EPISODE 17 TRANSCRIPT
Like the MFM podcast this site is not about big facts and truths so somethings may be incorrect.
May 19, 2016
17 – SE7ENteen
This week’s favorite murders include the killing of 13 year old Jennifer Moore in Novato, CA, and the murder-suicide of pro-wrestler Chris Benoit and his family. Plus tons of personal stories, shit talking, staying sexy, and not getting murdered.
Episode 17: SE7ENteen By Kristine M.
Feral Audio
*My Favorite Murder Theme Song*
*Karen singing ‘My favorite murder…’*
*Karen sighs audibly*
*Georgia laughs*
Georgia: What was that about, that breath?
Karen: I don’t know I guess I was just starting to clear a channel for this episode.
Georgia: Mm-hmm
*Georgia laughs*
Karen: Get ready for what was to come.
Georgia: The ride of your life.
Karen: Get ready *laughs* for a rollercoaster of emotion.
*Georgia laughs*
Karen: Are you ready?
Georgia: I’m ready!
Karen: Let’s do episode seventeen of ‘My Favorite Murder’ starring Georgia Hardstark
*Karen laughs*
Georgia: and Karen Kilgariff
*Karen laughs*
Karen: Hi everybody!
Georgia: Hi! Here we are!
Karen: Hi.
Georgia: Hi.
Karen: Welcome if you just started. Uhhh… Hi! What’s going on? In your life?
Georgia: Hi! How are you guys? Why do you like murder so much?
Karen: What’s up with you? Did you see something weird as an 8-year old?
*Georgia laughs*
Karen: Or have you always had a weird feeling inside?
Georgia: Mm-huh. Can you talk to anyone else in your life about it? Is that why you’re here? IS that no one else is interested and you’re a freak?
Karen: Yeah, cuz that’s why we’re here!
Georgia: Heyyy!
Karen: Ummm… so… G-good. Good on ya!
Georgia: So here we are. So that was the intro.
Karen: Yeah. These are getting better I think.
*Georgia laughs*
Georgia: I feel like-
Karen: I think we’re getting very strong.
Georgia: I think we’re professionals now.
Karen: People are like, I just start, I hit play on this podcast, and now I don’t know what’s happening. I’m not sure if it actually started.
Georgia: Yeah. People are just talking at each other.
*Karen clears her throat*
Georgia: Are you, I feel a little pressure, do you?
Karen: Oh yeah, be-*laughs* Guys our ratings went through the roof.
Georgia: Our ratings just blew… I mean, let’s just say it.
Karen: Let’s just say it. We think there’s a computer hacker that’s gone on to iTunes and hacked us into Number 1.
Georgia: And clearly they love us. For some reason this hacker…
Karen: Andrew Solomson, if this is you, thank you my friend. You’re a good person.
*Georgia laughing*
Georgia: It’s insane! We’re number 1 on the iTunes comedy podcast list!
Karen: Yeah
Georgia: Our, not our picture, but our logo k-it’s so exciting!
Karen: Yeah, it’s super cool. And we do want to thank Jack O’Brian who’s the host of the ‘Cracked’ podcast, that can’t be a coincidence that that thing got posted and then suddenly all kinds of people are like, “Heyyy, I just discovered your podcast!” So thanks, Jack, you’re the best. And easy on the eyes!
Georgia: Pretty cute. Dimples.
Karen: But he’s married. Calm down everyone, he’s married.
Georgia: Everyone chill.
Karen: But yeah, that was super fun to be on that podcast.
Georgia: It was so much fun, he’s great. This is all like… this is all insane. I feel like…
Karen: It’s weird that we had an idea at a party. You had the gumption to actually make me do it. And then something like that would happen.
Georgia: I do that. I make people do stuff a lot.
Karen: It’s good. It’s good.
Georgia: Otherwise we’ll just fall into a deep, dark depression.
Karen: Yeah! Same here! I’ll go into the TV room, close the curtains, like Mortitia Addams. And then watch British procedurals until I die of old age.
Georgia: This is why my blinds that you see right here, my drapes, are sheer because otherwise it’s just depression-ville.
Karen: Oh that’s true!
Georgia: You know what I mean? Because when you can’t be in the complete dark, you can’t be in the complete dark.
Karen: Are you telling me we need to go to Ikea and get some new curtains for my TV room?
Georgia: We are abso-fucking-tively saying that.
Karen: I’m going to burn those curtains. I have straight up black out curtains in my TV room.
Georgia: Yeah, I have that in my bedroom. But not, but in here, it’s like, I’ll get depressed.
Karen: Yeah. *laughs* I think you’ve cured my depression.
Georgia: I know. It’s very helpful. Although at the same time I don’t, I have this thing where Dusk makes me really fucking depressed.
Karen: Dust?
Georgia: DUSK.
Karen: OH. Yes. Yeah.
Georgia: It just reminds me of being a kid, which sucks, as everyone knows.
Karen: Being home alone, and being like, do I make my own dinner? I’m only 9.
Georgia: I’m not going to eat anything because it’s too depressing to eat alone.
Karen: Oh, I had the opposite reaction. That’s funny! I was like, I can make toast. I’ll make a whole loaf of toast.
*Georgia laughs*
Georgia: Cheese toast, man. Comforts you. Comforts you.
Karen: It’s like, uh, kids recipes. Like crackers with butter on them. How gross is that?
Georgia: What about, did you ever melt butter, mix in brown sugar and vanilla, and just eat that out of a cup?
*Karen cracks up laughing*
*Georgia laughs*
Georgia: Never done that? Let me just Tell you, it’s fucking great.
Karen: It’s like a poor man’s chocolate chip cookie.
*Karen laughs*
Georgia: It’s fucking delicious.
Karen: You’re basically taking everything good in chocolate chip cookies and none of the bullshit.
Georgia: Nope.
Karen: Fuck baking soda!
Georgia: Totally. Raw eggs? Who needs ya?
Karen: Go away chickens. I’m just gunna eat the good stuff. I love that. Wait – did you include, incorporate any chocolate chips in there?
