My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 377

Episode Date: April 1, 2024

This week’s hometowns include bank robberies in Portugal and a search party for a missing child. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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hit podcast, Tenfold More Wicked, premieres today, April 1st, right here on Exactly Right. If you don't know Kate, she's a true crime journalist and author who also hosts Buried Bones with Paul Holes. This season of Tenfold More Wicked, titled Fire and Brimstone, is about the death of a Puritan separatist in colonial New England 20 years before the Salem witch trials. Kate joins a listener whose distant relative was killed in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. And together, they investigate the life of Rebecca Briggs

and uncover the supernatural lore surrounding her death. Stay tuned at the end of this episode and listen to the trailer for the newest season of Tenfold More Wicked. And don't forget to of this episode and listen to the trailer for the newest season of Tenfold More Wicked. And don't forget to follow, rate, and review the show wherever you get your podcasts. Goodbye. In the room Hello.

And welcome. To my favorite murder. The Minisodes. Wee. You've sent these stories into us, so we've chosen to read them. Yeah, we wanna share your stories with the world. No secrets, no gatekeeping.

Want me to go first? Sure. Okay. This one is quite something. I'm not going to read you the subject line. So it starts, hello girlies and pets. I've been listening to years of MFM in the last few months since I found you, and I'm finally mostly caught up. I've been hesitant, but this story is too good not to share, so here it is. A few years ago, while I was going through architecture school in the US, I visited home and then in parentheses,

it says small town on the coast of Italy. Oh, what a drag. Wow. Architecture school was so stressful that I was losing the will to live, lost a lot of weight, even my hair gasp. So my sweet mom decided to take me to our family's dermatologist who had known me since I was a child. During that visit, the doctor and my mom caught each other

up on their lives like old friends do, and he told us he was going through a divorce. I remember feeling sad for his family. We knew his wife, and they had three small children as well. He then went on with the visit and proceeded to pull on my hair to do a test to see if I was just being dramatic, and then decided that I was just very stressed and needed to chill out for my hair to stop falling out. And then it just says, eye roll. Fast forward to a few months later, I'm back in the US at school. My mom calls me one day and shakily tells me to look up our dermatologist online. Remember that during the visit, he told us about his divorce. Well, this piece of shit had lured his wife into their family's villa under false pretenses of having to discuss the sale of some art in their collection.

And then a parenthesis says, yes, wealthy people's problems. And then it says, but what he actually was there to do was beat her to death. They found her body mostly naked and the police implied that he had sexually assaulted her as well. I also found out later that not long before murdering her, he had physically attacked his then ex-wife in public while she was at a very popular beach club with her new partner and their kids. I heard this from family and friends who were present in the scene, although this incident

was not talked about on the news. They caught him at his parents' house in Tuscany while he was trying to run. He had his passport and a bunch of money. He never confessed to the murder but was convicted and is now in jail for the rest of his life. The thing that bothers me most about this story, other than the fact that he touched me with the same hands that he had killed a woman with, than the fact that he touched me with the same hands that he had killed a woman with is that this doctor had publicly campaigned for many years against jealousy killings of women by their male partners and even organized a series of fundraising events to raise awareness on the issue. What? I hope this makes it through to you. I love you guys. You're the best at what you do.

And you've opened my eyes about the dangers around us, especially women. Bye, CS, she, her. Wow. Talk about a wolf in sheep's clothing, right? So a doctor, like just a community pillar. Yeah. Just horrifying.

Yep. It could be anyone. It could be anyone with uncontrollable rage issues that they don't think that they have to ever work on or get under control. Right. Narcissism. Okay. This one's called Murderer in the Family. Hello, ladies and assorted pets. I'm a newer listener to the podcast. Shout out to my therapist for recommending it.

Inside job, an inside job. And started listening from the beginning. I'm currently on episode 114. I was going to write to you about my hometown murder, 13 year old Eric Smith, who murdered four year old Derek Robbie. But I'm pretty sure you already covered it in one of your earlier episodes. I don't think we ever covered that one. Did you know it?

I might have. Did you know it? Maybe I did. Because I think wasn't he like one of the youngest murderers ever to be sentenced or something? That was the kid with the red hair, right? Yeah. Then I did cover it. So instead, I figured I'd tell you about my grandfather's brother who murdered two people back in the 60s. And then it says, I'm pretty sure that's when it happened.

I learned all of this from my dad because my grandpa doesn't talk much about his family. I wonder why. But apparently my great uncle went through a very bad drug addiction and ended up killing two separate people and stealing their cars to sell for drug money. The saddest part about the whole story is that one of the men my uncle killed

was on his way to the hospital to meet his sixth child who was born that morning. I was able to find more information on his crimes in a memoir of one of his arresting officer's life and it's as crazy to think that my family member's crime stuck with this officer enough for him to put it in the book. My uncle was eventually caught and sentenced to prison.

