My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 350

Episode Date: September 25, 2023

This week’s hometowns include babysitting at a bowling alley and an accidental grave robbing.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 ad-free on Wondery Plus. Hello! And welcome to my favorite murder. This is the mini-sode. And you handle our voices like this. It's so irritating. What if we did this the whole time? We're not going to. No. You want to go first this time? Okay. The subject line of this email is My Birth Saved Lives and Christmas. I mean, hey,

hey fam, love you all. This is long, so let's get into it. Here's a story of my birth that you didn't ask for. I'm from a small rural town in Iowa. My family living on the outside of a town on a farm, the next town was 15 minutes away. This is also where the nearest hospital is. On December 24, 1983, there was a major blizzard, 8 to 10 feet of snow, and 90 degrees below zero with the wind. Oh, holy shit.

9-0 degrees below zero with the wind. What? The F. No. Of course, this is the day that I decided to grace the world with my presence. Since we lived on a farm, and with the amount of snow and blizzard conditions, there's no way that my mom and dad were going to be able to drive their station wagon to the hospital, so they called the local ambulance.

A snow plow picked up the town doctor. This is before paramedics and EMT crews, and dropped him with the ambulance and following the snow plow to my house, they went to pick up my mom and dad. Wow. I mean, I guess people in the Midwest and back east, they have plans for success. Yeah, totally. Totally. But it's making me panic.

Yeah. Like, the snow plow guy must be like, his phone is ringing off the hook. Yeah, and clearly he's a good guy. He's a fucking do that. Yeah, he's not answering his phone on a blizzard day. Right. Yeah. Okay, so with the main roads closed to get to the hospital and a lot of debate on should

we do a home birth or not, they finally decided to take back roads and head to the hospital. This no-plow led the way as far as they could, clearing a path for the ambulance, but finally turned back after it was too dangerous for them. These people were all volunteering for their jobs. Oh my God. Now, onto the saving of lives. Along the way, because the conditions were life threatening for anyone stranded in their cars,

the ambulance had to stop at every vehicle they saw to make sure that no one was in them. But of course there was. Anyone that was in a vehicle had to climb into the ambulance. So in the back of the ambulance, my mom was in full active labor, was the doctor, my dad, and four other random people, two of which were very drunk. Oh my god.

And you fucking imagine. Oh my god. I mean, they shouldn't have been driving to begin with. But in you as the woman in labor would be so fucking irritated. Live it. At some point, the doctor and my mom decided that she could no longer hold me in. So the ambulance stopped on the road, shoved everyone into the front seat, and there on Christmas Eve on the side of the road and the back of the ambulance

in the middle of a blizzard, I was born. Because I decided to be extremely inconvenient from day one, my birth saved four people that morning and Christmas for their families who would have been spending the day morning rather than celebrating if I hadn't been born that day. All right, you're overdue. I need a little bit.

There are so many more details this story that I can only be told by my mom, but one of my favorite parts is in 2018 when my dad passed away on December 22nd. One of the ladies that we saved saw on the newspaper that he had passed and came to his funeral to finally introduce herself to the baby that saved her life.

Oh, this is obviously my mom's favorite Christmas story to tell, and 39 years later, my older brother still rolls his eyes every time it's still. And then a parenthesis that says, the poor forgotten child of the day. And then an inside parenthesis that says, insert my eye roll. And then all those parenthesis clothes. And that says, but I earned the nickname Sarah Snowstorm for life. Yes.

Thank you for all you do when my dad died and I couldn't listen to a single song without bursting its tears. It was your podcast that distracted me from the grief. Stay sexy and all caps. Stay home in a blizzard. There won't always be a Christmas Eve baby to save you. Sarah Snowstorm she heard.

Oh my God, that one is pretty epic it's so good that's really good yeah they would have died right because there's no cell phones they would have died in their car I was joking but yes if they were trapped on the road 90 below mindy minus 90 mindy mindy degrees are you mindy that's the coldest it's ever been okay my first one's called vacation murder hometown. Hello, mostly to the pets and everyone else, I guess. I can't believe no one sent in my hometown yet. It's infamous in this area, but I've never seen it covered by a true crime show or podcast.