Georgia: No. I don’t think we ever had… we had very little food when I was a kid in my house, at all times. Um, so it was like, what do I have on hand? I’m going to wrap a slice of turkey around a pickle spear, and that’s dinner.
*Karen laughing*
Karen: yeah, totally. I do have a very early memory of drinking cough syrup one time, and just, and jumping on the bed. That’s what I was doing that afternoon by myself.
*Georgia laughs*
Georgia: It’s cool that you knew that cough syrup drinking would be fun. Like I don’t think, if I had known that I would have been…
Karen: I mean if there’s ever a sign that a child is going to be an alcoholic FOR SURE, that was IT. That was like the Tom Hanks episode of uh “Family..” was it not Family Matters? – “Family Ties”.
Georgia: Yeah. Oh right.
Karen: Family Ties. When he drinks maraschino cherry liquid and shit.
Georgia: Gross!!!
Karen: And you’re just like, “What’s happening!?”
Georgia: I, uh, once cut open a tea leaf, a tea bag, poured the tea leaves into a little bit of paper towel, rolled it up like a joint, cuz I wanted to see what it was like to smoke cigarettes, I mean, I was like 10. And I smoked that in front of a mirror to see how cool I looked.
Karen: Did you look so cool?
Georgia: I… No.
*both laughing*
Karen: Did you barf from that?
Georgia: Basically, it lit on fire. You know?
Karen: Yeah, I would imagine that would go up pretty easily.
Georgia: The point is, don’t let your kids be latchkey kids.
Karen: Well one time my mom was home, she was just on the phone, and when she got on the horn, she would be on it for an hour and a half. And I just lit the bed on fire. I was playing with matches [laughs] and I was just like, it was like, strike a match, watch the flame go up, hold it until it got down to my fingers…
Georgia: Done it a million times…
Karen: drop it on the bed. Cuz I was like, 5, so it was like, well I’m done with that. Drop it on the bed.
Georgia: And this was the 80s. So this was the most flammable… everything is SO…
Karen: POLYESTER.
Georgia: They like spray extra flammable shit on everything.
Karen: Yes. This was like when they were trying to light children on fire-
Georgia: -Totally-
Karen: -in any way possible. Yeah. I’m pretty sure what the top layer was an electric blanket, which is also the most flammable thing of all time. And so basically I started a fire and it got into a like, say a 1 foot ring of fire in the middle of the bed-
Georgia: -Mm-hmm-
Karen: -and I went out to tell my mom, there’s a fire on the bed, and she was like, I walked up to her, and she, I’ll never forget, she’s on the phone with the crazy long cord, it was mustard yellow, she was walking around the kitchen doing stuff, and I was literally like, imagine a 5 year old me with my finger up, “Um pardon me, ma’am?” And she’s like, “UGH!! GET OUT OF HERE!” And then, so I went back and checked it, and now it was a 3-foot ring…
Georgia: Fuck!!! Are you serious!?
Karen: Yeah. And then that time, I was like, “Mom!” And she was like, “Honey, I" *grunts* and I was like “THE BED’S ON FIRE!”
*Georgia laughing*
Georgia: God!!! That is so cool.
Karen: And then, suddenly, I had a bad reputation in my family! Oh, I’m the asshole.
Georgia: Well who has a number 1 murder podcast now, Mom?
*Karen laughing*
Karen: This is the ultimate revenge. Oh, that’s hilarious.
Georgia: Um, fuck.
Karen: Also, our numbers are skyrocketing in Britain, the UK…
Georgia: Australia loves us.
Karen: Ummm… Latvia, I hear we’re doing…
Georgia: Really?
*Karen laughing*
Karen: No, I made that up.
Georgia: That’s from, where my family’s from.
Karen: Is it? For, really?
Georgia: Maybe a bunch of Hardstarks are listening.
Karen: That would be amazing. Yeah Longford Gallway, Ireland, heads up! That’s where my people are from. Represent.
Georgia: Nice! Let’s, well they ran us out because we’re Jews, so fuck off, Latvia.
Karen: Wait! They ran us out because we’re Catholics!
Georgia: I feel like we were made to have a podcast together.
Karen: Yeah. Our ancestors wanted this for us.
Georgia: Our ancestors and our shitty little kid selves.
Karen: Um, I just want to mention someone on the Facebook page. If you’re new to this podcast, we’re all about that Facebook page, so please join it. And join in the wonderful, um, sometimes quite frightening conversations that go on there. Someone brought up the fact that we pitched out a very interesting and exciting 9-1-1 phone call identifier game, and we also mentioned on the Cracked podcast, but we still haven’t done. And some people are pretty pissed. I explained that I’m very scared of 9-1-1 calls. But they want us to do it anyway, so that might be a good Mini.
Georgia: Yeah, for sure. I really want to know if we can tell, yesterday I watched some videos of Ted Bundy being interviewed, only to see if I could tell if I had met him, if I would have known. You know?
Karen: Yeah. Yes.
Georgia: Like it’s the same thing with 9-1-1 calls, I want to know, if we want to play 3 calls by husbands reporting their wives dead, two of them are legit, one of them the husband killed her. And we want to know if we can tell which one is the one who killed her.
Karen: Yeah. So we have to listen to two real 9-1-1 calls of a man whose wife has just been killed.
Georgia: Oh! You know… When you say it like that!...
Karen: I just want to walk you through it.
Georgia: No, no, no, it’s…
Karen: Everyone’s being real… playing very fast and loose about the idea of this “game”, quote unquote, called “Nightmare Fuel”.
Georgia: Yeah you’re right. What about 2? Two are fake, one is real.
Karen: That I could handle. If we play it once… Because I have listened to these calls. I’ve watched plenty of forensic files or whatever, but they’re just horrifying.
Georgia: I know…
Karen: Even when they’re fake, I think they might even be more horrifying when they’re fake, because it’s like embarrassing.
Georgia: How about we don’t do it…?
*both laughing*
Karen: Let’s pitch a ton of great games that people love the idea of and then never do.
Georgia: Why doesn’t just someone play the game with the Facebook followers? And that can be on THEM.
