My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - MFM Minisode 379
Episode Date: April 15, 2024This week’s hometowns include a thrift store victory and having coffee with Ann Rule. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
Transcript
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This is exactly right.
This Mother's Day, you can celebrate all the maternal figures in your life like your sister,
your best friend, or your best friend's mom.
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It's a great way to stay connected to the people who matter most.
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So when your loved one plugs in their new frame, it's ready to go.
The photos are there and Mother's Day will be made.
And they can use the touch screen to swipe through photos or send a digital
thank you as people share their pictures.
OK, so this year for Mother's Day, my sister is getting her mother-in-law a Skylight frame
because they live across the country.
But you know, my sister's constantly taking photos of her kids.
And she has two other grandkids.
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Bye bye.
Bye bye.
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Hello and welcome to my favorite murder.
The mini-sode.
That's right.
Here we are.
Oh, and if you belong to the fan cult, you can see this on video.
We're videoing this right now.
You can feel the video tension and the air and you should see it.
Yeah.
Don't make weird faces.
Don't make weird faces.
That's what I say to myself.
Why does that one section of my hair always look unbrushed no matter how much I brush
it?
You want to go first?
Sure.
Okay.
This one's called My Mom Survived a Serial Killer.
Oh, wow.
I know.
Hi, Karen and Georgia.
You guys rocked.
I'll attempt to keep this short and sweet.
My mom swears to this day that she avoided an attack from serial killer, Derek Todd Lee,
AKA the Baton Rouge Serial Killer back in the early 90s.
And that's the serial killer just covered in Baton Rouge.
Yeah.
Lee was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of two women.
DNA evidence was also used to link Leah
to five additional killings from the mid-90s to 2003.
Fear of this guy was crazy throughout the state
of Louisiana for years, as he would enter women's homes
when they were alone and rape and murder them.
Her story goes like this.
Back in 1990, before I was born,
she and my dad were living in an apartment near Baton Rouge.
My mom was, and still is, a teacher.
It was the summertime, so naturally she was home alone
most of the day while my dad was at work.
She said someone knocked on the door,
claiming to be a repairman who was there to, quote,
check on their hot water heater.
She didn't open the door, but looked through the peephole
and saw a young man standing on the doorstep.
He wasn't wearing a uniform
and she noticed he was driving a small car.
Not really what a repairman looks like or drives, right?
Right.
Since she was alone, she told him to come back later.
He then got very rude with her yelling that,
quote, if she didn't let him in,
she would get in trouble with the landlord.
And he would, quote, get in trouble with his boss. So he would quote, get in trouble with his boss.
So consequences for you, you better open the door.
Yeah.
But she being the smart bad ass that she is responded with,
too bad, come back later.
Assuming he left, she went back into the living room
to watch TV.
When she saw him walking around the side of the house
to the back door, she sprinted to the back door
and locked it, realizing he was going to try to come in that way.
When he realized the door was locked,
he banged on it again, telling her that, quote,
"'The landlord said her hot water heater was broken
and it needed to be checked right away.'"
There's no hot water heater in the world
that's this important.
No, it's not broken.
And why would the landlord know it was?
You'd be the person calling the landlord
to say something wrong with the hot water heater.
Yeah, that's, you know, that's not an outside in job. It's an inside out job.
Right. He kept trying the door a few more minutes, looking in the back window and yelling
at her. So she called the police and my dad, the man was obviously gone when the cops got
there and they couldn't really do anything except take my mom's statement. My parents
moved to the house we live in now shortly after this incident. Over 10 years
later in 2003, the news broke that Derek Todd Lee had been arrested for the recent killings
in the area. I will never forget this moment as my mom was standing in the kitchen listening
to the news. His picture flashed across the screen and she immediately yelled, Oh my god,
that's him. And started to cry.
The crying part is like the visceral,
like it definitely was him.
Through her tears, she told me the story of what happened
back in 1990 at her apartment.
I had never seen her that shaken up before.
She then told me exactly what you two have said
in earlier episodes.
Don't be afraid to be rude, go with your gut and be smart.