He did his time and then lived out the rest of his life as a law abiding citizen. I met him once before he died. And I remember being shocked that he was the murderer in the family. I definitely would have put my money on a few other family members. Thank you so much for your podcast.

It makes me feel more normal for being obsessed with true crime. SSDGM Kirsten. Yeah, that feels extra tragic that they could have just stolen the cars and gotten the same thing. Right. Why did you have to kill people? Just take the thing that you need to... Totally.

...translate into drug money or whatever. Like, just senseless killing on the way is horrifying. And then someone you know and are related to that just feels so unsettling. Yeah. Hey, Karen, when was the last time you were stuck having an uncomfortable conversation? Not this one, just a different one. Oh, a different one than this? I honestly can't remember the last time

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Zoc.doc.com slash murder. Goodbye. All right, well, the subject line of this email is shit my murderino grandma says, and then in parentheses it says quick and easy. Which really swayed me. And then it just starts, I don't have a cute greeting, so I'll just use my go-to from when I encounter someone

I haven't seen in years in the grocery store and say, hey, how's it going? And keep moving. My family loves to keep secrets, so unfortunately this email contains none. Please give me your tips for cracking withholding family members, exclamation point. Get them drunk.

Exactly. Alcohol. And then it says I grew up as a third generation Sacramento. And then in parentheses, it just has a question mark and had literally never even heard about the East area rapist until the first episode of your podcast. Wow. But it explains a lot. My grandma, Jean, who we call Grammy was in her 40s with a teenage daughter at home when the East Area rapist was committing his awful crimes.

To this day, Grammy is incredibly vigilant about personal safety, locks her car doors immediately after getting in, checks the stopper and the sliding door every night, sets her house alarm every single time she leaves or goes to bed. That's pretty standard. If you're not doing that, like get on Grammy's level right now. You should be doing all those things. When my papa passed away, she strongly suggested that their longtime neighbor would need to house it during the funeral because someone may see in the paper when the funeral service

was and knowing that no one would be home would use that opportunity to rob the house. She's on it. That's right. That's a thing. She's on it. Growing up 10 minutes from Grammy, her cautious habits and urgings no doubt played into my murderino origin story. But she is also borderline batshit in plenty of other ways. Once I was spending the night on her couch and we were gathering bedding for me to use, needing a blanket, I pointed to a plush blue one in the closet, still in its packaging and suggested, what about this one? She tells me no, because she hasn't decided if she wants to be buried with that one. Okay. Yes, that's right.

Grammy bought a blanket from Costco with the intention of taking it to the grave. What? Wow. Let her if she wants to. Sure. This had to have been five years ago now. And contrary to what she's always telling me, she's still with us at 92 years old. I'll have to check back in to see if she's made a decision on that blanket or if it's up for grabs now. Stay sexy and make sure your grandma doesn't want to be buried with that blanket before

you borrow it. Jay, she, her. Oh my God. They say the court is all an adrenaline from constant fear of true crime will take you early, but clearly it's keeping her alive. Not the case for Grammy, not at all. Grammy. Well, and also I think that's a really interesting point because, you know, there's people who,

like us, who elect to involve ourselves in true crime. But then Grammy was forced into it because there was an active, like, uncaught serial rapist in her neighborhood. And she had to get real super quick. And I think that's like over the years, it's almost like more and more the murderinos show up because of the experiences they've had and the things that they have gone through

and seen for themselves where it's like, there's no benefit to leaving your sliding glass door unlocked at night. And we've been hearing for years, we never thought it would happen in our neighborhood. No one locked the doors. It's like, let's stop with that. You know, we've learned from that. Right. Let us lecture you if only just for the one person that locks the door when they should. Yeah. Okay. It's called a search party for me you shouldn't have. Hi, MFMers. And which looks like motherfuckers, like a shortened motherfuckers, which is kind of cool.

I like that. Yeah. I don't have a murder story, but I do have an, I was a dumb kid story? Question mark. So when I was around five years old, I went missing. Kind of. My parents and siblings couldn't find me. They yelled in the house and I didn't respond. I looked all over the house and yard and still no Lindsay. So they started looking around the neighborhood. They were going door to door and had all the neighbors out looking as well.

Eventually the police were called and they were added to the search. No one could find me anywhere and my parents were panicking. Oh, that feeling. Oh, that's every parent's nightmare. Nightmare. After a couple of hours of looking, my mom went to my bedroom and laid on the floor and cried.