Karen: That’s a good idea. And then report back how scarred you are.
Georgia: Yeah! How scarred you are, and what percentage of people knew.
Karen: It’s interesting you bring up the Ted Bundy interview, though, because I, as well as a couple people who are listening, and have been talking about it, am re-reading ‘The Stranger Beside Me,’ the Ann Rule classic, who is a crime writer who worked with Ted Bundy on what was basically a suicide hotline in Seattle in the 70s.
Georgia: Like can you get more… classic than that?
Karen: I mean, talk about, she was meant to write that book, and meant to do that, but… the part I’m on right now, he went to this park in, I believe it was like the outer part of Seattle, in this really awesome, like, lake park, I can’t remember what it was called, sorry. And he approached six different women that day to help him with his boat that wasn’t actually there.
Georgia: Holy shit!
Karen: “Help! Can you help me with my boat?” Then he gets into the car and then he says, “Oh the boat’s actually at home, sorry I didn’t explain that.” And that’s where he got one girl at least, I’m thinking he may have gotten two that day. I can’t remember. I just wrote this yesterday. I keep reading it, and then falling asleep out of, I think I need to leave these facts, and go into a dream world. But it just makes me think, he must have been so low-key, because he looked, like he’d wear a tennis outfit, and he was really good looking, and he was kind of tall, you know.
Georgia: Yeah, but here’s the thing. In the interviews, he won’t make eye contact with the interviewer. He’ll go for long stretches of time, like looking down and away, and not looking up.
Karen: Yeah.
Georgia: He also has like, some kind of weird jerky movements a little bit. So I’m wondering, if he, like, did he like, get those after he went to prison, and after he killed a bunch of people? Or was he like that then, and would I even have cared. You know?
Karen: Right. Yeah. I mean, that’s interesting. Did he have like a tick, almost?
Georgia: Yeah, and I’m like that’s creepy, but I’m like is that because I know that’s Ted Bundy?
Georgia: Right
Georgia: He looks like someone my mom would have dated.
Karen: Yeah! He looks like a guy that would be in like a Lipton Tea commercial in the late 70s.
Georgia: Yeah like with his pretty young wife, they’re toasting to dee… they’re rolling it up and smoking it in a…
*Karen laughing*
Karen: they’re smoking some tea together and having a good time.
Georgia: Yeah.
Karen: But it is, I bet you he was, I think the girls that paid attention, um, were like, you know, at first started talking to him, and then kept on paying attention, and like, got into it, got that weird feeling, and of course once they got to the car, and like, no boat, see you later, I’ve gotta get back to my friends-
Georgia: But as we’ve – Oh sorry, go ahead.
Karen: No, I think you were going to say what I was about to say.
Georgia: As we’ve said so many times, you couldn’t be a fucking bitch back then. And like, you were taught to be nice and friendly and he fucking preyed upon that. And he probably was really good at turning on the charm.
Karen: Oh, 100%
Georgia: Right? So he didn’t have a twitch, and he seemed very nice.
Karen: I bet the twitch came after he was incarcerated, and he was just like, I’m going crazy.
Georgia: I bet that’s what happened.
Karen: I want to kill.
Georgia: How badly would you have wanted to interview him?
Karen: Hmmm… I don’t know! I’m not sure about that… because I like the story of what they do, I don’t want to know that person.
Georgia: Yeah…
Karen: Or be near that person… cuz ultimately, they’re a little bit of the devil.
Georgia: Yeah. There’s the Ice Man interviews-
Karen: oh yeah
Georgia: -documentary, and that guy seems normal and likable. He’s the guy who was a mobster hitman, but he’s also like a family man and he’s just casu-
Karen: Kills hundreds of people.
Georgia: Yeah. Casually talking about doing it.
Karen: Yeah.
Georgia: And he had more charm to me, and like likability, like, like, like. Than Ted Bundy did.
Karen: Well, I mean, but he’s gotta be a sociopath, or he would have been eaten alive by guilt and remorse and shame and all that.
Georgia: Right. But I don’t think he ever killed women and children. So maybe, it wasn’t like… Ted Bundy enjoyed…
Karen: YES, he sure did.
Georgia: Like got off on it.
Karen: This guy was like, it was his job, and he probably felt a little self-righteous, and like, “Well, they owe money.” Or, “They wronged someone.”
Georgia: Well, I mean, I support that…. NOOO, I don’t.
*Karen laughing*
Karen: That’s why mafia hits don’t interest me!
Georgia: Yeah!
Karen: It’s almost like a business transaction. It’s like, don’t deal with people who will kill you, cuz they’ll kill you. They tell you they’re going to kill you. You borrow money from them. You don’t pay it back. They kill you. That’s very…
Georgia: They have a history of killing you.
Karen: Yeah. They’re good with killing.
Georgia: Yet, somehow we still date men.
*both laughing*
Karen: Come on, let’s not be those people.
Georgia: Let’s fucking get in there.
*Karen laughing*
Karen: No…
Georgia: No, no we won’t, I’m kidding.
*Karen laughs*
*Georgia sighs audibly*
Karen: All the ratings drop to zero. ‘Ohhh, I see what this whole podcast…’
Georgia: ‘Oh, they’re feminists…’
Karen: ‘Oh, Ghostbusters, two’
*both laughing*
Georgia: Here, here. Let’s quickly do some, what’s the word, like…
Karen: Housekeeping?
Georgia: Housekeeping!!!
Karen: Housekeeping! Ding Dong.
Georgia: Housekeeping! Thank you!
Karen: ‘Housekeeping!’
Georgia: Like a hotel maid. If you’re new at listening to this, I, Georgia, forget words regularly, and Karen-
Karen: And I, Karen, do as well.
Georgia: No, you remember them for me.
Karen: Oh, is that how you…
Georgia: I think that’s how I see it. So My Favorite Murder shirts! *singing* The first o-ffi-cial shirts are up!
Karen: The shirts! We have ‘em!
Georgia: They’re so cute. It’s the adorable drawing, the adorable murder drawing of Karen and I surrounded by a bunch of murder weapons, it says “My Favorite Murder” on it and it’s by Michael Ramstead, that is this fucking awesome artist.