Their entire lives, my grandparents split their time between Florida, where all old Jews must go in the winter, and northern Michigan. So even though I didn't grow up here, I spent a lot of my childhood in the tip of the mitt. One of the true crime story people are always ready to talk about up here are the good heart murders. I think the name is appropriately ominous, right? Anyway, the story starts when the 1960s new money Robinson family from Detroit purchased a lake cottage in the tiny village of Goodheart. The Robisons traveled a lot as a family looking for new properties to buy so the neighbors

hadn't found it unusual that the family was gone for weeks. Until the next door neighbor was setting up her bridge party and then I've prompted to use it as 1960s and asked the groundskeeper to find out what the nasty smell was that was coming from the Robison Cottage. He thought it would be a dead raccoon or something, but when he couldn't find the source, he opened the front door. The groundskeeper found Mr. and Mrs. Robison and all four of the kids dead and decomposing with the heater cranked all the way up to high for some reason. They had been there for 27 days. I think I did this at a Detroit show. Yeah.

Yeah. Because it was a rural police department in the 1960s, they kind of totally fucked up the crime scene by letting journalists and lookelos walk through the house before anyone who knew what to do with a murder could get there. The police ended up pointing a lot of fingers, but the person who seemed most likely was Mr. Robison's

business partner, Joe Scolaro. It turns out Scolaro had been stealing tens of thousands of 1960s dollars, so like hundreds of thousands now, question mark, from Robison's businesses. There are a lot of other tiny details and pieces of evidence in the book about the murders when evil came to good heart, but this email is already long enough. In the end, right as the police have collected enough evidence to convict him nearly a decade later, Scalaro killed himself, and because the state of Michigan doesn't let the police close a case, because it's gone cold, the case is still technically open. Katie. Wow. Just fucked up and sad. Yeah. Wow. Also, it's just when we get those stories

and we hear those stories where it's like, for business and for greed, basically, someone kills an entire family. It's like, I hate the ones that are like, you fucked up your life and so you're killing someone else because of your bad decisions. It's not like they fucked up your life, you fucked up your life and their life.

And now you're gonna kill them to cover it up somehow. It's like not fucking fair. But it's also a sign that they're like sociopaths and or psychopaths among us, where it's like those people, it doesn't register to them. It's literally like finishing a can of soda

and throwing it away. It's on par. There's a solution. Which is just like, oh my god, it's just so horrifying that those people are around us. Exposed, cover up at Columbia University, the new podcast from Wondery and Dr. Death Host, Laura Beale, tells the story of the women behind the case

against Dr. Robert Haddon. At first, Dr. Haddon seemed like the kind of OB-GYN you recommended to your best friend. Calm, knowledgeable, and greeted everyone with a smile, but his cheerful demeanor hid and ugly truth. Dr. Robert Hadden was found to be a serial predator who abused hundreds potentially thousands of patients over his decades-long career. Once these stories began to see the light of day, one question remained. How was this position who was trusted with the lives of so many able to get away with this

for so long? And when the powerful institution he worked for was confronted with these accusations, did it choose to protect its own reputation? Listen to Exposed on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast. You can listen to Exposed early and ad free on Wondery Plus. Get started with your free trial at Wondery.com slash plus. Okay, let's take a quick left turn. Let's to this email, subject line is

bowling alley babysitter. Hey guys, I love listening to your podcast. I grew up in Gainesville, Florida and was in college when Danny Rawlings was killing college students. Holy shit. So frightening. One of my instructors interviewed Ted Bundy and told us all about meeting him. I read True Crime because my dad would leave books

and magazines around so I got hooked. You asked for 12-year-old stories. Here's mine. That's real specific of us. Yes, it is. I am a child of the 70s. My parents had very little money and lots of kids. They did, however, join a bowling league

and they bowled on Tuesday and Fridays for years. I kind of love two nights a week. Yeah, they're like, we are gonna have a life, too. Yes, outside of this children thing. Yeah, exactly. And this is how they made it work. We kids were too young to stay at home at night by ourselves. And like I said, we were broke.

