of furniture. The salad bowl was gone and my mom was not on the couch. He called out for her, but he got no response. My mom was gone too. So my dad followed the trail of lettuce and eventually it led to the master bedroom. When he walked in, he saw salad all over the bed sheets and in the middle was my mom completely knocked out, gripping a fork with an empty upside down salad bowl on her lap. My mom slept for 16 hours that night. When she woke up the next day, still gripping the fork, she did not remember a thing.

She didn't even remember asking for the salad, and it took us a while to convince her that she had actually cried and baked us for a salad. We will never know how my mom managed to create that much of a mess in less than 10 minutes, but I like to imagine that in her sleepwalking state, she thought she was a flower girl, and that the salad bowl was her basket of flowers. Oh, that's beautiful. I hope you find the story as funny as I do if you knew my mom, it would be even funnier.

Let me know if I should write in about the time that I got lost in the woods for two days on a tender date and the police told my parents that he murdered me, spoiler alert, we were actually just lost. Please write that. Yes, please write it in. Yeah.

Stay sexy and don't let dad be in charge of ambient supervision is a bell. Oh, my. Like the first thing that comes to mind, because I used to take ambient, is like, you take it in bed with your head already on the pillow, because within 10 minutes, you're fucking gone. Yeah. 6 p.m. in front of the TV. Oh, messy.

Yeah. You're kind of like opening it up to like, hey, let's see what weird shit I'm about to do for three hours before I make it to sleep. I love salad flower girl. That's like the best. I love asking for salad. And then when someone says we don't have any salad,

just sobbing. Crying. Just like, yeah. She must have needed some, like, roughage. Yeah. Yeah. My last one is about a heroic cat. I'm not going to read you.

But there are photos involved, and we can put them on our socials. Okay. It just starts esteemed associates. Allow me to welcome you to my email. Welcome to the story. Our Syme's Vincent once saved his family from a house fire. This is before we adopted him more on that later. From what we were told, the building caught on fire one night while everyone was asleep. The smoke alarms didn't go off because the shipbag

landlord hung empty plastic shells. Oh, then it says check your detectors, everyone. Can you fucking believe that? I mean, that guy could go to jail for that. Yeah, yeah. Vincent, the cat, who was named Wyatt Earp at the time, went to each member of the family and began yelling at the top of his lungs, jumping on their chests, and nibbling their fingers to wake them up.

Which knowing Elvis would wake me up for any fucking reason, so I can imagine him waking me up for a fire, too, you know. Thanks to Vincent's quick thinking, everyone got out alive and unharmed. And fortunately, due to what was found in the downstairs unit during the fire investigation, think cocaine bear levels of drugs plus some unregistered weapons. Ooh, Benson's family ended up having to relocate and couldn't take him to their new residence.

So what's that? Benson ended up at the local Humane Society where my husband works. We had recently lost our previous Symey's boy and weren't looking to add another kid to the family or so I thought. I was finishing at the work when my husband texted me simply all caps, he saved his family from a fire.

Followed by picture number one, baby Vincent, I texted back, I'm on my way. Later that month, Vincent, again previously called Wyatt Earp, was honored in a ceremony where he was given the Humane Society's Animal Hero Award, Sea Second Picture. Today Vincent is our elder statesman at 17 and shows no signs of slowing down. He loves to play and is not above using his heroic past as leverage to steal entire pieces of pizza straight off of your plate. He also keeps us on alert by conducting frequent com checks, meaning he yells his head off in another room until someone answers.

We couldn't be more proud of our tiny, loud, hero. Stay sexy and don't hesitate to adopt a cat that will save you from a fire. Hugs, Kelsey. That cat is so cute. By the way, he doesn't look like a classic Simeez, though. He kind of looks like a combo. Yeah, he's got Simeez coloring for sure and the big blue eyes and the loudness. I'm sorry, I guess I'm just a little bit furious because this cat saves the family. Yeah. I mean, I understand they're in a tight spot. It's their circumstances for sure,

or it's like maybe they had to move back home because you know, they didn't have first and last. And it's just sad and hopefully found a humane society that was, you know, a no-kill shelter. And obviously he didn't end up the family. He was supposed to end up at worst. Yes. They now have a parent that loves them

enough to write emails to podcasts about him. So I guess it did all turn out good. That was beautiful. That's amazing. That was amazing. Look at he's leaning there against his little, he's got a plaque. There's a plaque.

There's a picture with him and a plaque. That's amazing. One night when we, like first got mo, I was woken up to him, like, tapping on me and I woke up because it was weird and he had, like, swallowed, like, a piece of string and was, like, basically, like, low-level choking on it and, like, woke me up to be, like,

could you grab this out of my mouth for me? So he saved his own life. So it's not very heroic. It was very, like, nice to know that he now is like come to me if like things are going poorly for you. Or that's right. I'll wake up and take care. Also so polite of him to be like, excuse me, pardon me. This is my fault and I'm real stupid for doing having choked on this like belt, but could you. But tap, tap tap tap could you pull this string please? Oh oh send us your heroic animal stories you know we love them especially if you're animal got a plaque

I mean like can you beat Vincent and his saved a family got a plaque? That's for a major good old Wyatt Earp and then also stay sexy and don't get murdered! And then also stay sexy. And don't get murdered! Get back! Elvis, do you want a cookie? Aaaaaah! This has been an exactly right production. Our senior producer is Alejandra Keck.

Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo. This episode was mixed by Leonis Kulachi. Email your hometowns to my favorite murder at gmail.com and follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at my favorite murder and on Twitter at my fave murder. Goodbye! Listen, follow, leave us a 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 ad free on Amazon Music? Download the Amazon Music app today.

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