Karen: Yeah. I love that picture.
Georgia: And he let us buy it and it’s so you can go to myfavoritemurdershirts.com/collecti.... Just go to myfavoritemurdershirts.com and buy a shirt. It’s only open, the shop’s going to be open for like 2 weeks, so get on it. We’ll probably sell more later, but, I probably shouldn’t say that. I should have said, ‘Oh my god, limited time only!’
Karen: Of course, you have 4 hours, how about that?
Georgia: And you guys, alright, I’m just going to say one word. Patreon.
Karen: Oh yes.
Georgia: How do we… I feel weird.
Karen: No. We’re doing it!
Georgia: Okay.
Karen: I mean, it’s a thing that people get to, it’s not our thing. People have the option of paying money for a podcast they like. That’s just something everybody does. Everyone I know does it. Everyone with a podcast that has a bunch of listeners does it.
Georgia: Okay. It’s patrion.com/myfavoritemurder
Karen: Georgia set one up. We don’t know what we’re doing. We’re still finding out. But something’s there.
Georgia: Yeah, if you want to be like, you know what, I like this, here’s a buck.
Karen: Yeah, we figure if we have a bunch of people listening, we might as well be like, oh, we’re a real podcast that does things real podcasts do.
Georgia: Yeah! And I pay for music and movies, and books on tape.
Karen: Yeah.
Georgia: So, if you feel like it, no presh.
Karen: Yeah. We don’t have to feel guilty.
Georgia: Okay, I won’t. Goodbyeeee.
*both laughing*
Georgia: Okay, that’s the podcast. Byeeee!
Karen: Byeeee
Georgia: Bye Steff.
Karen: No, it’s become all housekeeping. On my end of housekeeping, I just want to commit, I want to improve every episode. I want to be a better podcaster every time we do this.
Georgia: Okay.
Karen: I really want to stop saying, “Literally”. I don’t know why I say it so much.
Georgia: Don’t make me say, “You literally want to stop.”
Karen: ‘I literally want to kill myself.’ It’s that thing, where when I hear other people do it, I roll my eyes internally, of like, “How dumb are you?” then I listen back to this podcast, and I’m like, “I am the girl I hate!”
Georgia: No, but when you say it, I hear you saying it, but I don’t think it’s too much. I hear, you say it wish so much conviction. It’s like when I say, “FUCK!!!” it’s like, I mean it. You know? It’s like
Karen: ‘Literally’ is my ‘fuck’.
Georgia: Yeah, it’s like a way to express how passionate I feel about something.
Karen: I’m just going to work on my vocabulary.
Georgia: Okay, I don’t want to say ‘like’ as much anymore.
Karen: Oh, good luck with that!
Georgia: Good LIKE with that!
*both laughing*
Georgia: Oh no, don’t laugh at that.
Karen: It’s funny, it was fast and funny. That’s how I like it.
Georgia: Okay. Should we get to the…
Karen: Oh!
Georgia: Oh go for it.
Karen: I was really shitty about the cops that worked that Shandra Leavey case last week. I did the thing I hate when I hear on other podcasts, when it happens a lot, I think it’s just a natural effect of going through a case and being bummed out. I was so ‘armchair quarterback’ like, “They didn’t even… find a CLUE!” and I was like, “Easy for me to say, I’ve never been a cop.” The funniest part about it is half of my family are in the San Francisco police department.
Georgia: Oh really?
Karen: It’s not like I am against cops, or judge them, or anything like that, it’s something that a lot of people in my family do. Good men. Smart men. So um yeah. When I listened back to that, I was like, “Oh, no. Don’t do that!”
Georgia: It’s for, as someone who studies a lot, you and I study a lot of true crime, it’s frustrating to see how slow a lot of the stuff is, but I think we’re not noticing, we’re not understanding or paying attention to how much is put into place so that innocent people don’t, how many rules and regulations and restrictions, all this red tape, like even getting, when they can’t get a fucking search warrant, and it’s like, you should have been able to get a search warrant, it’s frustrating. But it’s put in place so that people like you and I, so far in our lives…, who haven’t committed murder.
Karen: And also, yeah, so cops can’t just come into your house whenever they want, and be like, we kind of suspect you, here’s the paperwork.
Georgia: Right. So it’s frustrating when there’s a lot of evidence that the person did it, or that something’s going on and there needs to be, like, immediate action taken, but there’s you know…
Karen: And also the more these stories you read, you know, which is I know 100% that cops know this, is every second counts, so like the fact that things got delayed by weeks or months is like, makes you want to pull your hair out. But I also think that’s a thing, that’s been steadily improving since that time. I mean, the more things like this happen.
Georgia: Right. We need more renegade cops. Like in the fucking, horrible cop in the show, “The Family” that got cancelled.
Karen: Oh! Can you believe our ringing endorsement of that show that immediately gets cancelled?
Georgia: That was hilarious.
Karen: Poison.
Georgia: …Us? No. We’re fucking, we’re changing the system.
*Karen laughing*
Georgia: Uhhh, should we do our favorite murders?
Karen: Oh… one more thing! Sorry! Housekeeping!
*Georgia laughing*
Georgia: this is how the whole show goes. I think we should do it. Karen mentions another…
*Karen laughing*
Karen: I just want to say, we just found this out, we get to go to the LA Podcast Fest this year, which will be September 23-25, at the Sofetel in Los Angeles across from the Beverly Center, one of the greatest malls in this town.
Georgia: I think it’s… yeah it’s a prison.
*Karen laughing*
Karen: the Beverly Center Prison?
Georgia: I think Alie was saying that on the other podcast, that she thought it looks like a prison when she first moved to LA.
Karen: That’s hilarious, because of all those crazy levels of parking.
Georgia: And it’s just concrete.
Karen: And so many prisons have Sephoras.
*Georgia laughing*
Karen: But yeah, that’s in September, we figured we’d tell you now, so if you want to come, they have a ton of great podcasts.
Georgia: They have a ton of live shows.
