This is exactly right. Hello and welcome to my favorite murder, the two hundred the Mini, so can you believe it? Two hundred. We've done two hundred times that some 200 years.

The first the first one was on. Oh, where is it, Stephen? What was the first one?

The first one was, I believe, on March 30th. Twenty sixteen now and here we are. That was Georgia being like, you know we can do this more, you know we can do this again.

And just like great higher life can just be look at this podcast. Just keep coming back to this apartment.

Yeah. Let's do it anyway. Let's do it.

And then we did and you guys played along. That's the coolest part is, of course, my in my cynical negative mind. When Georgia first suggested that we do in Minnesota, I was just like, no one's going to write in, run out of them for people.

All right. And we'll have one episode. Yes. And that'll be and now we have just thousands and thousands of unread Minnesota. And so Lily, who collects them for us now, had the great idea that we only do Minnies that were sent in that first year. Yes. For this episode, which I love, this is the great get back for the people who jumped on board in the beginning. In twenty sixteen, their emails were ignored. Right.

They quickly bailed on this podcast and moved on to other, more welcoming lands. And now we're going to read their emails. Right.

So let your friend who quit back in twenty seventeen. I know the problem now that I found with all the options she sent us is that we hadn't yet been like send us anything lighthearted. So all the ones I had to choose from for that get really dark. Well, and also of course, I forgot that was what we were going to do is the theme. So the first one I read, I'm like, I fucking did this one going on.

And then I was like, oh, wait, wait, wait, look at the date. And then remembered that there was a whole idea behind this. But no, Lily, I love this idea of such a good idea because we would hear from people when we would do live shows. The V will be like I said it by email, but you never got it right and then send it again because it's fucking buried at the bottom. Yes.

You know, right. So basically, Lily dove down into the first couple months of the first year to try to get some of the oldest Minnesota emails that she could find. And so then we leave from their shows. And you're right, there's lots of just like it's heavy shit, huh?

I mean, obviously we say that all the time and there's no happy there's no grandparents stories. There's no sound in the world for.

Should I go first? Sure. OK, this one's comedy is very subjective, by the way. I know. I know. Fucked up prosecutor puts innocent man away. OK, it says hi. So I'm from Austin, Texas. And our most well known case around here is the murder of Christina Morton and subsequent imprisoning of her husband, Michael Morton. In nineteen eighty six, the day after Michael's birthday, his wife Christina was found brutally beaten to death in their home while their three year old son was home.

Despite Michael being at work at the time, he was questioned by the police as a suspect. I remember him saying something like, I thought if I told the truth, everything would be OK. They couldn't possibly think it was me. With no other suspects, Michael was put on trial. The fucked up prosecutor, while crying himself the disgusting liar, showed the jury the absolutely brutal crime scene photos and claim the motive was that Christina would not have birthday sex with Michael.

Oh, with no witness evidence or good motive, Michael was sentenced to life in prison. He was thirty two. There's three year old son went to live with relatives and eventually hated going to see his dad in prison and stopped going and changed his last name. Fast forward to two thousand and one pro bono attorneys working for Michael were able to finally get and this is all caps evidence that the prosecutor withheld from trial and the defense, including a witness statement from the son describing the killer and saying it wasn't his dad, as well as a bloody bandana found nearby.

Oh, the bandanna was tested and belonged to Mark Norwood, who in the subsequent years had killed two Austin women in the same way Christina Morton was murdered.

Martin was freed. The prosecutor, now fucking judge, was held in criminal contempt and served five out of ten days in jail. Oh, fine. Community service and loss of law license, five days in jail for ruining a man's life, his relationship with his son and wasting twenty five years of his life.

Oh, OK. Yes, there is now the Michael Morton law in Texas, which means that the prosecutor needs to give evidence to the defense even without. A court order crazy to think you could easily be put away in jail for the rest of your life without even doing anything. My family my family still talks about this case and everyone around here knows about it. Anyway, bye. Thanks.

I feel like that's because you said it was from the 80s or 90s.

It was eighty five. Let me look again. Yeah, I feel like I've seen that story. Yeah. Or something. I don't think I've seen not one but similar. I mean it just happened the time. Yeah. It happens all the time and it happens to people of color even more. Right. As we all know now. OK, here's my first one. It says multiple hometown murders related to a murderous and this is from May 18th.

Twenty sixteen. Oh, so early on.

