MFM Minisode 185
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark- 1,898 views
- 27 Jul 2020
This week’s hometowns include a body in a motel and a family folklore correction corner.
Hello, hello and welcome to my favorite murder, the Minnesota episode. How you doing in Minnesota? How are you, girl? Looks great on you, whatever it is. Oh, my God.
You I'm so glad you changed into that culture at leisurewear. Wow.
Our great terrycloth sweatsuit that I didn't know they made that colored jade. Now, why did they just rape but on the butt as anything.
Yeah, we know it's the but it's not like this is our first experience with. But just because you're wearing those SWIP. I do like that style of calligraphy though.
What do we kind of like a old gothic font. But yeah. But with three t's. That's my new athleisure wear make it line.
But this is a that we read your stories. Karen, you want to go first. I do.
I want to go first of all the time and every situation. Good. Because I don't I always want to guys like it.
Here, let me step forward and talk in a loud voice. This is entitled Hometown Story. Greetings. I remember hearing this story from my hometown between Buffalo and Rochester, New York. From the time I was in elementary school. My parents' best friend was a sheriff who apparently didn't filter his stories around children. I was finally inspired to look it up after listening to dozens of hometowns in your podcast that has been getting me through this pandemic. Anyway, here's the story.
In nineteen eighty seven, the police were called to a domestic where a man named Joe Schlamme was threatening to kill his girlfriend and her two kids. He had a pillow over the face of a newborn and the knife to the baby's chest and wasn't following orders from the responding officer to drop both items. The officer said after the fact he was right about to shoot him because the baby was dying. When Joe finally did drop both and was arrested when they began questioning him, he admitted that he'd murdered a woman.
They initially didn't believe him. They weren't missing any there weren't any missing persons cases open at the time. But when they searched the name of the woman, Pam Smith, they found that she'd missed a court date a few years before and began to believe him. He explained that he'd hit her in the head with a rock and strangled her with a cord and then buried her under the floorboards of the friendly motel. When they went to the motel, he showed them the room.
He stepped on the floorboards to prove they made a squeaking sound and sure enough, she was under the motel floorboards.
But this sounds like a book. I know, crazy. He was sentenced to 17 years to life at Auburn State Prison and has since died in prison. I believe her family never reported her missing because they thought she'd gone to Texas. I'm sure you're wondering, how did no one notice the smell? Well, the motel owner explained that he'd assumed the resident boa constrictor, the residence boa constrictor, had gotten loose and somehow produce the exact smell of a body decaying, totally normal.
I'd always heard this story had happened on prom night, but since he was twenty five and he killed her when she was 19, then I think that was an embellishment. It's crazy to think that if the officer had shot Joe, they may never have found him.
Anyway, thanks for all you do. It's nice to hear other voices besides your husband's during quarantine every now and again. Even if you love him very much, stay sexy and stay away from those empty side of the road motels because there is a body under the floorboards, Rebecca, that has everything. That has everything. That's crazy.
I think we can we can we get behind stopping the the the what's the process of not believing someone when they said that they killed someone and being like, well, we don't have anyone messing around in this fucking neck of the woods?
Well, there's no there's no hungry boa constrictors anywhere near here.
So what's there is I'm going to review the room. That rationale is like you're definitely that's that's like I don't want to do any more paperwork. Boa constrictor excuse. Yeah.
So this one's just called Small Town. Hello, ladies.
I've been meaning to get this story down for a while and you've given me the perfect reason to get it done. I work in a nursery and spend many hours of my day alone, so I usually bring you with me and thank you, by the way, you're fucking hilarious. So here's my story. When I was five, I was in day care with my siblings at my quote Aunt Judy's house. She was no real relation, just a close friend.
Everyone's an aunt. Mm hmm. Anyway, she watched quite a few kids, and one of them was her husband's nephew. He always brought a yellow duffle bag full of toy guns. One day we were playing by the pool while Judy was in the house on one of her incredibly long phone calls. The nephew told me to kiss him and I refused.