You can always apologize later if you hurt someone's feelings.
It just goes to show that being rude might just save your life, but there's no
doubt in her mind or mine that the man who tried to enter her apartment that day
was Derek Toddly. And with that, thank you for your creativity, wit, and just
plain bad assery. Stay sexy and don't get murdered, Katie.
Oh God.
I know that was written to us a long time ago
when I was doing research on that story, I found that one.
Sometimes we get emails from people who are like,
I think my aunt may have almost gone on a date with Ted Bundy.
That's a classic one.
But like, this is so real and horrifying
because clearly if it was 10 years before he was arrested,
does it feel like that was in his ramp up toward?
Like, he was just starting to, I don't know.
It's just so awful.
And then also getting the information
of how those other women let him in.
Remember I was saying how they were always very safe.
They didn't answer the door to anyone.
But yeah, it's the same thing with the Boston Strangler,
where it's like, I'm here to fix something
that your landlord told me to
You know a lot of people wouldn't give it a second thought no self included sometimes and if that one doesn't work
He was doing it so long by the time that people you talked about were being like stalked
He probably had the perfect line in the perfect tone of voice and the perfect everything. Totally.
Ugh.
Totally.
Okay.
I'm not going to read you the subject line of my first one.
It just starts, hello.
I can't even tell this story inside my own family for stupid reasons I won't go into.
So I'm giving it to you, dear MFM hosts, in all its glorious stupidity.
It is the early 90s.
My then girlfriend and I had just moved to California after graduated from college on
the East Coast.
We were a scrappy pair.
We didn't have a real plan or much money.
For us, it was a big yellow rider truck across the country and then a tiny studio apartment
in a strange place.
We were both looking for work, but we didn't have any connections.
Somehow I thought the one move I should make was to contact a local mobster mentioned to me by my uncle
and ask him for a job.
I still don't know why I thought this was a good idea.
It had something to do with the fact
that it was a family referral and thus felt safe.
But I was not really paying attention
to what I was about to walk into.
I met the mobster in his spacious office.
He was no different than any Italian guy I've ever
met, with one exception. He was wearing maybe the nicest sweater I've ever seen. That's how you can
spot him. I assumed it was cashmere or something very expensive. His curly chest hair was popping
out from the little zip down part. He was tanned and easygoing and he spoke in a softened California version of the Italian
East Coast accent when he said, oh, can I help you?
Right?
Don't you think that that's a California version of that?
That's a good one.
I realized I had given no thought whatsoever to how I would respond to this question.
I actually said, maybe you have a job that's not listed in the paper.
As soon as these words came out of my mouth, there was a rush of panic in my brain
as I came to my senses about what I was doing.
After a pause, he said,
well, maybe we have a place for you
in our accounting department.
By that time, the mental fog had lifted
and I was shitting a brick.
In my mind, I was like, this is not a movie.
I am not reading from a script.
I'm not messing around with characters on the screen.
I asked a guy for a mob job
and now I wanna get the fuck out of here as soon as possible.
I had to think quick.
I said, you know, I'm really looking for something downtown.
Do you have anything in that area?
I was either lucky or smart and it was a good deflection.
He shook his head no.
And then his face lit up.
Hey, you know that place Nordstrom?
That might be a good place for you to work.
That's a really great place.
He went on singing the praises of the fancy department store.
You could buy a shirt and you don't like it, you take it back, you get a new shirt, you
could work there.
And then you could buy clothes for a discount for your lady friend.
That last part was especially hilarious because my girlfriend, a thrift store diva who was
at that moment sitting in the lobby in one of her signature outfits, would not be caught
dead in Nordstrom.
I made it sound like working at the mall
was a really great plan for my future
and I got out of there pretty quickly.
All in all, this was precisely the kind of dumb, bold,
failure and escape that you can only get away with
when you're young and clueless.
I thought the whole thing was over until the phone rang
about six weeks later.
It was him checking up on us to see how we were doing
in that sweet way that Italian men do.
