My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 365

Episode Date: January 8, 2024

This week’s hometowns include a night out in Tokyo and a reminder to lock your doors.

This is exactly right. Hello! Hello! Hello! And welcome to my favorite murder. The mini-sode. It's so cute and mini! And it's filled with your emails, which you love. For your stories, straight to your face. Do you want to give us a first? Sure.

This one is called Death Bet Confession, Treasure and Grandparents with their names. Yes. Yes. Yes. This, yes, yes. This is a solid one. Sending this again via forward, because when y'all said you didn't get enough deathbed confession emails, I just about screamed.

This email has everything, and then it says, Stefan voice, so I did it. Georgia and Karen, I've submitted before, but I trimmed the fat for y'all. Good. My grandmother passed away in 2019, and as we went through her files and photos, we came across an article that tells of the murder

of her parents. Oh, no. Tom, 22, enjoys 20. That's how young they were. A Greer South Carolina surprised a robber in their home. Tom was known to have a collection of silver coins that he kept in the house. My grandfather says they also kept stacks of money, but not sure if that's true.

They died in a fire set by the robber. Possibly after he shot them, but it's unclear exactly how they died. There was a gun fired twice recovered in the fire. The house was burned to the ground, and there was so little left of them that they were buried in the same grave. This July we found the only reminder of them that my grandmother had, two charred watches kept in her bedside table. My grandmother, Carol, who was three at the time, happened to be staying at her grandparents' house. It's weird to think it shouldn't have been with her grandparents that day. I wouldn't have ever been born. Apparently, as my grandfather tells it, a man was convicted of a hung for the murder and arson. But Tom's brother, the grandfather who was killed, on his deathbed confessed to his nurse that he had done it.

Not actually committed the crime, but had tipped off someone that there was money and was in on the robbery, not knowing how badly it would end. Oh, that's horrible. Is she carrying that for your entire life? Also, it's like, you just thought you could make a decision like that and then remain in control of the actual outcome of it. I mean, it's just so naive. I wonder if there's a part of him that like didn't want to get away with it.

Like when the guy was hung and he realized it would never come out, just kind of have this like guilt to that you're never going to be punished for this thing awful thing you did. You know? Yeah, but then he waited till his death bed to confess. I mean, he just chose to live with it. Totally. Well, it's kind of freaky how much they're able to say in the article.

This is all in the article that she found. Oh wow. Details that you would never read in that kind of article today. My grandmother was the most loving and selfless woman and my penpal. She worked at a home for the elderly most of her life, always giving up her time and love. I think she's a beautiful testament to the fact that people with tragedy in their lives don't have to go on to have hateful twisted futures. Stay sexy and maybe use a bank. Question mark. Allison. Wow. Just kicking it off with a bang. Here we go. That's just so heavy to have a family history like that, but then your connection to it is of this kind of miracle child

survivor. Totally. It's just such a... And sorry, did you say at the beginning that Allison and her family didn't know until they found that article? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's so very very old school of, oh, we'll take this bird in ourselves and just never speak of it. Right. Keep it to ourselves. Oh, that's just yeah, so sad. All right. This subject line of this email is my mafia princess grandma and her serial killer dad. Okay, we are. This is a heavy hitter. Boom. Hi friends, long time listener, first time writer. You all asked for mafia stories and I'm sure I have the best one. So here's the story of my mafia princess grandma and her escape from the mafia slash feds. Wow. For the safety of my family, I'm going to change the names very smart

of the people and leave out the cities, just in case the mob or the feds listen to your broadcast. What if we have one of each? The feds do listen to our podcast member, those FBI agents that came to our show in Maryland. It's the Rilling. Did you also know that Vince's niece is in the FBI?

Whoa. Yeah. That's very cool. that's very cool. It's very cool. Oh, the feds. Okay, my grandmother will call her Marie, grew up in a big city up north. Her parents had come straight from Italy

to America in the 20s. Marie's dad will call him Sal, worked on the docks, that's in quotes. But we would later find out that that meant he was taking people on long walks down short pears and giving them cement shoes. That's right, my great grandpa was a highly ranked hitman for the mob. My grandma tells stories of being showered and gifts in jewelry every birthday as a little

girl. Jewelry for a little girl. Yeah, alright. Writing in the fanciest cars and going to big parties with the same group of Italian families and having a big group of uncles. She said certain uncles and their families would suddenly stop showing up to events. She wasn't allowed to question it or she would get in trouble. When Marie was in her late teens, she met my grandpa Vinnie. Fast forward to the 70s, they fell in love, had four kids and a house of their own. Vinnie didn't get involved with the maid men mainly because he was half Irish. If she's retelling us good fellows in a kind of a broken up way, it's like,