Hey, Karen in Georgia. I've recently been introduced to your podcast, thanks to the Cracked podcast, and I am loving it once again. Jack O'Brien, host of the podcast, had us on very early on and exposed us to lots and lots of podcast listeners.

Really helped us out.

He really it was very nice of him. I'm so glad there are other people like me from Huntsville, Alabama. And oddly enough, we have several semi famous murders here. But I'll just tell you about two and a murderous that I'm related to. The first is Jeffrey Franklin, who in 1998 was 17 and bludgeoned his parents with an axe. He also attempted to kill three of his siblings who are home with him. There were talks of him being a Satanist, but ultimately, I believe they narrowed it down to a mixture of prescription medications and a lack of sleep.

I bet there is more I bet there's more to that. But the prescription medication can really fuck even especially if you're on like an antidepressant or something like that. That isn't that doesn't jive well with it. You could or you have over you mix more than one. There's like, you know, side effects and shit.

Yeah. Yeah.

All three, all three siblings lived. That's amazing. Along with the ex, he used a sledge hammer, a butcher's knife and a rattail. The file. The second. Yeah, horrifying. The second is more recent. In 2010, I was attending college at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and a teacher in the science building. I mean, this is insane. I've never heard this before. A teacher in the science building opened fire on her colleagues during a routine meeting.

Oh, my God. Three of them were killed and three more were injured. The survivors did so by pushing Bishop out of the room and barricading themselves behind the door after her gun jammed. Whoa.

Holy shit. Unbelievable. And lastly, I wanted to mention that I'm related to a female murderer. Her name was Viola, and she was my grandmother's second cousin. She murdered two brothers living on her property and cut off their limbs and through body parts out of the car while driving down the highway in Andalusia, Alabama. The fuck. Thank you so much for the podcast. Love having others who enjoy murder stories as much as me.

Kalay Wow was packed. Yeah. I mean, it was like it was almost like an anthology of horrible murder stories called Great Jobs back in twenty sixteen, four years ago.

Thank you for being here with this shit. She is no longer at least she started her own really true crime podcast. Shoot this shit. I got stories of people who are ignoring me. Kelly, if you're still if you're still listening, we'd love to hear from you.

It's just another story. Like you said, you had a bunch from your hometown. Give us an idea. Yeah. Update and then read it within the year. Yeah. Put it in subject line. It's me, Carly. I'm coming back. I never left you guys. Why are you so insecure? No one needs that right now. Please be leaders. Please be stronger than that. That's right.

OK, this one's called. My mom was strangled and left to die. The good old eighties man. Oh what. It's ok. I know. Hi, Georgia. And Karen, first thing's first. You're the realist and I am so excited to have found your show. As I'm sure you've guessed from the title, my mom is still alive. But since you guys are into weird stories, I figured you would enjoy this. Wow. My mom worked at a hotel and she went to the University of Oklahoma back in the eighties.

She was closing up for her shift and her manager asked if she wanted him to stay with her while she waited for the next employee to come in. She said no because she was a bad ass woman of the eighties who didn't think about the possibility of danger. And so he left a man, let's call him Lesters, since that's a creepy name, came in and was kind of pacing the lobby until he finally approached her and demanded that she give him all the money from the jaws.

Moments before he had come in, she put money away into the safe box that she didn't have access to, which was not a satisfying answer for him. He jumped over the counter and pushed my mom into the back office, then proceeded to strangle her. When he thought she was dead, he crammed into the. Corner of a wall and pinned her body with a filing cabinet and bookcase. I know last year I started grabbing all of the money he could when a couple truck drivers came in.

They were regulars to the hotel since it was on their route. And they knew to expect my mom at the counter when they asked where she was last year, decided to pretend that he worked there, like, what the fuck? Don't mess with truckers, Lester. Meanwhile, he was putting on the charade that the guys weren't buying. My mom started to come to trade screaming out and he completely collapsed. Her trachea just sounded like little squeaks. I know one of the men heard her and asked what it was going on.

And Lester was all like, she's crazy, man. Don't worry about it. She's just drunk. She was super out of it, but started to try to pull herself out from the wall, which just caused her to pick up his bags and get the fuck out of there. One of the truckers tried chasing him after him while the other helped my mom, but he wasn't able to catch him. Later that night, Lester was caught because he's a fucking idiot.