I told them that both of us had jobs, which was true, and thanked him for his concern,
and that was the last we ever heard from the Nordstrom Don. Stay sexy and wear nice sweaters,
Big J."
Oh my god. He basically asked for an off-the-record job. One that's not in the newspaper is like
a criminal job.
Like I'm asking you specifically.
Yeah, like chopping up bodies.
Like what are you talking about one that's not in the paper?
Yeah, you're like, can I run drugs for you?
Totally.
This guy's smart because it sounded probably
like a sting operation.
He was like, nope, go to Nordstrom, goodbye.
Yeah, exactly.
Or we have an accounting department,
but other than that, there's nothing
that's not in the paper.
Oh my god.
This Mother's Day, you can celebrate all the maternal
figures in your life, like your sister, your best friend,
or your best friend's mom.
Whether you're celebrating or remembering,
the Skylight Digital Picture Frame
is a thoughtful way to show the women in your life
that you love them.
Skylight is a digital photo frame
for sharing all your favorite photos. It's a great way to stay connected women in your life that you love them. Skylight is a digital photo frame for sharing all your favorite photos.
It's a great way to stay connected
to the people who matter most.
With Skylight's gift mode,
you can preload all your photos to the frame
before they even open the box.
So when your loved one plugs in their new frame,
it's ready to go.
The photos are there and Mother's Day will be made.
And they can use the touch screen
to swipe through photos or send a digital thank you
as people share their pictures. Okay, so this year for Mother's Day, my sister is getting her mother-in-law
a skylight frame because they live across the country. But you know, my sister's constantly
taking photos of her kids. Yeah. And she has two other grandkids. So now both sets of grandkid
photos can just be uploaded to the frame so easily.
I mean, it's great, a new photo every day if you want.
As a special limited time offer for our listeners, get 25% off your purchase of a Skylight frame
when you go to ca.skylightframe.com and enter promo code MFM.
That's ca.skylightframe.com code MFM.
Mother's Day is coming right up, so order today to get 25% off your purchase
at ca.skylightframe.com code M-F-M.
Bye bye.
This one's called I Stole the Mona Lisa.
Hello M-F-M crew.
Picture this summer of 2006.
I was home from college in small town Brandenburg, Kentucky
and visiting with friends when we
decided to head to the nearest bar that served liquor, our bar's only served beer.
Oh, that's like some Blue Laws New England stuff.
Yeah, totally.
This watering hole was just across the Ohio River in Mackport, sorry, Indiana, and appropriately
named the Hoosier Inn. I was Shirley Tipsy from
pre-gaming when I spotted the Mona Lisa replica on the wall and decided it would be the perfect
gift for our friend Ricky, who had the hangout house where we're always crashing at. Speaking
of being young and dumb. I want to steal stuff.
I'm going to steal it and then put it at my friend's house where we all go all the time.
Right.
I got a few friends involved and we made a plan.
First person distracted the bartender, second person slid the painting off the wall, and
third person took it out the back door to the covered pickup truck bed.
I think it was like full size.
Jesus Christ.
We figured the bartender would be none the wiser until realizing the wall had a very
distinct rectangular outline due to nicking stains. Moments later when I went to the bathroom, the door burst open with
a female bartender yelling, have y'all seen the Mona Lisa? And it says, please say in a southern
drawl. So that's why I did that. That was good. Have y'all seen the Mona Lisa? Hey, have y'all
seen the Mona Lisa? That guy's back. Everyone's here. He's on the case.
He'll help out. My face would have been a dead giveaway, so thank God I was in the clothes stall.
She continued to yell for the missing Mona Lisa and made quite the scene. Each of us were questioned,
but we just shrugged her off. When we got home later and I presented Ricky with this present,
he said thanks at first and then changed his mind deciding he didn't want the stolen property in his we just shrugged her off. When we got home later and I presented Ricky with this present,
he said thanks at first and then changed his mind deciding he didn't want the stolen
property in his house. Ricky was thinking straight.
Ricky and the bartender were the two sober people in this scenario. They're like, yeah,
whatever you're doing, stop doing it.