Karen: Yeah, all live shows. You basically stay in the hotel. If you go to LAPodFest.com, you can register and get a cheap hotel room now and then everything takes place in the hotel.
Georgia: I’m really excited. I’ve always wanted to do the LA Podcast Festival, I didn’t know how. And you just made a call.
Karen: Yeah. That’s what I do. I’ve got juice, and I’m willing to use it for this podcast. Alright, I swear to god, I’m done this time. I’m LITERALLY done now.
Georgia: “Literally, like totally done.” So the point of this podcast, if you’re new, is that, the title is “My Favorite Murder” and Karen and I tell each other our favorite murders. Sometimes there’s a theme. Sometimes there’s not. Today? Absolutely no theme.
*Karen laughing*
Karen: nnno thank you. I think it’s your turn to go first.
Georgia: Is it?
Karen: I think so!
Georgia: Phew! Okay, this is an interesting one that I’m really excited about.
Karen: Okay.
Georgia: So, a lot of people have found the podcast through my husband Vince’s podcast, “We Watch Wrestling.” Which is also on Feral. And a lot of ladies on the podcast, or men, have said, “I listen to My Favorite Murder, and you listen to We Watch Wrestling, and sometimes there’s an overlap.” And they get excited, and it’s silly.
Karen: Are you talking about cute couples that listen to the cute couples Georgia and Vince’s different podcasts?
Georgia: Thank you!
Karen: It’s like you’re the Prince William and Queen Vickie, what’s her name?
*Georgia laughing*
Georgia: Queen VICKIE? I think it’s Queen Vickie.
Karen: Is it Queen Vickie and Prince William of England?
Georgia: It’s definitely Queen Vickie.
Karen: Hey England! Let us know if that’s right.
*both laughing*
Georgia: We just lost sooo many listen… we just lost Queen Vickie listening, she’s like, ‘Fuck that bitch.’ Alright, so there’s this murder he told me about when we started dating that I didn’t know about because it’s in the wrestling world, and it’s the murder/suicide of and by Chris Benoit. Have you heard of that? “CHRIS BEN-WA”
Karen: How old is it?
Georgia: Um, it happened in 2007?
Karen: I think I did hear about it, but I know nothing about wrestling at all.
Georgia: Yeah, I didn’t when I first met him, and now I know all this stuff, so it kind of makes sense to me, so I wanted to explain it because it’s actually really fucking interesting and crazy and murder/suicides are like… they’re really interesting to me because it’s like encapsulated in this home usually, the horrors that go on in this little home where people have lived and have been happy and feel safe.
Karen: And it somehow degrades into this insanity.
Georgia: Yeah, and what’s crazy about this one is the murder of his wife and his young son, and it happened over the whole weekend.
Karen: Ugh…
Georgia: So he kills his wife Friday night, like lives in his house, being like, “What the fuck am I going to do?” Well… let’s start from the beginning.
Karen: Sorry, so when we talk about that sometimes, that anxiety, I feel like I’ve had that anxiety of like, after you kill somebody when you don’t know, you’re in a panic, but mine is about different stuff…
*Karen laughs*
Georgia: Like not when you murder someone?
*Karen laughing*
Karen: but it’s almost like, when you say, like, when you talk about that, and I’m immediately like, oh I know how that feels. Where it’s like, ‘No, Karen, you have no idea how that feels…’
Georgia: I guess you can sympathize with being like, ‘I had this one little freak out and did something that’s unchangeable,’
Karen: Yessss
Georgia: “And I wish, if I could go back and take it back, I could, time isn’t a flat circle, why is a flat circle, so I can change it if I pray hard enough, or whatever.”
Karen: Yeah, nope, yeah. And meanwhile you’re just walking room to room in a house that no longer looks familiar, and you’re yeah, you’re experiencing freak outs on a whole new level.
Georgia: Yeah, and life doesn’t feel real sometimes. So one would think you could change it and go back-
Karen: -right-
Georgia: -but you can’t.
Karen: But just like when you send a bad text… Sorry.
*Georgia laughing*
Karen: That is permanently sent.
Georgia: Just like when you accidentally send everyone an email. It’s the same thing, right?
Karen: Yeah, that’s why we always put a 48-hour hold on our social media exchanges. Let the emotions pass…
Georgia: Oh… that’s smart…
Karen: …and then respond.
Georgia: Another good thing to do is write the response, and send it to a friend.
Karen: Oo yeah, that’s a good idea!
Georgia: Just be like, “Hold onto this for me.”
Karen: “What does this look like to you? Total insanity? Good to know.”
Georgia: Yeah. But then when you’re in the moment, you’re like, “I don’t wanna know. I’m right!”
Karen: Oh my god almost immediately like, “Go fuck yourself.”
Georgia: That was the right thing to do.
Karen: yeah. And just stand by it and never change that stance.
Georgia: Even if you know you’re wrong.
Karen: Yeah.
Georgia: Okay. So Chris Benoit was a Canadian professional wrestler, he had a 22-year career, he held 22 titles, and he had the victory of the World Heavyweight Championship Match in Wrestlemania…. What are two Xs next to each other?
Karen: That’s twenty…?
Georgia: Thank you.
*both laughing*
Karen: Or that’s almost super dirty.
Georgia: Yeah. Third grade was a hard year for me.
*Karen laughing*
Karen: couldn’t concentrate?
Georgia: No.
Karen: Okay.
Georgia: Just smoking too many…
*Both laugh*
Karen: tea cigarettes…
*Georgia laughing*
Georgia: tea cigarettes… So I didn’t even know about this guy, but he was huge, like The Rock. I don’t think he was as big as The Rock, which is a wrestler everyone knows, but he was pretty big up there. He was widely respected by viewers and peers, and people really liked this guy. He was a little weird, and a little quiet and intense. A lot of people said he was “intense” but he was a nice guy, he had a lot of friends, but, so, it suggests that depression and brain damage accrued from numerous concussions, and contributed to him committing these awful crimes.
Karen: The concussion thing is big!
Georgia: Well, we’re going to get into that.
Karen: Okay.
Georgia: Yeah. It really is.