She opened her eyes and there I was, under the bunk bed that I shared with my younger sister, looking at her with my big eyes. When my parents and the police asked why I was under there, I told them I was playing a game. Oh. And when they asked why I was under there, I told them I was playing a game. Oh. And when they asked why I didn't respond to the yelling, I only told them I didn't know.

I don't remember the incident much, but I will always vividly remember the view of my mom sobbing on the bedroom floor while thinking she lost a child. Oh. I wasn't in trouble after, but I was forced to sit with my mom for a while on her rocking chair instead of being able to go play.

Stay sexy and don't scare the shit out of your parents for no reason. Lindsay. And actually, I remember one time I stayed out all night when I was 13 or 14 on drugs. And they knew I was on drugs. And so they called my parents, they called the police. The police were looking for me. And my brother later told me that he heard my dad sobbing in the bathroom, which is like,

making your parents sob is the worst feeling. And I definitely changed my act after that. That kind of pierced through the haze of like, I'm trying to be cool. Right, rebellion and shit. It was like, oh, that's not fun for anyone. Yes, but on behalf of little Georgia, I would just like to say then don't make me walk home from kindergarten by myself.

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all lowercase. Go to Shopify.com slash murder and take your retail business to the next level. That's Shopify.com slash murder. And again, don't forget the code is all in lowercase. Shopify.com slash murder. Goodbye. Embrace something new at Starbucks. Introducing the Ice Lavender Cream Oat Matcha Tea Latte. A creamy drink where smooth matcha meets subtle floral notes from our airy lavender cream cold foam. Only this spring. Only at Starbucks. Ice Lavender Cream Oat Matcha Tea Latte includes dairy.

This is another fun family one. I want me to read you the subject line. It just says, Dear all, I hope this story is in line with the mini-sodes theme. I'm at the point where you're accepting rabies related stories. I love those. I love when they tell us what we're now accepting in a way that's like, you won't believe this. But it also sounds like something I would say if I was sick of it, where it's like, look, I'm at the point where we're accepting rabies related stories.

Like, this is insanity. That's how it reads to me in my head. But they're just actually saying, yeah, I'm just at the rabies section. Back half that is so I can only imagine what kind of stories you're getting nowadays. Anyway, I love my family and we are all happy and successful in our own ways, but we've never done anything remarkable enough to be newsworthy. We don't have any champion athletes or award-winning scientists or anything like that, which is why I was so excited to find out after 26 years of living with my family that we do have

a record setter in the family. That's right. My mom's cousin set the national record for bank robberies with a whopping 27 banks robbed throughout Portugal. Holy shit. That's a, wow. It's a lot. Yeah. I was obviously super excited about this and mad that I wasn't the only one who had no idea that this cousin even existed. So I dug a bit deeper. It turns out his name is Manuel Samoes, but he was known by the media as the Portuguese loaner. He robbed between 27 and 29 banks. Some articles differ, so I'm not sure which one's true. Between 1998 and 2000,

accumulating about 500,000 euros. However, all articles also mentioned that he was terrified while doing these robberies, often shaking while pointing a gun at people. No. And even cried once in front of an employee. Oh my God, how confusing. I don't know how to feel right now. I know. Apparently he had a successful business in France, but according to my mom, got involved with a shady Italian, if only, and became seriously in debt.

He was only arrested because he tried to rob the same bank a second time and was recognized. So he was like just under pressure. Yeah. He was actually nervous because he didn't want to be doing this thing, but he had to. But he had to 27 times. That's a lot of debt. So much debt. Okay, but wait, he managed to break another record after that as the first person to escape

from the prison he was sent to. Oh, okay. Only to be caught again five months later. I never knew this cousin, but my mom and uncle say he was a really nice guy and just a normal dude. Although my uncle once illegally crossed two borders, and then it says Spain and France in parentheses,

because he didn't have his passport when they were about to leave. And this cousin said, no worries, just hide under these blankets in the back of the car. It's like a drive-in theater. It's not that you can't. Yeah. Yeah.

I was so blown away by this information that I had to tell everyone I knew right away. Interestingly, and I swear this is true, a few days later, I was telling this story to a friend. And after I finished, she said, I'm pretty sure I have an aunt who got robbed by a man around that time while she was working in a bank here in Lisbon. We immediately checked with her mom and the story tracks.