No, it's not cute. I guess because his neighbor was the Mead County Sheriff. Lol. Oh my God,
I hope the Mead County Sheriff wasn't on
the case too. The Mead County Sheriff is like literally standing behind you while you're like,
yes, what I'm gonna do. I took it back from his ungrateful ass and it kept the Mona Lisa with me
proudly displayed on the walls of my various homes ever since. They got away with it. It is
hilarious to me that the real Mona Lisa was missing
from a museum for days without notice, but the Hoosier Inn bartender spotted it in a heartbeat.
The Hoosier Inn no longer exists and or has changed ownership. So I felt almost 20 years later,
it was finally safe to tell this story. SSDGM, Eliza. Eliza, here comes the sheriff.
Ssdgm, Eliza. Eliza, real.
Here comes the sheriff.
I hope the bartender's listening right now
and is like, I fucking knew it.
I knew it, those bitches.
You need to write to us immediately.
Also that kind of thing where like,
it's such a drunken idea.
That's how I spend all my drunken time,
would it be like looking around,
getting a little excited inspiration,
it'd be like, come on, we have to do it.
And it's the worst, dumbest idea.
Just like needing some adventure.
Yeah. And kind of thinking like the world is now as drunk
as you are.
So everyone's perception is fucked up and you're going to be
able to get away with shit.
You know what we need?
Bartender stories.
Oh, yes.
Please.
Have you been a bartender?
Any part in your life, we need the wildest stories,
the stupidest stories.
Please, we beg you.
We beg you.
No, no story too small.
Also like somebody was talking,
oh, it was a TikTok that I saw where somebody was like,
hey, if you're regular at a bar,
not only are you not beloved, we hate you.
Oh no, oh no.
It was hilarious, but I mean, you think about it
where it's just like, yeah, these are people
that come to your job and get shit faced in front of you.
Right, and try to talk to you.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, oh my God.
So funny, I mean, yeah, it's a little harsh,
but I like the idea of it.
Okay, the subject line of this email
is traumatic Girl Scout camping trip.
And it just gets right into it.
It just starts, I'm the same age as Karen
and aside from the awesome storytelling,
one of my favorite parts of MFM
is reminiscing on the mayhem that was
the 1970s and 80s childhood.
I just finished listening to the mini-sode
with the story of the dad who invented Greasy Pete
to scare his kids from wandering off into the woods while camping. I forgot about that. I wanted
to tell you this story for a while, but Greasy Pete was the sign I needed to write to you
about my first and only Girl Scout camping trip. I was in the third grade. The year we
got to go on the real Girl Scout camping trip in the actual woods with tents and campfires
and everything a suburban kid who never camped before could imagine. I had already completed the
prerequisite first and second grade camping trips which consisted of a one-night sleepover
on the cold hard probably asbestos tiled floor in the basement of the town's Presbyterian church.
Oh god, we did something similar to that.
It's like they're breaking in camping to you like first you're going to be away from your house, of the town's Presbyterian church. Oh, God. We did something similar to that.
It's like they're breaking in, camping to you, like, first you're going to be away from
your house, then you're going to be in a sleeping bag.
Here's some pine needles we can put in the church floor.
In the time building up to the trip, the excitement was profound.
When arrived at camp, we got our tent assignments, did some outdoorsy stuff to earn badges, and
when night fell, the chaperones lit a campfire, and we, of course, got to hear some spooky stories.
They were fairly benign, except for the last one, the story of Lefty Louie, a madman who
lived in these woods, had a hook where his left hand should be, and of course, eight
little girls.
It was a scary story, but everyone seemed pretty okay when story time was over and it
was time for bed.
We lined up flashlights in hand and started down the short wooded trail to the restroom
building to wash up. A few minutes into our walk, out of a pile of leaves beside the trail,
jumped a full grown hook handed bearded man who shouted in a low low spooky voice, I'm
lefty Louis.
Why do you need to traumatize children, adults?
I guess it was like they were all stoned listening to like Led Zeppelin and like, you know what
would be cool.