Karen: And then you just hit play on the movie “Concussion.”
Georgia: And we’re just going to sit and listen to the whole thing.
Karen: Listen to Will Smith do this accent and explain to you why concussions are bad.
Georgia: Is that a good movie?
Karen: I’ve never seen it.
Georgia: Okay.
Karen: I don’t want to watch that shit.
Georgia: I would watch it if it wasn’t Will Smith. Because that guy is actually really fascinating.
Karen: That doctor?
Georgia: Yeah. I watched a documentary with him, and he’s like…
Karen: I bet it’s actually a great movie, I just of all the things I have to do in my day, sitting down to realize how basically they’ve subsidized damaging people’s brains, it’ll never stop happening, there’s too much money, and it’s a machine where people care more about making money than human beings, I just get really depressed.
Georgia: There’s a period at the end, that’s all true. That’s all. Well here’s the thing, one of his moves was the “Diving Head Butt.”
Karen: Oh noooo….
Georgia: So he’d stand at the top of the turn buckle, you know when they climb up high? And he would spread his arms out, and just, like, do a fucking fall. Head butting the other guy on the canvas, either on the back or elsewhere.
Karen: So using his head, basically, as a weapon.
Georgia: Yep. Like, freefall head.
Karen: Jesus Christ.
Georgia: So he had another signature move which will come back, called the “Crippler Cross Face.” And this is a submission hold where he would lock the opponent’s arms behind him with his legs while pulling back on his neck. It’s almost like a hardcore headlock. But like, on the face, and sometimes the move would even knock people unconscious. So we’ll get back to that.
Karen: Oh… So like, real unconscious? Not wrestling ‘unconscious’?
Georgia: Yes. Real unconscious.
Karen: Okay.
Georgia: So on June 25, 2007, the police were called to Benoit’s, like incredible gated security hardcore mansion, and they couldn’t get in because of all the gating and stuff, which they could’ve climbed over, but they were too crazy Doberman pinchers, sorry, German Shepherds, roaming the front lawn.
Karen: Eee…
Georgia: Like, this guy was hardcore security. Showing that he had a lot of paranoia. But also was rich and famous. So, understandable.
Karen: Yeah… but I bet a lot of people don’t have like, Nazi dogs on the property.
Georgia: Totally, yes. And so, the home was in Fayettville, Georgia, but it was like an unincorporated part, so they had to get the next door neighbor, Holly Schreifer, who was a good friend of Nancy Benoit, the wife and would sometimes take care of the dogs. So she had clopped…? Clopped on over the fence
*Both laughing*
Karen: She was part horse?
Georgia: She clippity clopped. She did a, what’s a horse maneuver?
Karen: Ummm, you know, some de…sage?
Georgia: She did some dressage right over the fence.
Karen: That’s a general part of…
Georgia: Making fun of murder – no making light of murder, that’s what we.
Karen: Or just making light of mistakes in our mouths.
Georgia: That’s it, this Holly person sounds like a good person. So she got over it, then she went into the house, which you’re like, “Oh, civilian, don’t do that…”
Karen: Wait, so the cops were waiting outside, she goes over the fence, to open all the shit, but then she goes into the house, she sees everything first.
Georgia: Well she goes over the fence, locks the dogs in the house, in like a little spot.
Karen: Oh.
Georgia: And is like, “I’ll just do a once around.” Cuz she can’t get ahold of her friend Nancy.
Karen: Holly… Let the COPS do the once around.
Georgia: Don’t do once around.
Karen: You’re….ewww.
Georgia: She finds the kid Daniel. So, should I… Basically, he did that ‘crippler cross face’ on the kid.
Karen: Ugh…
Georgia: This little, I think he was seven.
Karen: No…
Georgia: There’s reports that he had something called, umm… where did it go. He had a genetic syndrome called “fragile x” meaning he was, met the criteria for autism. It’s inherited, it’s like an intellectual disability. But there’s conflicting evidence of that so I don’t know if that’s true. So, what happened was, this is all over the place, isn’t it.
Karen: No, No, No, it’s good.
Georgia: Oh you just nodded your head and I thought…
Karen: No, I have, I nodded my head so I don’t picture Holly walking through the house and what she’s seeing, cuz that’s the bummer.
Georgia: Yes. So here’s how it took place. On Friday he kills his wife. And he leaves her bound at the ankles and wrists, he covers her in a sheet, and he leaves a bible by her body.
Karen: That’s not gunna work.
Georgia: I know. Died of asphyxiation. Had bruises on her back and stomach. And he had been physically violent with her in the past. He had been abusive. So-
Karen: Well cuz also, sorry but on top of concussions, he’s probably taking a bunch of steroids, right?
Georgia: Right, so they’re both taking a bunch of steroids, there’s a ton of…
Karen: The wife, too?
Georgia: Yeah. There’s a ton of marital discord, it’s on again-off again. They had just, she’d filed for divorce, and then didn’t go through with it, she leaves all the time. He’s possibly having an affair, there’s all these text messages between the two of them. I should say the book I was reading about it is called “Chris and Nancy” by Irvine Much..nick? Muchnick? It’s really good if you want to learn more about it in detail.
Karen: Was she a wrestler, too?
Georgia: Ye- Uh, no. She was like the heightman girl, you know the hot girls that come into the ring?
Karen: Hold the big card over their head?
Georgia: That’s… no that’s boxing I think.
*Both Laughing*
Georgia: She’d be his like, his side kick kind of like the woman in, and actually she was so interesting and gorgeous that her name at the time was just “Woman.” Was her like, handle.
*Karen laughing*
Karen: That’s how gorgeous she was. That she was reduced to a one word thing.
Georgia: Yeah. Yeah.
*Karen laughing*
Karen: Alright.
Georgia: So they got set up by her husband at the time as like, a, you know, to be like, “Oh she’s cheating with Benoit.” And then they ended up getting married, so it worked. So anyways, so…
Karen: So it’s a wrestling storyline that came true?
Georgia: -Yeah-
Karen: -So their lives are a bit surreal anyway?
Georgia: Yeah, definitely. Definitely.