Shut up! My cousin robbed her aunt and now we're close friends. Reverse karma, I guess? Sorry for the long story. I had to share this with you. I love the podcast and I can't wait to be up to date on the episodes. SSDGM and cheers from Portugal Miguel Miguel Thank you Miguel. That was a great email That was everything we want and with kismet at the end you kismet

It would have been great if it was a meet cute just saying I mean it had all the elements It had everything we needed. Okay. my last one's called Hidden Treasure. You love it. Hi, MFM crew. I'll try to keep this short and sweet in hopes it gets picked. I've written in a few times with a longer story, so hopefully you too can squeeze in

this feel good treasure story. Good selling. When I was in my early 20s, my then boyfriend and I were headed north from Seattle, Washington, where we lived, to Bellingham, Washington, to spend a long weekend with friends. He was driving my little tin can of a used car while I played DJ in the passenger seat. We were almost to our destination when suddenly we heard that stomach-dropping whoop of a police car behind us.

And then in parentheses, it says, going 85 in a 60 is frowned upon, I guess. We pulled off to the side of the road and await what's next. We got the usual, do you know why I stopped you young man talk? And then he proceeded to ask for license, registration and insurance. My boyfriend hands over his ID and me being the unorganized carefree girl that I was at the time thinks shit. I'm rifling through my glove box, center console, under seats, nothing. It says irresponsible, I know. With a pile of old mail, loose papers, and god knows what else,

plopped in my lap, I have to lean forward and tell the officer I don't have the documentation he's requesting. He hands us a hefty ticket, and as we pull away, I burst into tears. I had no idea on earth how this broke ass 22 year old living in an overpriced Seattle apartment was going to pay the man. I collect myself and begin going through the pile of randomness on my lap. I come across a plain unsealed white envelope. I open her up and right there before my eyes

is nine perfectly crisp $100 bills. What? It says WTF. Is this yours? I asked my boyfriend. Neither one of us had any clue how or why this amount of money was hidden away amongst the rest of the papers. I had purchased the car many months prior and all I could think was that possibly the

previous owner left it behind accidentally and I found it when I needed it the most? Or I am a sleepwalking cash stashing freak? We'll never know. Let's just say that ticket got paid with plenty to spare. Stay sexy and always know where your car registration is or don't because you just might find some hidden treasure. Melanie. And then it says, PS, you ladies are my fave. Thank you for all you do and for keeping me sane and entertained through this crazy thing we call life.

Heart emoji. Well, you're welcome, Melanie. It's our pleasure. But never in a million years would I have used that $900 cash to pay that ticket. No. No way. Well, you get out of it somehow, right?

But if you need the money, if you're going to get the ticket, you're going to get the ticket. True. I'm just saying very viscerally felt Melanie's description of the inside of her car. And I'm like, I've kind of been that girl for a very long time. And you basically, you get these huge life lessons of like, see, now you have this ticket, now stop being irresponsible, now get your shit together.

And then you find an envelope of cash and you're like not today motherfucker I'll learn that lesson another time. Someone's telling you otherwise. That's it I sounds like we need to go to TGI Friday All right Well, thanks for writing in to those people who wrote in, and thanks for listening to you who listened. Yes, we appreciate you. And if you have a story about rabies or anything else, please write to myfavoritemurdergmail.com

and stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie? Ah! On the next season of Tenfold More Wicked, a longtime listener reaches out with a tragic family story that's been passed down through the centuries. My first name is Carrie. My last name is Nolte, N-O-L-T-E, and I am a descendant of Rebecca Briggs, murder victim. About an English Puritan separatist

fleeing religious persecution who arrives in colonial New England to face an even greater danger. You do get these kind of instances where families kind of turn on themselves and any member can kill anyone else, where it does spill over into violence. Rebecca Briggs Cornell survives the harsh landscape

of the early colonies, the sudden loss of her husband, and a horrifying massacre, only to be found burned to death in her own home. But was it an accident, or was it murder? I think that she was stabbed. I think he set her on fire to cover up the wound. A harrowing historical true crime on fire to cover up the wound. A harrowing historical true crime that takes a turn toward the supernatural.

He opens his eyes and he sees his sister kind of bathed in an ethereal light and she says, look how I am burned with fire. I'm Kate Winkler Dawson and this is season 11 of Tenfold More Wicked. Join us as we uncover the details of a murder investigation from a time when belief in the spirit world was commonplace. They were burning witches 90 miles away, and the entire population believed in the supernatural. And when folklore was trusted as fact, there is something called cruentation. And what that is, is the belief that the body will tell when the

murderer is near. In a time when a ghostly vision could be used as testimony to break a murder case wide open, pinpointing the alleged killer for who he truly is, a member of the family. Season 11 of 10 Fold More Wicked premieres April 1st on Exactly Right. New episodes out every Monday. Listen and follow 10 Fold More Wicked on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,

or wherever you get your podcasts. This has been an exactly right production. Our senior producer is Alejandra Keck. Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo. This episode was mixed by Liana Scolacci. Email your hometowns to MyFavoriteMurder at gmail.com And follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at MyFavoriteMurder and on Twitter at MyFaveMurder. Goodbye!