that dammit. We have to remind the listener, please don't retell us famous Scorsese movies. Okay, but he was still engulfed in the lifestyle because they all lived in the same neighborhood. Grandpa tells us stories of the mafia Don during his time and how he was one of the nicest guys. The Don would always keep a pocket full of candy so he could give a piece to the children when he saw them. He was not to be fucked with,

but reigned peacefully for over two decades. Oh, that's, I guess, good. You're allowed to do that when you're like the boss, right? You have to be the mean guy. You've got bunch of people to do that for you. You can trick people into thinking you're raining peacefully while people are down on the pier. Well, why are we talking shit about the mafia?

What do we do? I do mean that. I get it. We don't have anything to say about the work or the jobs that you sell as you. You're good fellows. In the early 80s, the new generation of made men decided he was too nice and the dawn was murdered during an uprising. That's how they always get them.

There you go. It's like being a grammar school teacher, you can't start nice and get me in as my sister says. This is where it all goes downhill for us. A new Don took over. We'll call him Polly. What's calling Polly? Just blending between the Godfather, Goodf good fellows, and the Sopranos. A new Don took over and believed it or not, he lived right across the street from my grandparents. My mom doesn't remember much because she was only 9 years old, but she did confirm this story. Polly had a short-lived reign because he was blown up by a bomb in his home.

Holy shit. Now we're getting some Miller's crossing in here a little bit. Yes, the home across the street from my family. My grandpa's old and usually drunk every time I see him. Well, oh my god. Let's not judge. My grandpa's old and usually drunk every time I see him, but he's told me this story a hundred times and I choose to believe it. Paulie came home and placed his key in the door. The key triggered a bomb that caused the house to explode. The explosion was so strong, his belt buckle was lodged into my family's front door across the street. Holy shit.

I'm not saying that this person is exaggerating, but that sounds like the kind of detail my father would add for fun after the fact non-factually based. That's a good one though. You need to know how big it is until that's a great way to describe it. Within a few months, my great grandpa, Sal, was murdered and one of the long-term members began snitching on everyone.

This part of the story isn't clear because my family doesn't talk about it too much. Well, then just go watch Goodfellas. It's very clear in that. All I know is Marie and Vinnie. I'm packed up, my mom and her siblings, to move south. Now we're in my cousin Vinnie territory. And now I'm an Italian southern girl who can't wait to hear my grandparents' next story. My grandma always said Italians were made for the mafia because we perfected cleaning tomato sauce stains. And it helped us to learn to clean up blood.

Damn! Damn, say sexy and don't get involved with the mafia. Also, does this mean my great grandpa is considered a serial killer? Thanks for taking the time to read this. I hope it was as entertaining as my Christmas gatherings are, J. She, her. Okay, can I please come to your next family gathering?

Could you please? please imagine can you imagine Bada bang bada boom wish I was just a little Italian You know just for those weddings and also just for like gesture the amount of ham gestures and passion in like Talking about a parking spot like I love it's high level living, the best food, the loudest screaming, the best looking man. It's my cousin Vinnie. Hey, it's my cousin Vinnie. Oh, hey, oh.

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Rocketmoney.com slash murder. Goodbye. Here's a night out speaking. I'm not going to tell you.com slash murder. Goodbye. Here's a night out speaking. I'm not going to tell you this is a night out. Okay. Hey, lovely ladies and the MFM team and four legged friends. My name is Russell. He, him and I'm a first time submitter and about a year in listener. I've been following the podcast since my partner April got me into it. We first started dating. so shout out to her. She's a long time listener compared to me.

I just wanted to share quick story about a night out I had whilst I was in Tokyo, Japan, about a decade ago. It was mentioned a few times on MFN Mini-Sode for mob stories, so I guess this technically counts. Ooh, psychic theme. This took place around 2014 when I was in Japan. I was out in the evening exploring the nightlife in Ginza, Tokyo, when I stumbled at an alleyway with some great Izakaya restaurants. I started from one place and ended up at another and so forth. When

I got to the third Izakaya restaurant, I was seated next to a few businessmen and suits that were drinking and having a great time together. They noticed that I was a foreigner and started to engage with me. My Japanese isn't the best, but it's enough to hold a conversation, but their English was 100% on point, so we continued the conversation in that language. We had a conversation about travel, Japan, food, and drinking, which made the night so much more interesting. I thought they were such kind and lovely people to talk to that I wanted to get the tab

at the end for our drinks and food to which they decline and insisted on taking up the tab themselves. Classy. Once finished in one restaurant, we would move on to the next and each time at the end I insisted on paying to which each time they declined. They was getting late into the night so I decided to call it an early one and said, Sianara and thank them for being such hospitable hosts. They thanked me.

