My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 351
Episode Date: October 2, 2023This week’s hometowns include surviving sneaker waves and visiting a Bigfoot museum.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privac...y#do-not-sell-my-info.
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I'm Candace DeLong and on my podcast Killer Psychie Daily, I share a quick 10-minute rundown
every weekday on the motivations and behaviors of the criminal masterminds you hear about in the news.
Hey, Prime Members, listen to the Amazon exclusive podcast Killer Psychie Daily in the Amazon
music app. Download the app today. Hello. Hello. And welcome to my favorite murder, the mini-sode.
Yeah.
Whenever you say it, you put your hand up,
like what do you want from us?
It's simple.
Like what?
You know it's not the right day for the long episode.
It's the short one.
I mean, you come on.
It's something that's had mini-sode,
so you should probably know.
You know, we shouldn't have to explain this over, over.
All right, you wanna go first?
Sure. I won't reach the subject line because it gives it away. You wanna go first? Sure.
I won't reach the subject line because it gives it away.
It just starts high, ladies.
I love y'all.
Yep, that about sums it up.
Here we go.
Growing up, my dad would occasionally take me with him
to the hunting club he was part of in North Louisiana.
It sits on 400 plus acres and is down a dirt road
way off the beaten path.
Even further down the dirt road sits an abandoned, very old house with one hello story.
A man, everyone called Doc, lived there, and then parentheses it says, he was basically
the only doctor in this small town.
He was a very generous man and would give work to hitchhikers off the highway from time to
time despite everyone telling him not to do so. a very generous man and would give work to hitchhikers off the highway from time to time,
despite everyone telling him not to do so.
Well, one of those times, he hired a hitchhiker to do some farm work, and the man stayed for
quite a while.
Members of the hunting club, including my dad and the owners, got to know him, and he
became a familiar face.
One of the unspoken rules at the hunting club is that five o'clock is cocktail time
where everyone gathers on the front porch to have a drink and chat before heading out for the evening hunt.
Right?
And then Apprentice says, it's always a good idea to not be sober when handling firearms, right?
But I have to say this is a very common practice in, yeah. I'm sure. And if you live out in the country, it's kind of like hunting is the fun thing.
Yeah.
It goes along with party.
And golf, except with guns.
But I think they really only have like one or two, then they go out, then they come back
and then they really, yeah.
Then they really party down.
Okay.
Who am I, who am I to judge?
Look.
Let's be less judgemental and more afraid of drunken firearm handling.
One day the owners and a few hunters were on the porch enjoying their cocktails when the
hitchhiker drove by.
They flagged him down and invited him over for a drink.
He obliged and no one thought twice about the blood he had on him because after all,
it was a hunting camp and they just assumed that he had shot a deer and got some blood
on his clothes.
After a few drinks in a chat, the mandrov off, a few hours later, several cop cars flew
down the dirt road and headed to Doc's place.
As it turns out, the hitchhiker had shot Doc, hence the blood, stopped for a few casual
drinks, and then went to the nearest pawn shop to sell some of Doc's guns and items.
The shop owner recognized some of the guns and immediately called the cops to check on
Doc.
He was found dead on his living room floor.
Just because of the shop owner's instinct and quick thinking, the hitchhiker was immediately
caught and arrested.
This happened about 30 years ago, and to this day the house has been boarded up in a band-in.
The murderino in me has always wanted to break in and explore, but I also hate snakes.
So it's a real catch 22.
Anyways, I hope you enjoyed my hometown.
Stay sexy and don't murder people.
Thanks, Ariel.
Yeah, that sums it up.
I mean, kind of perfect, kind of a perfectly encapsulated hometown email.
Well done, Ariel.
That was perfect.
Yeah.
Let's go to a lighthearted hometown story from the 80s.
That's what the subject is.
I'd love to.
Okay.
Hello friends.
My dad told me this story and I thought I would share.
My parents were born in the late 60s and to this day,
they still believe hardcore in the satanic stuff
for which there was a panic.
Mm-hmm, well put.
When they were in high school and living in Kansas,
and says they've been together since my mom was 16,
they were severely under-supervised
and often got themselves into some teenage predicaments.
Usually the kind that included middle fingers towards authority.
So it was rumored that there was a haunted house
in which a cult performed their satanic rituals. middle fingers towards authority. So it was rumored that there was a haunted house
in which a cult performed their satanic rituals.
So of course, my parents and their friends decided
that it was the perfect place to drink irresponsibly.
They weighed until it's dark and in typical horror story
fashion, they split up to explore using only flashlights.