Karen: Okay.
Georgia: So she, let’s see… There was a pillow leaning against her head. It sounds like what happened is they probably got into a big fight and it escalated. And he killed her. The weird part to me is that he tied her up. Because that’s shows like premeditation to me.
Karen: Mm-hmm.
Georgia: He didn’t just, like, hit her so hard, or get angry and strangle her. He tied her up. And then killed her.
Karen: I wonder, because, steroids, it’s like, I took speed for a little while in the 90s to lose weight.
Georgia: Sure, we all did.
Karen: And, right? Fun, fun? And it made me INSANE. Like, just, angry from the second I woke up in the morning, and if you’re on steroids, which is, they’re basically rage pills.
Georgia: Yeah.
Karen: So it’s two people on steroids, I’m sure that everything was…
Georgia: Intensified times a million?
Karen: Yeah! Like, and they’re reacting off each other but there’s not, it seems to me, I would assume, there’s not one person going, “Hey, let’s relax for one second.” It’s just everybody’s going through the roof.
Georgia: Escalation through the roof. And he was supposed to leave that weekend for another match and she was just so pissed he was leaving all the time. The amount of pills that they ended up finding in the house is just incredible. It’s, they found soma, and hydro-codeine, which is fucking heroine. Xanax, and all these, you know, Ambien, and of course steroids. And he was actually exempt from the rule that you can’t take steroids in WWE because he had ruined his body so badly with steroids that he couldn’t make testosterone on his own anymore, so he had to take steroids to get testosterone.
Karen: Oh, okay.
Georgia: So even though there’s a “no steroid” rule… He was exempt!
Karen: He was taking it medically.
Georgia: Yeah, but that’s so shady.
Karen: Right.
Georgia: That’s your solution for being fucked up on steroids? Is-
Karen: I’m such a bad coke addict, that I need to take coke.
Georgia: Right. I’ve ruined my ability to whatever. Anyways. All of the above.
*Karen laughing*
Karen: Right. Yeah.
Georgia: So between the two killings, about 3:30 pm on Saturday, um, it looks like he might have killed Daniel on Saturday, the next day. So he’s hanging out in his house with his fucking wife in the office dead, not knowing what to do. Calls his coworkers and he’s like, I can’t make it, my wife and kid have food poisoning, and they’re really sick. Kind of tells everyone that so they won’t call.
Karen: Yeah.
Georgia: So Daniel, the kid, was then suffocated in his own bedroom, a children’s bible was left by his body. And he had become kind of a religious fanatic at that point by reading, he was reading passages.
*Karen laughing*
Karen: and not just in the span of that weekend?
Georgia: Yeah, leading up to the murders. He killed his son with the chokehold. No bruises. And, um, yeah. He had needle marks in his arm suggesting he had been given growth hormones.
Karen: The son? Or the, Chris Benoit?
Georgia: The son. Because he was undersized because of this ‘Fragile X Syndrome’, that he supposedly had, but I don’t understand that completely, and I’m wondering if he gave him sedatives.
Karen: Oh…
Georgia: So he could…
Karen: So he could… yeah…
Georgia: You know what I mean?
Karen: Yes… That would almost be a tiny bit of a relief as hideous as that sounds…
Georgia: I agree… And I think in his mind, people have surmised, that he thought he was doing a mercy killing.
Karen: Of course.
Georgia: “I killed the mom, let’s just end this.” In the same way I think a lot of men who do the murder suicide shenanigans to their family, are like, “I lost all our money, I’m not going to make you live this way.” And kill the family.
Karen: Yeah.
Georgia: Which is fucking insane. “We’re good. We wanna live.” As someone who…
Karen: Well yeah, it’s like, it’s twisted as some sort of noble move, it’s total narcissism.
Georgia: It’s complete narcissism to think that they’re an extent ion of you,
Karen: And you get to make that call.
Georgia: Right.
Karen: That’s nuts.
Georgia: Right
Karen: And also, everybody’s in debt. Relax about it.
Georgia: It’s complete, it’s the person not wanting them to find out what a fucking that he wasn’t who he said he was.
Karen: Right. Well also this is classic drug brain, too.
Georgia: Yeah, yeah. So yeah, so he dies, he kills himself. He dies of asphyxiation. He was found hanging by the cord of a weight machine. So he goes down to the weight room and he’s sitting upright on a bench on, like, a weight bench, facing the weight machine so if you can imagine doing pull downs, what do they call them?
*Georgia laughing*
Georgia: I work out. A LOT. I, as you can see by my…
Karen: He did like 6 reps of pull downs. Okay
Georgia: Right. He was shirtless, his leg was extended. His right blah-bitty blah… The black nylon weight machine cable was around his neck. A strip of white towel was underneath to keep the cable from cutting into the skin. Which it’s like, you don’t deserve that, dude.
*Karen laughing*
Karen: Also, what’s the point?
Georgia: Yeah, and he was being held in a sitting position by the cable. So I think what he did, is he just let go of the weight and strangled himself.
Karen: Yeah.
Georgia: And it appears that he actually tried to maximize his own pain.
Karen: Oh…god…
Georgia: Which is so sad.
Karen: That’s horrible, that’s horrible.
Georgia: It sounds like he knew he did something wrong.
Karen: Yeah.
Georgia: It doesn’t sound like he was like, “I’m going to murder-suicide everyone.” It was like, here’s a mistake, compounded with a mistake, compounded with a mistake.
Karen: God it’s terrible.
Georgia: Yeah it really is.
Karen: He’s trapped in this horror show.
Georgia: Solminers would also like to note that there was a bottle of dynamite vineyards bottle of Merlot next to the body.
Karen: Why?
Georgia: I don’t know, he probably drank it.
Karen: What sick fuck sommeliers need to make that note? You assholes.
Georgia: Me?
Karen: No!
*Karen laughing*
Georgia: They didn’t really ask that. They didn’t really request that, Karen.
*both laughing*
Karen: *high pitched voice, mocking Georgia* Who me? *laughing* This is the episode I turn on you for liking murder. You dick, Georgia, this is disgusting.