Yeah, let's scare the shit out of the children.
Out of third graders.
Shrieks ensued, pants were peed, tears were shed, and all at once the adults realized
that they had misjudged the age rating for this prank.
I don't remember how long it took. Yeah, that's actually a perfect seventh grade prank. Yes,
totally. Third grade, go to hell. Yeah. I'm the third grade lawyer and I say go to hell.
I don't remember how long it took to get the group calm down, but I do remember the next morning when
our parents rolled up in their wood paneled station wagons to take us home. One or two girls must have told their parents about Lefty Louie because there was a good amount of
yelling, frantic hand waving and what were you thinking directed at the troop leader and her
husband, aka Lefty Louie. I've never camped again and to this day I only hike if I'm guaranteed to
be the fuck out of the woods while the sun is still high in the sky. Thank you for keeping us all entertained, bringing back so many Gen X memories, and
of course, advocating for those who need it.
Stay sexy and maybe don't hide in leaf piles to traumatize third grade Girl Scouts.
Robin, she, her.
Robin is such a 70s, 80s name too.
That's hilarious.
Oh yeah, that's so true.
Oh my God.
No.
No.
It's like scary enough to be in the woods
without a fucking monster jumping out at you.
I have anxiety right now from that email
of just like, oh, that's gonna,
now they have to get into bed.
No one's sleeping.
No, and imagine if you did pee your pants,
how embarrassing that would be and like, oh.
But you were right to pee your pants.
Yeah, it was a pee your pants situation.
By any means necessary, get away from lefty-movie fuck.
Ugh.
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Goodbye.
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Okay, here's my last one.
Antique Roadshow Hometown,
an OG declaration of independence.
Greetings, murderino royalty.
Listening to the latest minisode,
I heard your request for great thrift finds,
and I knew I had to write in about this one
because it's almost unbelievable.
Several years ago, my husband was working a job
you can probably only be hired for in LA, New York or Nashville. He was a cartridge driver.
You know what that is?
Cartridge?
Uh-huh.
Is it something like on sets?
Kind of. You're basically a moving guy, but you work exclusively with famous musicians
moving instruments and gear around to venues and studios across town all day long.
They're like moving guys that don't fuck up because you can't fuck up like Paul McCartney's
one guitar. Right and Paul McCartney doesn't want to throw it in his trunk and head there so he needs
some of the... Yeah and it's probably like insured and specialized. Yeah oh my god that'd be terrifying.
If you don't mind manual labor and you're around famous people, it's the job for you.
He totally had the energy of a UPS driver that marries Jennifer Coolidge in Legally Blonde.
Not exactly what you're talking about.
Calm, cool and collected. The kind of vibe that comes from someone who doesn't worry too much.
Sounds nice.
I mean, how?
Have you looked around lately?
Things aren't great.
No, things are not great.
It's time to worry.
It's time to worry.
He probably was so chill because 10 years before,
he happened upon one of the greatest thrift finds
of maybe all time.
At a local Nashville thrift store,
he picked up a replica of the Declaration of Independence
for $2.48.
Thinking it was pretty cool and looked old.
That's something I would never look twice at.
You know what I mean?
I don't care about that shit.
Cause also you would know for a fact it's not,
it can't be real.
It's not like some secret painter.
No, it's from the Cracker Barrel fucking gift store.
Like no.
Right?
Oh no.
Yeah.
It's your, that aunt that really loves America.
It was like, no, I want my own copy.
Oh my God. It's like, she got everyone one for Christmas that year.
And okay. Well, this particular replica was one of only 200 commissioned
by John Quincy Adams, handwritten by William Stone in 1823.
So it shows us...
Literal national treasure.
Literally.
His copy was one of 36 surviving copies and was in pretty good condition.
At auction, it sold for $400,077, $650.
Oh, half a million dollars.
He paid $2.48 for it.
Okay, so he grossed.
So it says, wait, wait, wait, but to an investment firm in Salt Lake City in 2007, which in today's $2.48 for it. Okay, so he grossed.