The house is falling apart and it's spelled like dead mice
and mold, so of course they decided to stay. My dad walks upstairs and steps into a large room.
When my mom follows, she finds he's unintentionally standing in the center of a pentagram painted
in red on the hardwood floor. There are candles in each corner and dripped wax everywhere and a... All caps. Dark red stain right where dad is standing.
Ooh.
My mom's scream whispers to him to get the fuck out of the circle.
And at the exact moment my dad looks down to see that he is in the designated sacrifice area.
They hear a car pull into the driveway and see headlights flash across the window.
Everyone freaks the fuck out and they run out the back door,
ditching their cars and running all the way home. Oh, that's how you can tell their teenagers,
because they just started driving. It's so new that they forgot they can drive.
Mom and Dad say it was the satanic cult coming to murder them. I think maybe more teens had similar ideas of underage illegal activity.
Either way, my parents stayed sexy and didn't get murdered.
They're still together after 38 years.
I suppose surviving a satanic cult house really keeps the romance alive.
Thanks for reading, stay sexy, and on exploring haunted areas areas be sure to look where you're stepping Liz.
I love Liz that your parents relationship has been like
girdered by Satan himself. That's a really the idea that they're afraid of stuff like that or think it's real.
Yeah. It's actually just like, but Satan is
He's in that relationship with you. It's got to be us against the world about something. relationship with you. It's gotta be us against the world about something.
Yeah, me and you and Satan against the world.
Yeah.
But I do love the idea, the first thing I thought of was that
that it's like, they're all freaked out.
Like, oh my God, Satanists practice in this house.
And it's like, do you mean the seniors
that came and painted that and they're trying to scare people?
Or like the 11 year olds, I definitely didn't shit like that
when I was a kid.
Yeah, just a fuck around.
I mean, what's scarier though than like at night,
the woods of pentagram.
There's a really the beginning of everything.
Like candles that have been lit,
meaning like something happened.
Yeah, candles, that's power.
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New episodes come out every Tuesday, starting October 17th.
Prime members can listen early and add free on Amazon Music. Okay, this subject line is freaky nature survival slash best mom award question mark.
And it says hello ladies and furs. Long time listener, let's get into it.
You asked for freak nature stories in a recent mini-sode. So here's mine. Do you have any memory of
freak nature stories? Fake nature. Yeah, no. This spring my son turned one when I was a young and much more plucky mom in my 20s.
A friend invited me on a trip with her and her also one year old to beautiful Puerto Rico.
She would be going on an academic conference and I would be caring for two one year olds
on my own all day.
In a city I'd never been where I did not speak the local language, sign me up.
Look, I was young and desperate to travel somewhere warm away from Michigan, so of course I said
yes, an adventure ensued.
One day I got the chance to take my baby boy down to the beach and have some one-on-one
time.
The scenery in Turquoise Ocean were straight out of a postcard.
I did, however, happen to notice
that this particular beach was posted with signs that read, strong currents, riptides, no swimming.
Got it. I won't swim. I'll just sit down and nurse my baby and meditate on the waves.
In moments, baby is asleep, and I lay him next to me in the sand. Perfect, relaxing. I'm at peace
and I'll always write with the world until a giant wave rushes up to the
beach at us so fast I can't even process what's happening
and sucks my baby into its powerful retreat back into the
ocean. Holy shit! I'm on my feet and my sweet baby is being
drugged down this beach just barrel rolling into the ocean.
I'm running sure this is the last time I will see him.
And just like that, another wave shoves him back up the beach, and I scoop him up in
my arms, covered in sand, and looking a mess, but seemingly non-plussed by what just happened.
I'm happy to tell you he survived that day, and many more.
My son is one of the best people I've ever met and I just dropped him at college two weeks ago.
Oh no! So hard.
That little baby. That little baby is in college now.
The college baby. That's so cute.
See, he's still got seaweed all over his hair.
He is smart, he is kind, and I'm so thankful for every adventure we've had in the past 18 and a half years.
Here's to many more, I'm like getting choked up.
Because she thought she lost her baby.
In the fucking ocean of all places.
That would be, I mean, yeah.
Sneaker waves.
Okay, I don't know if there's a lesson here,
but I kept a child alive for 18 years,
and I feel pretty good about that,
because being a mom is hard and scary,
and full of unexpected waves,
stay sexy, Amber, she heard.
Oh, that's beautiful.
That's so good.
Okay, if I could be guaranteed a kid like hers, you know,
that I didn't break.
You don't break?
That make you...
Yeah. He's a good person. I don't ruin break. Yeah. He's a good person.
I don't ruin them.