It's good, broke is in all caps. So when they went bowling, we went to. That's fun. Yeah. That meant my dad would give us four quarters at the start of the night, so we could play in the game room get snacks from the vending machine Run around the bowling alley with no supervision

Once my mom sent me to get her a Peña colada from the dark smoky bar That was there in the bowling alley and my dad sent me for cigarettes out of the vending machine on more than one occasion Absolutely, that was like part of your job as like a six-year- old in the seventies. You're basically a bartender. Yeah. Not and a child. You're like a cigarette butler. Very common. I even called my first grade teacher from the pay phone one night around 9 p.m. and

woke her up. My mom saw me talking on the phone and intervened and let me tell you I got a big trouble. Oh my God. What was she thinking? Here's the thing. I bet a lot of the youngsters today have questions about how that was possible. I'll tell you how it was possible. She sat there looking through the phone book for people's last names that she knew and

found her teacher. Yeah. Oh, Mrs. So-and-so. So she's up to. I love my teacher. I'm going to call her at nine on a weeknight. And the teacher's just like, do I need to go save this child? So and so. So what she's up to. I love my teacher. I'm going to call her at nine on a weeknight. And the teacher's just like, do I need to go save this child?

Like what is she being harmed in any way? Right. Honey, tell me what part of the bowling alley you're in right now. Yeah. And then it says, but here's my story. One Friday night, the babysitter at the bowling alley quit. Okay, so there was a babysitter at this bowling alley. That's hilarious. So here, all these people with small children and nobody want to watch their children,

the manager asked my mom if I could watch the kids. There were roughly 20 kids, five and under. I would get paid $50 a night for four hours. And then it just says, can you imagine hiring a 12-year-old to watch kids for four hours? Also, can you imagine a parent seeing one 12-year-old when you walk in to drop your child off and thinking that that's a good idea? Oh my God. Anything goes back then.

It was mayhem. One kid realized I had very little control over the situation and I had to call the front office. His mother was very mad at me. I was like, little Johnny will not listen in his throwing things. I got to do that for about a month before they found someone else. That's a lot of money, though, too. That's what we're moving on to.

That babysitting money was the best money I made as a babysitter, so I was sad when it ended. However, I was able to buy my first pair of Nike's that year and even bought myself a pair of jeans. My parents stopped taking us soon after that. They figured if I was old enough to babysit there, then I could stay home with no pay and keep my brothers. We watched a lot of happy days, Laverne and Shirley, love boat and fantasy island. Yes. I had a huge crush on Gofer.

We all did, girl. Anyways, thanks for keeping me smiling on my long walks at times when I needed a good old murder to jolt me back to reality. Stay sexy and don't use the bowling alley for your babysitting needs, Lori. Lori, which is one of the great names of the 70s that it would be lost to time.

That's true. Yeah. Good one. Right? Baby sitting stories, please send those in. Please. This one's called Sunk and Trasier, an accidental grave robbing. Hello to my favorite fellow Angelinos.

I always imagine running into one of you while shopping at the Grove or at a comedy show in Santa Monica and reacting like I just saw an old friend. Well, we don't go to the West Side. So that's... No one know. Over here goes to the West Side. That's right, sorry. We might as well live across the country from each other.

You guys on the other hand would have no idea who I was and wonder why a five foot six blonde woman was running up to you, eyes wide with excitement and probably call security. No, we wouldn't. We know what that looks like. We know the look. For justice has happened to you.

That being said, I can't imagine my two hour commute every day without your banter. And in my book, we are besties for life. We are. I recently decided to say, screw you to my anxiety and tackle my scuba diving certification. Whoa. I know.

It's a big deal. Well, on the dive boat, I made friends with a fellow dive here. Let's call her Stephanie, who already had her certification. Well, asking her about her diving adventures, she told me this story, and I immediately knew I had a ride at him.