And as we were leading the alleyway, we walked onto the main strip. And there it was, 10 black cars waiting for them. I was stunned at first. And then one of the businessmen said to me, you're a good kid. Stay at a trouble, put his hand on my face, gave it a few taps, and then proceeded to head for one of the cars. Each of the men had their own car and had what looked to be bodyguards opened the door for them.

Hot. And some cars, there were some women also waiting for them, inviting them in to keep the party going. Do we know where this is going? To a Yucuza party? Well, you wish. I do wish. At first, I thought nothing of it, but after sharing this story with one of my host where this is going to a Yucuzaparti? Well, you wish. I do wish.

At first, I thought nothing of it, but after sharing this story with one of my host family members, they immediately said, oh, those were some Yucuzamen. Yes. You got it right, but unfortunately, there's never after party. Oh, okay.

I think that the amount of time they spent with the Yucuzas seemed like plenty. That does. It's enough. And at which point I was shocked. I then started to play the night back in my head. And there were some red flags here and there, as when I asked them what they did for work,

they were hesitant to answer, as well as not looking to share about their personal lives, which I thought was normal when meeting a stranger. It is when you're not in the mob. I like the idea that they just ran into some businessmen with really healthy boundaries where they're like, that's kind of none of your business right now. Let's just keep it to the food and drink.

Right. Then, when it was all adding up with the suits, the generosity of them picking up the bill always, the women, the black cars and bodyguards, that it all pieced together. What an experience to have abroad and shout out to them for being gentlemen. Yeah. I hope you enjoyed this little story and thank you for your time. Love your work, stay amazing and much love from Melbourne, Australia. Hey.

Hope you visit us once again, all the best, Russell. Russell, like, first of all, I have a hunch that Russell is a charmer because how did you figure out how to get 10 Yakuza to want to hang out with you? I've seen the movies. These are not overly friendly people unless all the movies are just negative generalizations, but I wouldn't have imagined. Any sort of mafia is like, let's open this party up to tourists. Not rude, but not super social. No, they're kind of elite. They're just like, sure. We have a lot of money, we have a lot of power.

I wonder sometimes they're like, let's give a foreigner a story to take home. I would love to just meet some Yakuza. I'm sorry. I'd get on the back of a fucking Yakuza motorcycle. It seems as you started describing this, I was like, this is so sexy. Like Yakuza friends. That's the new TV show. Yakuza friends. Yakuza friends. You could be like roommates,

but then there's also like, there's shootouts in the rain with neon lights. Friends. Plus Yakuza. It's like a friends fucking, what is it called? Spin off. Spin off. Think it. Okay, ready? Hmm. Am I ready? Is the question? Stop. Thank you. Okay, ready? Am I ready as the question? Stop asking me questions. Okay, this one is a hometown reminder to lock your fucking doors. And then it says, hi everyone at ER Media. Love it!

George Clooney. Anthony Edwards. Everyone at ER Media. I've been meaning to write this story in for several years now, but I never got around to it. I relate to that. My family is from a suburb about 20 minutes outside of Boston. I'm the third of four daughters. Our parents had us in a five year span.

I'm not really sure how they did it. I can give you one hint. They really, really liked each other. Our mom is an emergency room nurse practitioner and our dad is now a retired detective, nice combo. Wow, you just, yeah, we're childhood. They rotate day and night shifts until our older sister A was about eight

and deemed responsible enough to watch the rest of us eight. I used to be seeing these memes lately that are like, if you're the oldest sister, like congratulations on your first children, your siblings, it's like, yes, yeah. All the different ways the oldest sister is fully traumatized and damaged

and used it as coping skills and is now like getting her life. When my sisters and I were all slightly older, high school and college, our parents would take well earned weekends to the Cape, leaving us to watch the house, and immediately took these opportunities to stay the weekend with her boyfriend. One of these weekends, my next oldest sister, H, and I went to a party, and our youngest sister, S, being the sweet baby angel that she has picked us up as our designated driver.

When we got home, she put H to bed in our parents' room at the top of the stairs, so she went and got her drunk sisters. Got it. At the top of the stairs and tucked me in on the couch in the living room, right next to the slider that leads into the backyard, S then put herself to sleep, put herself to sleep. Put herself down in this bare bedroom,

off the living room, wanting to stay near me in case I got sick. And then in parentheses, it says, she followed in our mom's footsteps and is an RN now. Oh, right. In the morning, I woke up to the slider wide open and proceeded to wake my two sisters up, asking if they'd accidentally left the door open, both denied it and asked if I was feeling okay since I got sick in the night. I asked them what they meant

because I hadn't gotten sick or even left the couch. This is when they both explained that in the middle of the night S saw a figure who she assumed was me crawling up the stairs. Don't crawl. Please don't crawl. Oh. Oh, no. Go on, go on. This is the Japanese horror movie piece. For real.