Yeah, they're a good person.
They can get into college or you can get in.
You don't have to go to college, but.
But they could if they wanted that.
They made that option for themselves.
I know.
I know.
But such a crap shoot.
Okay.
Historical hometown with murder.
Hey ladies, my hometown murder is actually a story story I've heard since I was a little girl,
proudly told by my mom in my aunt's to all us children as inspiration,
a warning to my brother and boy cousins, question mark who knows,
but I have long assumed that this was just family lore and perhaps an exaggerated tale at best.
I was delighted and instantly knew I had a right in when my brother returned home from
a trip to California, where the murder was committed, with a copy of the news article
from 1910 of my very true hometown murder.
Whoa.
My mom's grandpa, who was two at the time, was in the living room with his mother Rose,
who was eight months pregnant and visiting with her mother.
When Rose's husband came home,
he flew into a jealous rage,
accusing her of sleeping with the neighbor
or the milkman.
This is where the details get hazy.
As Rose's husband starts to beat his pregnant wife,
her mother takes a darenger out of her purse
and shoots him dead right in the living room. Holy shit, out of her purse, she's got a a darenger out of her purse and shoots him dead right in the living room.
Holy shit. Out of her purse, she's got a fucking darenger.
And darengers, am I wrong to remember them to be the little guns from like the 20s that
are like, it's a lady gun. It's a lady gun. It's like a, her not heralded mod. Who are
they? Bonnie and Clyde. Them. It's like one of their styles, right? I think so from... I don't know. I don't know either.
This was probably a very chaotic moment,
but I like to envision Rose's mom as stone-faced
and cool as a cucumber in this moment, a total badass.
Rose's mom did go to trial, but she was found innocent
and continued to help Rose raise her family.
Oh, I know.
My family is full of crazy, take no shit women
and it seems like we've been that way for a while.
Stay sexy, Sarah, she, her.
Sarah, congratulations from descending
from a long line of bad asses.
Also, I wonder if that mother had already seen
some red flags in that husband
and she had fucking had it.
Yes.
And she's eight months pregnant.
I mean, who would stand for such a thing?
Fuck no.
No.
No.
No.
Yeah.
Amazing.
This episode is a mom theme.
Oh, you're right.
So this one actually kind of goes along with it.
Okay. It's a little long but worth it.
Okay.
I'm not going to read you the subject line.
It just starts, hello, Karen,
Georgia, Steven and all the exactly right team.
I love people still mentioning Steven.
It's like, it's eternal.
It was the late fall of 2011
and I was a 16 year old junior in high school.
My parents had split up the summer before
and then in parentheses it says,
encouraged by me, don't stay together for the kids
if you are visibly unhappy because we can pick up on that too.
Hey, man.
That's so true.
Close parentheses.
And I was primarily staying with my mom
in her old family home, which was vacant at the time.
My older sister was a freshman at the local community college,
so she also lived with us. Although we lived in a small town in southern Maryland, I was playing on
a club volleyball team closer to Baltimore. That meant that two to three nights a week my mom and
I were out of the house from about six to 11 p.m. On this particular night, my sister came with us
to practice in order to get some time out of the house. After arriving,
God, I remember I would go on any errand, on any errand, growing up in the country where you're just
like, if there's absolutely nothing on TV and nothing to be done in this house, people are like,
I'm going to the hardware store and you're like, and I'm going with you. I'll go watch you play
softball, I'm bored out of my fucking mind. Will there be candy bars there?
Yes.
Kids of candy bars.
Kids of candy bars.
Okay, so after arriving home from practice or on to 11 p.m., we began winding down for the evening.
This looked like the three of us taking turns to shower and watch catfish on MTV.
As I went into the upstairs bathroom to grab some whitening strips that my mom and I had
recently gone in on, and then in parentheses,
it says they're expensive, okay?
I know.
They are.
I was horrified to find that almost all of the whitening
strips were gone except a half used one.
This really set me off, and I made multiple trips downstairs
to the living room, accusing my mom and sister
of stealing the precious strips. I was going back and forth yelling at them and observing
the strips to make sure that I wasn't just seeing things. After about the fifth time
that I confronted them, I declared that if one of you did not take them, then someone
must have broken into our house and taken them. While I thought this would surely get my
mom or sister to confess, instead my mom got a bizarre look in her eye.
She then proceeded to go upstairs, and instead of going into the bathroom, she went into
her bedroom.
I met her at the top of the stairs as I was still protesting this abomination.
What happened next was probably the scariest moment of my life.
My mom said, stay calm, but we all need to exit this house.
We've been robbed.
Oh my God.