One day, while on a dive, Stephanie discovered what she thought to be a sunken treasure resting on the ocean floor. Filled with excitement, she swam down and retrieved the shimmering silver object. It was filled with sand, but she emptied it out and brought it carefully up to the surface to show her friend on the boat. What she held in her hands looked like an ancient silver vase, and she was already imagining displaying it proudly in her home and telling all of her friends and family how she had founded

at the bottom of the ocean. Upon closer examination of the treasure, her friend exclaimed, Stephanie, that's not a vase, that's an urn. Oh. She had emptied it out of the sand, wasn't it? Oh no. Remember that little bit? Realizing her mistake, Stephanie quickly resumed her dive and returned the urn to its resting place

at the bottom of the sea I decided to give up treasure hunting for the rest of the trip Oh No, I am proud to say I now have my official open water dieting certification And I'm already planning to write in about all of the treasures I find in the ocean to my favorite podcasters Please, please every nickel that you find down there, I want to hear about for real. Stay sexy and Leigh grandma's remains at the bottom of the ocean, where they belong. Linae,

they don't belong there though. That's the legal. Don't you have to have like a permit or something? It's people like it seems maybe not, but you know, I wonder how long they've been there. Yeah, probably looked know, I wonder how long they've been there. Yeah, probably looked ancient. It's troubling.

It's such a different thing. I've found ancient treasure. And then I literally found someone through this off, probably this same boat eight months ago. Oh, man. Okay, this is probably one of the most exciting emails to me that we've ever received. Oh my god. Because it goes into one of my specialty interests. And the subject line is big foot hometown

connection. Whoa. Get ready. Okay, this is pretty major. It says, hello, esteemed murder friends and pets of all breeds and creeds. I'm a late-er to the cult of murder. Although it was actually in 2020, so maybe not that way. My best friend told me about the podcast when it first began airing in 2016 and I quote wasn't into podcasts then. When I was faced with several long solo drives, I suddenly understood podcasts. I think that's what it takes for most people. By the way, I am one of the people who listens to your podcasts at work. I work in catering, so most of my day is spent slicing bagels or making salads and a podcast is the perfect companion. Yeah, that sounds fun. Yeah, I do finish up my day with admin work, and it can be difficult to not swear when I answer

the phone, when I have a podcast in one ear. My hometown and current city is Charlotte, North Carolina. I've previously submitted a story about Charlotte and one about Tallahassee, Florida, where I lived for five years. But listening to the episode where y'all introduce Ros Hernandez, wooh wooh, goes to by Ros Hernandez, our new hit podcast about ghosts. Please listen if you can. Reminded me of Charlotte's connection to Bigfoot. So please prepare for a story you definitely haven't asked for, but I think you'll enjoy. There's a legendary costume shop here in Charlotte called Morris Costumes.

It's like a mile from my apartment, so I am there often. It's a true super store with everything from dancewear to tuxedo rentals and plenty more. I even bought an Elvis jumpsuit there for $15. This store has been open since the 60s and the owner, Philip Morris, and then it says, in parentheses, I have no idea if he's related to that Philip Morris since it is North Carolina, I'm going to say there's a possibility. So the owner, Philip Morris, has sold costumes all over the place and is apparently known for his guerrilla costumes. In 1967, Roger Patterson reached out to him to order a guerrilla costume since his prices were the best around.

He even asked for parentheses and received guidance on how to make the costume look more realistic. According to Morris, when he saw the famed Patterson and Gimlin film of Bigfoot, which is with the one we all know, the Bigfoot walking away with his swinging arms, looking over his shoulder, and the creek bed, he recognized his costume. He said he never said anything about it because he would be revealing another illusionist's secret.

Ah, I love that so much, but then I also love that like if you live in Charlotte, you'd probably know this story. Totally. Oh, I want to go to that store so bad. Yeah, I love it. Amazing. I hope your travels bring you back to Charlotte one day so you can check out Morris Costumes. Georgia would really enjoy this. Georgia would really enjoy the sleepy poet and teak small. Fun fact, back when I used to do ballet and bought my dancewear at Morris Costumes, I performed in the Nutcracker on the very same stage.