H confirmed this because when the figure got to the top of the stairs, our parents bedroom door was slowly opened. H saw who she assumed was me on all fours at the entrance of the bedroom. She asked if I was all right and said that I didn't respond and just slowly shut the door. Stop doing things slowly.

Can we just like agree not to do things slowly? A thousand percent. Like a regular crawl up the stairs and you could kind of kick it in the face. If it got up and you realized it wasn't a familiar body, but the slowness just freezes you into what is happening. Totally. Oh my God.

Okay. So in all caps with a period after each word what the fuck Panic right panic and sued as a dawn on my sisters that I had not been crawling around the house the night before Had H been the only one to witness this. I probably would have written it off as drunk hallucinations But the fact that S was sober as a judge and saw this person to confirm that someone had been in our house a judge and saw this person too, confirmed that someone had been in our house. When our parents came home, we told them what happened and my dad said something along the lines of, yeah, the Manson family used to do that. They called it creepy crawling.

Anyway, you need to remember to lock the doors. So that's like the smartest way to scare your children into doing something. Scare them before you leave for the cape. Please. Scare them before they're alone. Creepy crawly. Creepy crawly. I hate it.

Thinking about it, still creeps me out to this day, knowing someone opened the slider and walk crawled. By me sleeping on the couch, past S in this bare bedroom, made their way up to H just to watch us all sleep, gives me chills. We're so lucky that this person did not physically harm us. Stay sexy and lock your fucking doors, and that's, there's no name attached.

You know what it sounds like to me? Just maybe they make myself feel better when they go to bed tonight, is that like an adolescent boy who just like kind of was breaking into, you know, just like to see how people lived, let's say. Yeah, like love, dark texture, love, you know, just like, to see how people lived, let's say. Yeah, like, love, dark texture,

loved interior decoration, just wanted to get in there and inspect that carpet. Definitely, definitely. Just wanted to make sure they were still breathing at night. Girls, good, good, you good, you need water? Creepy crummy. There's no innocent crawling as an adult, sorry. Maybe that's judgmental.

No, that's true. These all sound so far, like, they could be adult. Sorry. Maybe that's just mental. No, that's true. He's all sound so far like they could be movies. Yeah, like everyone of these. Okay, here's my last one. Okay, great depression. Mountain doctor, meet cute and old timing names. Hi, Gals. I apologize for all the details, but I promise it's all worth it. It's a story. It's a story. You got it too. You got it. Please. My great grandfather, Lindsey Garrett Fitzpatrick,

Lindsey Old-timey Mansman. It's a good one. Was born in 1917 in the Hills of Virginia, where he was one of nine. His family struggled to find work, to feed the children and themselves, and made the difficult decision to move to Michigan where there were more factory jobs. However, there was one catch.

Only the five youngest children would be going. Leaving four of the oldest boys, my great-grandfather included, to survive on their own in Virginia. He was nine years old. No. This is the fucking twenties, I think, 1920s. That's what she just did. Did they say the age range of these four boys? He was one of nine, it just says.

They're the four oldest. Four oldest, but do we know if he's the youngest of those four? Oh, no, we don't. We please tell me he's not the oldest. I guess what I'm looking for. Oh my God. Lindsay and his brothers would steal chickens

and vegetables from people's farms as they tried to make their way up to Michigan. They're like, well, I guess we'll make our own way. The train cars, what they would they would they would legally jump onto, not passenger trains, cargo trains. Another fucking movie. Yes. Here we go.

That's like the box-car children, it's a wonderful popular children's book series where it's almost this exact same thing, orphans taking care of themselves and living out of a train car. Yeah, eventually they made their way to Kentucky. It sounds like they just stopped like Kentucky. That's as far as we're going. They're like, it's too hard to make to migrate across America by ourselves. When you're in nine. Yeah. Migrate grandmother, Virginia Catherine, was born in the hills of Kentucky, where her mother remarried to a wonderful

man who was a mountain doctor. For a lot of residents in the hills, they were unable to get to proper medical care or able to afford it, so they would call her stepfather where he accepted traditional payment and untraditional in the form of flower, rice, or handy work. I mean, this is a story. Yeah. It's a good thing there's details. I'm what I'm loving in this story is the details. It really makes it.