He kept bugging me and I eventually gave him the five year old version of Go Fuck Yourself Powell, at which point he got upset and pulled his dad's pearl handled 22 caliber pistol out of the yellow duffle bag and put it up to my forehead.
These kids are five, by the way. My older sister saw this. I'll go down and ran into the house screaming for help, and my aunt proceeded to chew her ass out for interrupting her. This sounds like some that could have happened in either childhood, right? It absolutely did happen in mine. Meanwhile, standard fare, moms on phone behavior, moms on phone your and you might not survive this even while outside I am still refusing to kiss the little creep and my sister comes back out just in time to watch him pull the trigger.
The gun was loaded and it and it did fire. The only reason I'm alive is because the bullet jammed in the chamber. Needless to say, the sound of the gun got that bitch off her phone.
And Judy, my mother somehow managed not to beat her up. And the kid moved to California that week with his family. Oh, Jesus. Yeah, they're out of there. I believe I heard a rumor a couple of years later that he ended up killing his younger brother. No, I won't include the details. Fortunately for me, I block the entire incident out and have no recollection of it at all. However, my poor sister was never the same afterwards.
Of course, stay sexy and keep your guns locked the fuck up, Crystal.
I mean, that is a cautionary tale after cautionary fucking tale. I really wanted that to be that.
That was just like a little kid messing around and he didn't know the difference. And the idea that he went on to hurt another kid is so horrible.
Well, he might not have. And it's clear that if he if that's what was going on with him, there was something going on at home. You know what I mean? In my mind, in my estimation, if you are a little kid carrying a bag of guns around with you and and putting it to someone's head and pulling the trigger is like a retaliation for not kissing you on the lips is like, oh, yeah, he's he's mimicking that.
He's mimicking something that's been taught. Yeah. No, it's it's horrible. That's what this podcast is. Heavy. Horrible. Let's get heavier and horrible. And the subject line of this email is since you mentioned John List. Hello all. I was listening to your most recent episode, Small Bigfoot and my ears perked up when you mentioned John List for two particular reasons. Reason number one, since I have no self-control, listen to podcasts and completely random order.
I was so pleased and excited to hear that you actually did cover John List. Turns out I've just been too lazy to scroll all the way down to anything under episode fifty. Reason number two, a lovely receptionist at my job has a crazy connection to that hometown murderer.
Listen to the Conan O'Brien episode two. There's some John list tidbits in that that we did.
I work in an orthodontic office and Thursdays we don't have patients. We just clean and catch up on all administrative things. So typically I put my headphones in and listen to my true crime podcast all day. One day I look over at our receptionist, we'll call her Mary and asked if she had any interesting, true crime stories. And man, did she ever. She grew up in New Jersey, right across the river from the John List home, I believe.
She told me that she was eight years old when the talk of the neighborhood was the slaughter of the list family. She proceeded to give great detail about the murder and how he got away with his senseless crime. She even told me that at the time it scared her so much she would even ask her dad from time to time to please not kill her family.
And so was the love of that. I mean, it's like it's terrible, but it sounds like something I would have done entirely or like if this would sway you at all. I just want you to know I don't want you to do this. Right. Right. I could hear myself as a kept saying that to my sweet dad. Please don't murder us. Sure. I used to ask my parents, like once a week, are they getting divorced?
And that weird wildfire of early eighties divorces, we're just like all of a sudden. Seventy five percent of your friend's parents were getting divorced. And I just would like every night at dinner just be like, seriously, are you guys going to I don't want to be surprised by this.
That's the worst thing is when they sit you down is right. I've definitely said to Vince, please don't kill me. Just break up with me. I swear it's fine. It's like you are over it. Break up with me, bitch. Don't kill me. And I'm sure he's horrified by is just like, OK, he's covering all my bases.
It's a deal.
Georgia, he shakes your hand very formally. Sounds good. A promise is a promise of deep doo deep. Then she put in parentheses poor thing which is true. Yes. After of course he didn't and she grew up to be very kind and spunky. So luckily it didn't traumatize her. Here's the wild part. Mariah went on with life.