Apparently, she discovered that some of her personal items were missing as well. We
quickly exited the house. We had no way of knowing if the burglar was still in the
house or not at this point. So it goes without saying that until we had gotten
out of the house and into the car, we were petrified. So what happened? My mom's
ex-boyfriend, who was a college volleyball coach that we had met at one of our tournaments,
had broken into our house, stolen gift cards to local restaurants that he had given my mom,
and you guessed it, whitening strips. I guess my mom had had her suspicions about him
because she knew exactly where to look for the things that he might take.
Unfortunately, we were not able to press charges because he used a Heide Keyki which he must have spotted back when he and my mom were still together.
Just think if my sister had been home, thank goodness she decided to ride along to my practice
that night. He stalked some of my volleyball tournaments until my dad finally confronted
him and got him to stay the hell away from us. To close, I am happy that my mom has had
a new boyfriend for nine years now, and
he's the coolest guy ever. I even started calling him my stepdad recently because he means
so much to me. Stay sexy and always count your whitening strips. Jess, she, her, PS, y'all
have been with me through my battle with alcoholism, but I can proudly say that I'm now
almost two and a half years sober and life has never been better.
Wow.
Congratulations, Jess.
Good job.
Good job.
That could have gone so much worse if her sister was home
and surprised him.
And that's so many of those forensic file stories
happen that way, you know?
Yeah.
And his thinking of like, obviously,
that's going to be scary.
And then he's taking things back.
Like how dare you break up with me,
I'm gonna do, it's just so, it's such bad vibes.
Totally.
Oh my God.
Let me see if I have a mom one among my other stories.
Hold on.
Oh, I do.
Hey.
Okay.
This one's called My Mom versus the Bigfoot Museum Guide.
Hello, MFM crew. I recently caught up on some early episodes
and talk of cryptids made me think of this story. I graduated college in May and had so much time
on my hands this summer. That, listen to this, I accompanied my parents on pretty much every errand.
Oh my god! Yes!
much every errand. Oh my God! Yes. In August, we ended up in Blue Ridge, Georgia. To my absolute delight, we found and all caps, Bigfoot Museum, standing alone on the side of the highway.
My mom and I went in to check it out while my dad waited in the car as dads do. This place would
have had y'all in a chokehold. They even explored how Bigfoot's cousin,
and then it says,
brother, pal, grandpa, a question mark.
The Yeti could have caused the dialog pass incident.
Anyway, we poked around for a bit,
and on the way out, my mom starts up small talk with the guide.
My mom, this place was so funny, we had a good time.
Guide, funny?
Uh-oh.
My mom. Yeah, you know, like it seems so serious, but you guys don't actually good time. Guide, funny? Uh-oh. My mom.
Yeah, you know, like it seems so serious,
but you guys don't actually believe in Bigfoot, right?
Mm-hmm.
Oh dear God, wrong move.
The guide became visibly upset,
and the staff in the gift shop all perked up at this statement.
Guide, of course we do.
The owner has devoted his life to finding Bigfoot. He even caught
a juvenile Bigfoot on infrared camera over the 4th of July. Oh, every artifact you've
seen in here has taken years to curate. Bigfoot is absolutely real. For some reason, this
did not register with my mom as serious still, and I watched mortified as it went on like
this for a solid five minutes. No, no.
By the time I had bought a t-shirt
and shuttled my mom outside,
I seriously thought the guide might have thrown a punch
to defend the existence of our good friend Bigfoot.
Thanks for everything y'all do
and for making my work road chips more bearable.
I even introduced my Bigfoot deny mom
to your podcast on one of my drives.
Hey.
Hey, stay sexy and never badmouth Bigfoot Genie mom to your podcast on one of my drives. Hey. Hey, stay sexy and never badmouth Bigfoot Fiona.
Well, not in a Bigfoot Museum, Fiona's mom, come on.
Oh, no.
You've gone to the one place you can't do that.
Anywhere else kind of in the world,
people would be like, I don't know,
but like you basically went to the source.
Totally.
It's like going to the Natural History Museum
and being like, but you guys don't believe in this, right?
Jesus didn't do this.
Jesus buried those dinosaur bones to trick us.
Oh, it's true.
Hey, that's it, right?
Oh yeah, it is.
Oh, thanks for listening, you guys.
We appreciate you.
We believe in Bigfoot.
Your mom is, tell your mom we say hi.
Yeah, we believe in Bigfoot, but more than that,
we believe in your mom.
It's right, always.
And also stay sexy.
And don't get murdered!
Yay!
Elvis, do you want a cookie?
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.
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