It really makes it. One day around 1930, my great-grandfather Lindsey sliced his heel nearly clean off in Kentucky. It says, because, of course, he had no shoes. And where did his brothers carry him to? Across the river to my great-grandmother's home? Q, the meat cute. Oh, we don't have many details of their first encounter, but we do know that they hit it off

and eventually got married and had four children, their youngest daughter being my grandmother. I was incredibly lucky to have 10 amazing years with my great-grandpa before he passed away in 2003. Well, unfortunately, my great-grandma passed before I was born, but everyone who knew her said she was an absolute treat. I have fond memories of my papa, as we called him, sitting on his front porch swing, chain-smoking his marboros, and then it says never inhaling, though, as he would tell you.

Anyways, thank you for bringing me company during some of the best and worst days. As S.D. GM, Marisa, she, her. Marisa, I loved that story and I really want to know, like, detail beat by beat, of like, how did they get even out of this city limits, much less all the way to Kentucky? Yeah, and then what happened in Kentucky, that they just raised themselves like? Yeah, how did they stop? Or did they did some adult go, hey, hold on you guys, how about you stay here instead?

And like, here's some far more, just like live here, please, damn it, stop being federal children. Please God, damn it. But also, and I'm sorry, because this is even more compelling to me, show me the angle like that you're slicing your heel, because you would hit and bump,

like you would have to do it so specifically. Yeah, it's like when you cut the tip of your thumb off, and it's like, yeah, yeah. Okay, read me a last story. Your last movie pitch. This is my last movie pitch. I'm not gonna read you the subject line. High folks both on and behind the mics.

Nice, inclusive loving. I'm not going to read just the subject line. Hi folks both on and behind the mics. Nice. Inclusive. Loving. In many so 3502 you spoke about those horrifying realizations you have when you realize everyone did completely naps things back in the day and thought it was totally okay and that triggered a buried memory from when I was a kid in the 90s. I was about six or seven so 93 or 94 and growing up in a town just outside Cambridge in the UK. It was around October and my mum, Jenny, and I were walking home from primary school.

On the hill round the corner from home, I was extremely excited to find a lost wallet. My mum suggested that I should hand it into the police station, so we detoured into the town centre and I handed the wallet over. We left our names in address. I suppose before there was always a risk that we stole something from the wallet before handing it in. And then went our merry way, happy to have done a good deed, cut to a few days later and a knock at the door just before dinner. I answered and looked up to see a complete stranger standing there in the dark with a smile on her face. It turns out the police actually told the woman whose wallet it was that it was a little girl who found it and gave her our names and address.

Absolutely, not in hindsight, but at the time. But at the time I was beyond excited because the lady brought me a and in all caps, meter long bar of Cadbury's dairy milk chocolate to say thank you. Damn. That is a meter, Alejandra, is a meter three feet. Yeah, it's over three feet, just over three feet. Over three feet. You got a third graders height of chocolate.

Oh my God. It legitimately one of the most exciting things to ever happen to me as a child. In addition to jumping at chances for longer walks outdoors, my mom, who I loved dearly mine, was also not very keen on sweets in the house. Oh, so it was like, yes. It was a total jackpot. I had to make that thing last. When I remembered about this, I asked my mom to check I wasn't imagining it. And she said, oh yeah, in retrospect, that wasn't great. Was it? Here's hoping the police aren't giving out children's names and addresses to strangers anymore. Thank you for all you do. Your commitment to growth

both professionally and personally has been wonderful to listen to all these years. That's really nice. And I think we all needed the laughs along the way too. I'm getting over a concussion right now and you're keeping me company while I try to avoid screens. And then it just says, brains, who'd have them? SSDGM Lucy. She heard. Lucy?

Cute. I thought it was going to be like, she gave me $10. Even though that's like probably even cost $10, that's like way better, for sure. So much better. It's like a cartoon version of chocolate. Like here you get all the chocolate in the world to you, essentially. Yeah.

Such a good, so nice. Amazing. Great stories, everyone. You can see this was videoed for the fan cult. If you want to see the things that are happening. If you want to see the strangely flat one side of my hair, can I show you the pink that matches my sweater? Ooh, yes.

George is got some like a magenta-y stripe and then, or even more, that like a layer underneath, but hidden, tastefully, Right. Matches are sweater. Get on there. See, I'm a cool grown-up. Check out George's whole, cool grown-up look. And right to us, at my favorite murder at Gmail, and thank you for listening. And stay sexy.

And don't get murdered. Come back. Elvis, do you want a cookie? Aaaaah! 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!