A bar owner called the police and said, hey, there's this man in here that tried to come in earlier for a drink but didn't have any money. So I kicked him out. Now he's back and he's waving around a big stack of cash. And it just doesn't seem right. Thank God. God. So fucking Lester sold himself out because he wanted a celebratory beer from the bar where he was originally broke. When the arrest was made and it was time for court.

The weirdness didn't stop. When my mom went to testify, Lester's mom started barking like a dog and wouldn't stop until police had to restrain her and remove her from the courtroom. Right now, he was convicted and was to serve two years in prison, but a couple or two fucking years in prison, but a couple of months and he hanged himself. I'm sorry. This is not a murder story. No, it's OK. But it is. Yeah, but I figured it was weird enough for the two of you keep up the amazing work you're doing and can't wait for more sleepless nights from listening to the gruesome tales say sexy Angelique.

Oh, my God. I know. At first I was like, we can't read this. And then I was like, this is insane. She goes to testify against him, which is so badass he only gets to fucking you like such a crazy story. And those two truckers who cared enough to ask more than one question and like, have it not be convenient or they were just immediately like, what is suspicious here? And they stuck with their gut.

That's so thank God no initiative and survived and then fought despite the fact like her way out, it was like, yes, it's can you go so insane if you are trying to yell people to help you and you.

Oh, ok.

OK, good job Angelique. You really nailed it four years ago. Thank you so much for participating. Angelique is now moved to Europe. She is sworn off all podcast's and tells people it's because of this one on the rejection that she fell from never year here. But we are so insecure. I just like to imagine all the different stories of the people whose emails are at the bottom of the parasol that hold up at us.

Yeah, how many people did we did we swear have swear out this podcast because we're like, send us your letters or letters, we'll read them and then we're like, we're reading yours. Well, it's because we didn't realize we were going to get literally fifteen thousand.

We are trying to get to all of your emails, but we're not interested in organizing anything.

OK, classic this the subject line of this is this might get a little long.

OK, so it's just it just starts this is really my friend's story, but I really don't expect him to tell it. I'll do my best. Years ago I had this friend, let's call him Tim, and Tim was living with two other guys in this apartment and one of them, Cory, started to get a little weird, the kind of weird where Tim and the other roommate would joke about how if they had to pick one of their friends as a future murderer, they'd pick sorry, but they figured it was probably nothing because who would ever expect her roommate to be a murderer?

The morning before the dark night was released, Tim walked into the living room and Corey was on the couch. Corey had been pretty distant for a while, so Tim was a little surprised to see him. Tim did the polite thing and invited Corey to the midnight showing of Dark Night, but Corey declined. Tim wasn't surprised and was probably even a little relieved. He left the apartment and ran a few errands for a couple hours. When he got back, he saw a whole bunch of cop cars outside.

His interest was piqued and he checked out the first and second floors but saw nothing. When he got up to his apartment, it was filled with cops. The sheriff asked him if he knew where Corey was, and Tim said no. Did he expect to see him? No. The sheriff left his direct number with him to immediately call if he got word from Corey.

So Tim called his dad and asked what was going on. His dad said he didn't know but would be watching the news. About an hour later, Tim got a call from his dad who said that there was a middle aged woman shot and killed in New Brighton. Tim immediately grabbed his head and yelled, Oh, my God, he killed Christine. Here's the story. Corey Gustad was dating this girl who is a little younger than him. He. Twenty one, and she was 17 at the time of the event, but I don't know how old they were when they started dating.

In any case, she broke up with him, citing violent tendencies. He didn't take this very well and started stalking her. So she and her family filed a restraining order. He didn't take that well either. So he was following his ex-girlfriend around one morning, expecting her to go to work. He was going to kill her and any other employees and customers there, but she wasn't going to work. So he went to her house and waited for her.

She and her mom pulled up a little later. He got out of his car with a gun behind them and demanded to know why she'd broken up with him. And then in parentheses, it just says, really? And then it says her mom, Christine, got in between her daughter and Corey and tried to reason with him. So he shot her and his ex and ran away. He fired at her four times, but she wasn't hurt.

You could believe that he's in prison and he won't be eligible for release until twenty, forty nine at the earliest, because apparently Minnesota takes their murder a little a little more seriously than some other places.

And there's no name. Holy shit.

Is that fucking epic. That was from April. Twenty eighth. Twenty sixteen.