Mariah went on with her life. She moved to Virginia and started a family with her husband. One day, nearly 18 years later, she sat down to watch the news. Lo and behold, John List, who slaughtered his whole family just down the street from Maria eighteen years ago, had been apprehended just two miles down the street from her new home in Virginia.
What are the odds? Oh, Murray, of course, was shocked. She had never thought that he. He'd be caught after such a long time, let alone right down the street from her new home. A few states over, I could not believe my ears at this wild story and had to research it myself. And everything was exactly how she described it to me. The simple fact that he was caught based off a composite sculpture aged 18 years blows my mind.
But the fact that Murray experienced both a hometown murderer and a hometown apprehension of the same annihilator in completely different places surprises me even more. Anyway, thank you all for everything you do. Stay sexy and try not to move the same town as your hometown murderer, Hannah.
What are the fucking chances? That's crazy. Crazy. Just nut. Yeah. Wow, I love that. That's what you got to ask every single person in your life if they have a hometown most. That's a gold star hometown of say for sure. That's really upper echelon. I think that's up there with chainsaw sawing down telephone poles.
I mean, nothing could be better than that, but it's close. Look, I have another I just called Hometown Story. Dear Georgia, Karen and Stephen, in the spirit of badass grandmother stories, I want to do a corrections corner for a hundred and two year old bit of family folklore. It's a tragic story about my grandmother, Mary McGarvie, the oldest of twelve children born in 1916 in Stark County, Illinois. She raised five kids on a dairy farm.
A detail I remember about her was very rough hands that would snag on the polyester dresses she wore in the 70s. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And also worked. Yes. And also her wedding ring was worn down to a mere thread from years of manual labor. She wasn't retired long when early onset Alzheimer's set in. And we lost about we lost her about ten years before she actually died. There's always been an air of sadness about her and much speculation as to the cause.
Some said it was that she'd been engaged to a man who died before she married my grandpa. My mom thought it was sleep deprivation from milking cows at four a.m. for fifty years. My dad, though, told a story that I thought was very likely at the heart of it.
When she was little, she was babysitting her one year old brother, Joseph. He got into some iron tablets and died. The way the story was told implied that she had been responsible and that he had died on her watch. And it made sense that the guilt of that could be just the thing that might haunt her for the rest of her life. Recently, I was putting together a scrapbook about our family tree. And in visiting a graveyard where my McGarvie family is buried, I came upon the gravestone of little Joseph.
His birth and death dates for nineteen seventy three nineteen eighteen. I was shocked. My grandmother was born in 1916, which meant she was only two years old when he died. Later it came. I came across the account of his death in the newspaper. It said that Mary had been playing doctor with the iron tablets that belonged to her grandmother, who was a guest in the home. The fact that this account was written in the small town newspaper forever connecting my grandmother to this tragedy is so wrong for my dad to believe that she was, quote, babysitting suggests that in nineteen eighteen somebody was looking for somewhere to place the blame.
The version in the newspaper stuck and my poor grandmother had to carry that. Oh, the stories of women are missing from history. Thanks for creating a platform that helps to remedy that. Molly, that's so sad. So they didn't want to blame the grandmother for having iron tablets out. And so they blamed a two year old who probably was supposed to be babysitting or fucking one year old.
Yeah, no, I think rule of thumb is if you need a babysitter, the babysitter did the babysitter should have already been through at least first grade just for the basics, you know, standing up and sitting down. Right. Go into the bathroom where you're supposed to. It should be a person that's twice as tall as the baby. Right. And then don't print that it was their fault for the baby dying in a fucking local news, you fucking assholes.
It's a baby. It's a baby is a baby. Two babies. Why do I have to say two year olds are baby.
Why are you making me call to book an expert now?
Well, everyone knows you're the expert on children. OK, so here's the thing. When they're laying down, that's like a super baby. And then it's then then that is, I'd say zero super baby. Then zero to two is baby. OK, OK. And then two to four. That's like a big baby. Big baby. And then once you get those little white shoes with the laces then then we can start talking about practicing baby. OK, but not until like five or six.
The thought of like my sister letting my four and a half year old nephew, a baby's quote, babysit my one year old nephew, baby, you imagine there would be Cheerios everywhere?