Y'all were on. When we performed in Charlotte, that was this person's ballet stage. And then it says, I guess I should think of a clever sign off. Stay sexy and keep the receipt of your gorilla costume. Rita Vesci. Yeah, that I guess that's one little thing they didn't think through is like they had to buy the costume from someone. Right. Like you should have made it. I guess I assumed they had it made

by a person that then promised to keep the secret. Or did you assume that it was real? Really big foot. Me personally? Yeah. Oh yeah. I mean that was my first pass. I loved the idea that it was like, well they caught them. They caught them on camera. Yeah. Look at them go. That's hilarious. Yeah, right. Can't get away with jack shit. This is the story. I'm here. Oh, here, this one's called, what teachers do when they go into narcoleptic zombie mode, lighthearted, two minute 30 second read. This is my last one. Yeah, kind of long. Actually, it's two minutes and 30 seconds. I was listening to many so 344 and heard the sleep walking story and your call for

more of those. Though, this is not technically a sleep walking story, it is an odd ball tale of what happens when the line between being asleep and being awake becomes blurred. You see, I have narcolepsy. It is a sleeping disorder that messes with your sleep, wake cycle, causing your subconsciousness to sort of take over sometimes. Patients have trouble staying awake, especially while doing menial tasks. Instead of just falling asleep or zoning out and feeling out that boring spreadsheet, as others would, narcoleptics go through something called automatic behavior.

This is what happens when your body remains awake, but your brain does not. In other words, whatever you're doing that puts you to, quote, sleep, you just keep doing, but you do so in full on zombie mode. I'm a teacher, and the most tedious part of my job is correcting writing assignments and writing feedback for my students. So those are my danger zones as an arcolyptic. You can see how this can become somewhat of a problem at times. My students think I am absolutely horrible at math. I am, but not this bad, since I'd handed back countless assignments

that were graded 78 out of 10. I've also had many students approach me discreetly and hesitantly to ask about the, quote, interesting feedback I had added to their writing assignments. One said, quote, good work, Frank, but I feel you could have described the toothless druid in the dilapidated barn in more vivid details so as to improve the suspense level of your story." Frank's writing assignment was, in fact, an argumentative essay about the death penalty and had, you guessed it, zero mentions of druids or barns in it,

dilapidated or otherwise. Besides in my job, narcolepsy also tends to make my home life more interesting. I found my phone in our freezer, dryer, inside one of my shoes, as well as placed squarely in the middle of our driveway. Oh, it's just like, her walking out to the drive.

I just love that visual. It's right down, and there I go. Walk back inside. My keys somehow end up in my sock drawer a lot. I have also had many discussions with my boyfriend swearing up and down that I did take the trash out to then find the trash spread out all over our garden with the empty trash bags neatly hung out to dry

on a tree branch. He was not amused by my comment that I had technically taken the trash outside. Narkalopsy is of course not a joke and has profound impact on my life as it does for all of those who suffer from it. But I'd rather laugh than cry about it on most days. And luckily so does my boyfriend. He's a firefighter who has put out many, many figurative and even literal fires that my Nark narcoleptic autopilot started. He's upset at Karen because he had been on my case for years,

but how I should clean out the lint trap of our dryer. But I only started doing it after Karen mentioned it on the podcast. Thank you for reading and for all you do. I've lost both my grandparents in the past two years. They were my favorite people on the planet and your podcast has been absolutely essential in getting me through the raw grief that comes with losing people that you love that much. You're the best. Love from Belgium. Marie, she, her. Marie is a narcoleptic from Belgium? Yeah. Wow. She's fun to talk to at parties unless you bore her. She, she, then she's just like, you are, you are the kind of thing that puts me to public sleep. Wow. Nice one. I've never known anyone with like actual narcolepsy. That's really interesting. I know. Well, the only one I've ever heard is, you know, Jimmy Kimmel is narcoleptic. And that was

the thing he made jokes about when he first started because his show was live in the beginning And I think there was like concern or whatever it like he came clean early of like this is a possibility Wow, I know right like I guess it's so exciting on stage You probably don't fall asleep then right? I would hope not that would be a real judgment on your Interview you're like wait up this quick story about oh Yeah, how Harry Styles just makes me fall right to sleep. Well, thanks everybody for another great episode. Your emails are endlessly fascinating to us. And if you have a story for us, and at this point, it could be

literally about anything, especially if you're from Belgium, please send it to my favorite murder at gmail.com. And if you want one extra story from each of us, join the fan call at We Do It Every Week. They're all there. And also, stay sexy. And don't get murdered! Give it! Elvis, do you want a cookie?

Ah! 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 us on Instagram and Facebook at my favorite murder and on Twitter at my fave murder. Goodbye!

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