That one's been sitting, sitting in the hopper waiting for us since almost the beginning of the hometowns. That's incredible. I just never found it. The last one I just did it was from May twenty sixteen and the first one I did was from December 1st. Twenty sixteen. Oh OK. And then this one is from January 30, verse twenty sixteen. Oh it says this was the fourth email sent into that Gmail no folder.

Oh come on. I think we had just created it.

Yeah. No you and I in the beginning had to find them on our own. And so it would be like not only would we have to record another episode every week, but we'd have to take, like, you know, a half an hour or an hour to find all the stories. And finally months. And we're like, Stephen, can you start doing this for us?

If we don't, I'm going to go and say we do, because on it. Yep.

At that point, it was already like that was like. Yeah. So it wasn't just like sifting for I was like, oh God.

It's like, it was like a real job suddenly became a major and you had an actual writing on a TV show job.

Two or two at least at least one. Yeah. Oh yeah. You should take coloring your hair at home to the next level with Madison. OK, because I deserve gorgeous professional hair color delivered right to my door, starting at just twenty two bucks, outdated at home, hair color, or the time and expense of a traditional salon.

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Goodbye.

Here's my last one, my Lincoln, Nebraska, murder story, dear Karen in Georgia, I want to express my gratitude to you, too, for starting the podcast recently. So recently. Right. Like many kids that were overly grim and painfully awkward in their teenage years, I have a huge interest in serial killers and mass murderers. I wanted to mention the spree killer from my hometown of Lincoln, Nebraska, Charles Starkweather, which is so crazy we've never done him.

I don't know how well known Starkweather is in other parts of the country, but he has made a definite mark in pop culture. Charles and his girlfriend, Carol Ann Fugate, killed 11 people over two months time. In nineteen fifty nine, Charles got the chair and Carol went to prison. I'm thirty one. So growing up in Lincoln, Starkweather was not widely discussed. I think this was because the murders weren't really that old. And Lincoln was still a relatively insular community at the time.

At any time a relative or acquaintance of the victims could be an earshot, especially in South Lincoln and the way Charles Starkweather was almost like the boogeyman. A rite of passage for the local high school kids was to hunt around why cemetery and search for Starkweather headstone. It ends up being quite an ordeal as why UCA is about one hundred and twenty plus acres. Not too long ago I was there just to take a walk and I ran into a couple of teenage kids who were looking for the headstone.

I thought it was pretty cool that it's still a tradition. My intersection with the murders goes back to my first job in high school sometime during the summer of 2001, when Carol Fugate was released from prison in the 70s, she moved out of state and kept her head down. During the murder trial, Charles was prepared to take all the responsibility for the murders. Carroll maintained that she wasn't a willing participant, which angered Charles, who changed his story, claiming she was more than willing to assist with the murders.

Isn't this what Natural Born Killers is kind of loosely based on? Do you know that? I've never seen that. Have you? Huh? I love that as a teenager because it's all fucking crazy and scary and now I won't watch it again.

It's just like really glorifies violence in an ugly way. The nineties.

Yeah. Like when you go look back on some of the the filmic work of the nineties, it's pretty bleak. Yeah. So that it sounds a lot of people here have a special kind of hate for Carol. I worked at a country club that no longer exists as a busboy and occasionally as a server. On a slow afternoon, one of the older waitresses gave me her tables and left for the day in a hurry. As I started to make my rounds to the tables, I noticed some of my coworkers intently staring at me.

One of the tables sat Carol and Fugate and her husband, who has since passed. They were both very quiet and polite. They tipped well and didn't stay too long. I guess the waitress refused to wait on Carol and that's why she took off. Oh, anyway, I love the show so far and hope you do many more creepily yours, Dak Thompson.

And then it says P.S. on episode two, when you started talking about the JonBenet Ramsey murder, I looked up the Wikipedia article to refamiliarize myself. I was stunned to see that the father, John Ramsey, is also from Lincoln. This seems crazy to me, as I know, as I was well aware of the case as it was happening in 96, 97, I never once heard that John Ramsey is from Lincoln.

We got mad secrets in Nebraska, but also no dacs that the name D a k k, I believe.

Let me see your dad, a.k.a. Dak Thompson.

Amazing email. So that's you know, that's also that idea of like the after effects of like an infamous because at the beginning Jack said something about like I don't know how. Well no. But I feel like everybody knows about Charles Starkweather and that spree, that idea that.