So it says, wait, wait, wait, but to an investment firm in Salt Lake City in 2007, which in today's money is over $600,000. Beautiful.
Mikey said he used the money to buy a used car, help his parents, teeth, teeth to his church.
Tithe. Tithe.
Tithe is the money you give every Sunday.
Got it. And built a sun porch on his house. Thought you would all love this ultimate thrifting
success story. Stay sexy and find valuable treasures so you can coast into retirement.
Rochelle. Rochelle, I absolutely love that story. It It touches something in me that was opened up around 1990
when I started going in Sacramento to thrift stores
and realizing the potential treasure that was in front of me.
But you don't really hear,
like you hear the ones that are like,
oh, this purse was actually a real Chanel and I redid it
and it sold for $4,000 or something. But $600,000.
That's insane.
Do you remember what I was thinking about?
I always think about this.
What was thrifting like in the 70s?
Like all you found was 1920s, gorgeous art deco shit
and turn of the century fucking.
Yes.
Tchotchkes, like my dream.
Also, you know, I think about that
because there's a Charles Dickens,
I think it's Bleak House where one of the characters owns what they call a curiosity shop, which is a basically
a vintage store, but in Victorian times for like antiques.
And I'm like, I know it's just a set, but it's so realistically done.
And it because everything's like candle lit and like dusty corners.
Like I would absolutely kill.
I think that would be like, if you could make a wish,
the wish to walk through that store
and see what's actually in there.
Yeah.
Okay, here's my last one.
And it's kind of long, but I think it's worth it.
Okay.
I'm not gonna read you the subject line.
So it says, hi, me again.
You asked for a follow-up from my previous email
and I'm finally
getting around to it. So this was someone that sent in something and at the end wrote,
I'll tell you about my coffee date with Ann Rule a different time. And then we freaked
out, I believe. So it says, you wanted an update on my coffee with Ann Rule as well
as my great, maybe not so great grandmother who was most likely a black widow. So here
goes about 20 or so years ago,
Anne Rule had a book signing in my city.
I had just recently become acquainted with her books.
Remember the black and white photos
that were always in the middle.
Turn to those immediately.
First.
First thing.
And I wouldn't know what was going on in the story.
Totally.
That's how I saw that picture in the John Wayne Gacy book
that my cousin Marty had.
Right.
That haunted me forever and landed me here on the podcast, My Favorite Murder.
How fortuitous.
It really has been quite fortuitous.
Okay. So I was thrilled that she was going to be in town. The day of her signing was pretty crappy,
lots of sleet, maybe some snow. I can't remember all the meteorological nightmare
that was that day, but it was bad. But not for this fledgling murderino. The bookstore that she
was at wasn't too far from my office, so I made the short drive over. When I got there, I was sort
of thrilled that there weren't a lot of people. And then in parentheses, it says, I'm sure Miss
Rule didn't have the same opinion. Anyway, she signed several books for me. And since there was hardly anyone around, we just started talking.
And then she asked if I'd like to get a coffee, which I did.
I can't remember if there was a coffee shop attached to the bookstore or just one next door.
But we sat with our cups and just talked like old friends.
Oh my God, for some reason, this is making me want to cry.
I was like, I mean, it's just like strange.
Or how do you meet people like that?
That sounds so lovely. And I feel like she had, you mean, it's just like stranger. How do you meet people like that? That sounds so
lovely. And I feel like she had, you know, she's one of those people I feel like I know her when
I'm remembering. It's like, that's my mom's friend, but it's not. It's somebody you don't know.
But I feel like the breadth of the her life and the different work she did, she's like an
interested person. Interested in as a great knack for making people
comfortable immediately around her.
Yeah.
Journalists, you know, all these things.
Serial killers.
Serial killers.
I mean, she was good.
Okay, so sorry.
To be honest, I can't remember what we discussed,
but I just remember thinking what a wonderful,
wonderful person she is.
She was very warm, but you knew she had a bit of toughness
to her in a good way, in
a way that many of us should emulate.
So that's it, just a nice conversation between two women.
On the flip side, there's my great grandmother.