Just may have Cheerios. I mean, that that is the weird thing, too, is also why back then when there was cocaine in in Coca-Cola, are they it's like maybe that means there shouldn't be iron pills available to people that freely if a baby could get into them.
And then I think that the the two words that are the thank God part of this, our child. Roof said one word or two words, I'd say it's one of the guests then or a hyphen it, then I'm going to put an amen at the end of it. So it's two words childproof. A Mamen baby, literally, baby and super baby.
You did it, super baby. Look how uncomfortable like those two babies on a couch staring at each other like, sorry, who's the babysitter? Is it you? Are you in charge or do I have to ask you for my daughter I was supposed to get yours or do you want juice to. I have this craving for juice. Pirate's booty. Oh no, that's right. You can't you have no teeth in your mouth. You can't have it.
So you're a super baby. OK, ready for the last one? Yeah, this is a perv story, lighthearted. Hi, I'm one of the 14. Hi. I'm one of the 14 year olds you sometimes shout out for dinner.
Super duper baby baby.
Yeah, that's the we call 14 year olds giant babies hihi. OK, this is a really good story.
So I live in a very small town in North Dakota. Yes. North Dakota, where the most notable thing about my town is we have more funeral homes than grocery stores. You would not believe how many middle aged people come here to die.
So we stop calling a 30 year old middle aged people. I am an advanced age fun. Oh, wait. In parentheses, it says not fun.
Middle aged people like you, conservative. OK, any who you're not here for the life story of a young murderer.
You know, you came for a pervert story. I'm a cashier at one of the two grocery stores in my wonderful town. Fourteen year old grocery store cashier. Yes, girl. Get out there in the workforce. We used to have a man who came in about three times a week ready to give weird compliments to all of our underaged workers. Now, I work in customer service where stuff like this is commonplace. The reason these compliments were notable is that every single one was mouth oriented.
Yeah, mouth oriented. Ah, maybe the two creepiest words I've ever heard does. We're not we're not going in a good direction though. Yep. You read that correctly. This man, we'll call him Dave would come in and compliment our teeth, lips and fucking tongue.
I can't make this shit up. Of course this guy was reported to our boss. But here's the thing about small town North Dakota. No one thinks anything is weird unless something physical happens. And unluckily for me, the fourteen year old being weirded out by compliments didn't make the cut, which is incorrect. After months of reporting this guy, he was finally kicked out of the store, not because of all the complaints, but because this happened.
I was a normal it was a normal workday. I was restocking graham crackers in one of the aisles when old Dave camp comes up behind me breathing like he was about to Jesus pants. Fourteen years old or thin.
But listen, this is her story and she gets to tell it. She is. She does. And she's doing it and she's doing an amazing job.
Now I forgot to mention but I'm five one and ninety seven pounds so this guy could easily overpower me. So I'm shitting myself and this guy goes Your teeth are so white. What products do you use? I gave a short laugh and my customer service voice and said something about Crest toothpaste. He's shooting back a nice wow and he all caps sticks his fucking hand in my mouth. This grubby old man stuck his hand in my mouth and felt my teeth.
What the fuck the fuck?
I cannot describe the wave of terror and shock that went through my body. Keep in mind, this was during the first stages of Korona. Oh, when we when we were all scared. But it wasn't in America yet. So naturally, my sixth grade self-defense class kicked in and I shoved my knuckle into that motherfucker's eye and ran. Yeah. Anyway, this is why I don't fuck with straight dudes.
Aided Anum shit do know. Sorry if it's she or they that do we know she her in parentheses underneath. Thank you. Yeah. Do not stick your hand in someone's mouth hole like.
Oh is that not just a known fucking rule of life. Well here's all I have to say. Yeah. Going through that, you know Aiden has upped her mouthwash game probably three times a day and because of that she'll have perfect teeth and gums for the rest of her life. The funny thing to me is asking a fourteen year old how their teeth are so white. And it's like because they're fourteen and they haven't gotten into a coffee addiction and a wine addiction yet.