Yeah. Like why wouldn't she have moved to like New Jersey or somewhere or Maine or something? He said she did, but maybe she was like in town because she probably still has family. She didn't murder there. As I'm saying. I'm like, wait, she murdered didn't they murder her parents? Did they? No, no. But it's but it's also crazy to to think like you think of a small town like that. It didn't even cross my mind that, yeah, you could be at a diner talking to your friend about how crazy those murders were.

And like a victim's mom could be in the booth next. I was like, yes, since I'm not from a small town, I hadn't even thought of that. So no one talks about it. It's crazy, right? Or if you're going to talk about it, you do it like in the privacy of your car or in your house or something. You do. You don't like yap about it, which is kind of a good thing to keep in mind.

I mean, just like you never know to consider, you never know.

Well, the other thing I liked about this story, because at first I was like, oh, it's he's going to tell the story or she's going to tell the story about Starkweather. But no, it's like the thing we asked for originally, which was what's your connection to the hometown murderer? And he waited on them. It's so old school. Yes. That's actually d'Arc executed. The assignment perfectly, a little then and then was ignored.

And so now and has never listen to the podcast since, did exactly what we asked for in a really lovely way, well-written and vulnerable, really gave us something.

What did we do? We left it in the inbox for five years.

And then at the end he says, I hope you do more of these shows. I hope you do more episodes. Oh, we will. We will. We will. Thanks for being there, d'Arc, if you're still with us. God bless. God bless. OK, so this last one is from May 19th, 2016, and I believe that it could qualify as our very first grandma email without being Selous. Holy shit. OK, right.

I love it and it just starts. Hello, I love your show. I just started listening and I've been catching up on all the episodes and I think it's cool. This story isn't from my hometown, but it is a story from my grandmother. I only learned about this last year. Apparently I missed other tellings of this story. After the war, my grandma was working in a hospital in France. She met my grandpa who is planning to move to Canada, and she decided to go with him.

They plan to get married. The hospital my grandma worked at was run by nuns, most of whom she insists were very nice, very ominous.

All the other ones were very nice. They're very nice. But there was this one. They used to kind of crouch in the corner rubbing her hands together. When they found out that she was going to get married and move, they were fine with it. Mostly one nun was very upset because my grandpa had been married before and gotten divorced. She tried to convince my grandma to stay and become a nun. My grandma didn't want to. And that was it.

Shortly after my grandma got a stomach bug and it wasn't serious. But she stayed in the hospital because she worked there and they wanted to keep an eye on her. Soon after moving to the hospital, she got worse and after a while they knew something was wrong and that she wasn't getting better. The doctor eventually came and talked to my grandma and her mother saying that they knew what was going on and that it would be better if she recovered at home.

As soon as she went home, she got better. It was an open secret that the nun who was upset had been poisoning my grandma's food. Holy shit.

But my grandma kept working there until she left and isn't upset by it to this day. Grandma, when she told me I didn't believe her at first because she was so casual, that's my grandma was almost murdered by a nun story. Hey. And that's it. That's the whole email like that is Hey Larry is truly my favorite sign off of any email we've ever gotten.

Hey, with an exclamation point that seems like this is before people try to, like, make catchy funny opener's and closer's and stuff and give their names.

Yes, that's right. This is just the beginning when it was up to you to make your know what you wanted it to be. They weren't doing this for like to get attention or anything because we didn't because no one listened to the podcast. Kakamega anyone who knew you.

Hey, so, hey, who sent it on May 19th, twenty sixteen. And told this truly like a harrowing story, harrowing grandma story just that ends so grandma style. We just stop making a big show about it. Back to everyone please. That was how you showed you cared as you basically almost murdered.

So she was she like to be. That's all she did. Oh, to touch her was so much fun. Thank you. That was great. When early adopters sending in your stories and ever playing ball, anyone who sent them in and hasn't had them read yet, we will see you. We just haven't seen e-mail. Yeah. We hear you were digging through. And and thanks for coming up with this idea, because I think as it was an idea whose time had come.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. I can't believe 200 episodes. You guys, thank you so fucking much for listening and for making this thing you want to listen to and happen. Yep.

And for participating with all of your personal and hometown stories. We love you for it and we appreciate it.

Stay sexy and don't get murdered by Elvis. You want a cookie jar?