My dear great grandma came to a small town in Wisconsin from Paris where she married
my great grandfather who owned a bar in town.
They had four children relatively quickly, although one child passed at a young age.
One of the bar patrons was a young man who, as my family history tells it, took a fancy
to my grandmother.
He was much younger than she was, and she had small children, but apparently that didn't
stop them.
At this point, I'd also like to interject that it was during this period that my great
grandmother took up gardening, like a lot of gardening, and she fenced in that garden
so nobody could get to it but her.
It wasn't long after this man entered her life and the gardening was blooming that my
great-grandfather passed away from an alleged heart attack.
He was 42.
My grandmother sold the bar for a decent amount of money.
She then married this young man.
She kept gardening and he worked for the railroad, and in those days that made for quite a good
living, plus there was always the railroad and in those days that made for quite a good living plus there was always
the railroad pension.
Apparently the marriage was not the happiest and as luck would have it, husband number
two suddenly passed away from a heart attack.
He was 30.
Oh my god.
So great grandma now had inheritance number two.
At some point she turned her home into a boarding house and that's where husband number three
comes in.
He was allegedly a renter at her home into a boarding house and that's where husband number three comes in He was allegedly a renter at her home. He was older than she was and gasp
Worked for the railroad. Holy shit. Oh my god
He also had a much bigger pension than husband number two because he had been with the railroad company longer
They got and stayed married for about ten years and then he passed away from, do you see where I'm going here?
A goddamn heart attack.
Did they write, do you see where I'm going here?
Yep, yep.
Love it.
You would think people would be questioning all these deaths,
but they lived in a small Wisconsin town,
and this was about 100 years or so ago.
Maybe the whole autopsy thing didn't happen frequently.
I do know that both within the small community and the family,
there are several, including my 88-year-old mother, who think that this woman had something to do with
all the deaths. It turns out that in that fenced garden were quite a few native Wisconsin plants
that can cause heart attacks or simulate the effects of a heart attack when ingested. I did
want to end with this. I am in my sixth decade on this planet and
I've often thought that I've lived a very ordinary life, but I've come to realize that
within every so-called ordinary life are extraordinary moments. After writing this, I realized that
I've had some pretty interesting experiences and rule hidden room, black widow relative.
Nobody is ever just ordinary. Nobody. We need to remember that about ourselves.
Stay sexy and don't ever think that you're anything less
than extraordinary, Lori.
Oh my God, Lori, what a perfect fucking email.
What a beautiful, rich tapestry of an email.
You know what my mind goes to?
The last husband was real, true love, 10 years.
It's a long time not to kill someone
when you've killed the other ones.
And he actually died of a heart attack.
Almost like it was her karma that her,
the one she actually loved died of a real heart attack.
Do you know what you just did
is you wrote an incredible screenplay right there.
That is like, right?
Isn't that irony?
Isn't that like a bunch of this paradox or whatever,
like a bunch of those big $10 vocabulary words
you can slap on there,
but like then she would be like,
no, no, the one I wanted all along.
That's beautiful.
Let's write it.
Let's write it.
Don't kill people with weeds or plants.
Don't do it.
Don't do it.
Don't do it.
That's it.
Thank you guys.
Amazing emails.
Bartenders, please send your emails
to myfavoritemurder at gmail.com.
We're gonna need it.
Bartender stories, yes.
Bartender stories, please.
And what you think is the ultimate thrift store
victory story.
Or even a medium.
Doesn't have to be ultimate.
Did I once tell you that I bought a really cute jacket
from a thrift store, like an old 60s sailor jacket,
and inside was a little piece of paper
with the word victory on it?
Really?
So I got the victory that you were just talking about,
the thrift store victory.
A full circle.
Crazy, I think I still have it somewhere.
We will die tonight.
That was it.
No, I can't leave the house.
Stay sexy.
And don't get murdered.
For 24 hours.
Goodbye.
Elvis, do you want a cookie?
This has been an Exactly Right production.
Our senior producer is Alejandra Keck.
Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo.
This episode was mixed by 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!