Yes, it's because they're a child. They haven't chipped both their front teeth on beer bottles at Lake Tahoe like old Karen did. No, they're just living their clean-Cut lives and their clean teeth lifestyle.
What's South Dakota, right? Oh, Aiden, that story is disturbing, but I love that you told us that means that you're not that still that upset about it. I mean, you can be as upset and you're smart and, you know, you can handle your shared it.
Karen, I've I've always noticed about you. You have a beautiful tongue.
But if someone said that you have no idea if anyone's talking to you about your tongue and you haven't been dating for three months means you got to walk and then ask if you are dating and they're talking about your tongue, it's still kind of fishy.
Then you alert a phone tree of your friends to say this was actually a point of discussion. Keep your eye on me. You know, I got my here when I was hurt. When I was thirteen in nineteen ninety five, I got my tongue pierced. Did it hurt so bad? No, it doesn't hurt at all. Oh, no nipples hurt, OK? But what happened? Did you unplug? Did you take it out?
Oh, God, yeah. I mean, those are the 90s. Remember, tongue piercings were cool. Yes, I do. And eyebrow piercing eyebrow. Yeah, all the rage. Just have a guy with the ring sitting on his eyebrow also so hot and a bowling shirt. Sweet and like hates you strippers.
And he's wearing creepers jersey and he's mad about pavement. He's mad about you not knowing enough about pavement. Yeah.
Yeah asshole. Rodney that guy Rodney.
OK, this one's called a little spooky. Very lighthearted. Hi. I love your work. I'm just an average twenty one year old forensic science student from Sydney, Australia, coming at you with a fun little spooky and that's the oh a bunch of O's and some are upper case and some are lower case, you know.
So it says Spooky, amazing coming at you with a fun story that I borrowed from my brother for a little context. My older brother's twenty two and his friends have a somewhat odd obsession with torches better known as flashlights for you Americans. And many of them own their own crazy, powerful torch amongst some other features. Many of their torches have a strobe function. Thank raev. I always do. One night, after getting together amongst friends, my brother and his friends piled into a car to drive home around two a.m. While on their way home, my brother noticed what appeared to be a ghost in a white nightgown.
They continued on driving for a short while. However, my brother insisted that they had just witnessed a paranormal paranormal being, and so they decided it would be funny to turn around to find this ghost and strobe it with their torches.
Fortunately, by the time they reached this poor old lady in her nightgown who was attempting to wave down the few cars that had passed her by, they had already had a change of heart and decided against strobing her good idea. It turned out that this lovely lady, Barbara, has dementia and accidentally wandered out of her house in the middle of the night. Unbeknownst to her sleeping husband, Nightmare, the boys, who now dubbed themselves Barbara's boys, found her place of residence from her ID.
Thank God she had brought her handbag with her and delivered her safely home. Her husband, who she unfortunately did not recognize when she was returned home, had not yet realized that she was gone. It is comforting to know that there are still lovely young men out there looking out for our society's most vulnerable. I've used her name with the assumption that she does not listen to this podcast. However, if she does Hibara, we can only hope that the good days outweigh the bad and that she and her family are doing as well as possible during this time.
Stay sexy and don't stroke poor old women with flashlights. M Yeah, that was as light hearted as I expected it and I put it last. Well I do like the, you know, the sentiment of it, which is there's good people out there. I mean that's, it's such a common thing to and so horrible. But that thing of people with dementia wandering, they get very restless and they want to go walk. So and it's very common.
And yeah, it's it's scarier than if it were something paranormal because it's horrible.
Real. Yeah. Send us your paranormal or non paranormal or flashlight related or whatever. Fourteen year old Tunt stories. Yes. Or tell us how you got your teeth. So they look great. And also I love this idea of people like discovering something their coworker did or they're making their co-worker tell them stuff. Yeah. No we're all on Zoome calls these days and then can be very dull. Don't be afraid to just throw anything out there asking people about themselves.
They we all love to talk about ourselves. We do. And we love to hear about yourselves. You can send them to my favorite murderer at Gmail or on our website or wherever and stay sexy and don't get murdered by all this.
Do you want a cookie? I.