Georgia: How dare you! Ummm… so let’s talk about his brain damage. So after the murders and such, ummm, there was no preexisting mental or physical ailments, he did have depression obviously, and where did my other notes go? *singing* Oh there are the printer! I left my fucking notes at the printer.
Karen: *singing* Let’s sing a little song about the printer.
Georgia: *singing* There are my printer notes.
Karen: *singing* The printer notes. Luckily it’s just right there!
Georgia: *singing* Printer!
*both laughing*
Georgia: Feels good.
Karen: We should walk it off a little bit
*Georgia laughing*
Georgia: So yeah, they’d been searching for answers, the family, because it does not add up that this is the same man –
Karen: This lovely man.
Georgia: -Right. This family man, 7 year old son, the course found ana-anabolic steroids? They thought that it was roid-rage, but it turns out that-
Karen: *whispering* My theory’s wrong…
Georgia: It wasn’t roid-rage. I mean I’m sure there’s something added to that. Benoit’s brain was that of an 86-year old Alzheimer’s patient.
Karen: *whispering* Ohhh nooo….
Georgia: Yeah. And the same way with football players who are constantly getting concussion after concussion. And I mean, there’s a story in this book about how in one fight, he and this other guy just banged each other’s fucking heads into each other until they bled.
Karen: That hurts SO bad!
Georgia: Does it?
Karen: When you hit heads with another person, have you ever done that? Accidentally?
Georgia: No…
Karen: Like you both bend down fast at the same time,
Georgia: Oh, yeah, you’re right, yeah.
Karen: See, Steve knows what I’m talking about.
*Karen laughing*
Karen: And you smack your head.
Georgia: CLONK
Karen: It is loud and it hurts for like 20 minutes after. And the idea that that’s what he did for a living is…
Georgia: Have you ever had a concussion?
Karen: No. I did get flipped out of the back of a truck when I was –
Georgia: JESUS –
Karen: - in seventh grade –
Georgia: CHRIST! Remember when we could light fires in our room alone and sit in the back of trucks?
Karen: Yes! This is the country life that I led.
Georgia: No, this is the 80s man. We already put them on notice.
*Karen laughing*
Karen: yes, and for good fucking reason. Me and my friend, my dad was so livid because he told us, “Don’t drive that truck too far away, the brakes aren’t great.” We drove up into the national park, uphill, uphill, uphill, and as we’re driving we can smell the brakes in the back.
*Georgia lets out a long sigh*
Karen: But it was our next door neighbor, Andy, me, my sister, her friend Maureen, her friend Christine, and
Georgia: God, you remember everything. I’m so impressed.
Karen: And these friends. I can’t remember Andy’s friend’s name, the poor kid who was the one driving the truck. We start going downhill through a campsite, brakes go out, he literally is driving a truck with 4 girls in it, with him, and the brakes go out, he hits the back of Andy’s car,
Georgia: *gasp*
Karen: Andy pulls forward, he tries to go over onto the side of the dirt embankment. Instead, he drives up onto the dirt embankment, flips the car –
Georgia: HOLY SHIT!
Karen: - me and Holly, my best friend Holly Gardener was with me, we go flying out of the back of the truck, and I remember very clearly thinking, “When I hit the ground, my skirt’s going to fly up onto my back, and my underwear will be showing, so I have to make sure the second I hit the ground, I have to stand up.” And I literally hit, and stood up immediately.
Georgia: Do you think that’s what saved you?
Karen: Yes. For sure. Well Holly fell too, but neither – my mom was a nurse. She woke us up 5 times that night to check our eyes for concussion eyes.
Georgia: Oh right. I just imagine a concussion, and maybe I’ve had one, and I just don’t remember it, but the wobbly brain syn – that’s just, nothing feels right, and you don’t even understand that you have a concussion, I don’t think.
Karen: “How did you get a concussion?”
Georgia: Maybe I didn’t…
*Georgia laughing*
Karen: Are you totally full of shit right now?
*Georgia laughing*
Georgia: No!! Maybe I’ve had a concussion and that’s why I don’t remember anything. I think I was in a car accident when I was a kid, and had one.
Karen: Yeah. Hit your head.
Georgia: Yeah. I don’t know. Bu it was with a girl once who had one because she got clunked in the head with a softball.
Karen: Oof.
Georgia: And she just started crying, we were hanging out one night, and she just started crying and had to go to the hospital. Anyways.
Karen: Jesus.
Georgia: It seems terrible, but can you imagine having dozens over a ten year span?
Karen: Yeah! Yeah, and that just -side bar- totally is like points, makes me want to point to OJ right now because that’s that thing, where like, yeah at the beginning he was the American hero, but when you have a full career where that happens to you every day, practice and in games, you know, 50 times a week or whatever, your brain cannot, you don’t remain the person that you started as.
Georgia: Vince told me an interesting thing recently that hockey players, like, in the 70s, they put in the, or maybe even like the 80s, or 90s… at some point they were like, “Helmets have to be used.”
Karen: Yes!
Georgia: BUT if you’d been playing before that, it was your choice if you wanted to wear a helmet, so everyone from then on had to wear a helmet if you got hired.
*Karen laughing*
Karen: But you might have been just too far gone where it’s like, “Fuck it, you don’t have to if you-“
Georgia: Yeah, it’s like, “If you’ve owned a motorcycle before 19- you know, you don’t have to wear a helmet.” It’s like, that was the law.
Karen: I really love hockey players, so much, because hockey is so graceful and beautiful and yet insanely violent and male, which I think is
Georgia: *making fun of Karen* “So violent.’
Karen: very sexy.
Georgia: oh… I don’t like fights. They scare me.
Karen: What? Georgia?
Georgia: Really?
Karen: That’s the stuff of life!
Georgia: I hate fights!
Karen: Two guys punching each other?
Georgia: Oh! I hate it, it makes me so, especially
Karen: I think it’s hilarious.
Georgia: - in ice-skating. What if -
*Karen laughing*
Karen: Ice fight- that’s what this is!
Georgia: What if ice skating had the same amount –
*Georgia laughing*
Georgia: Oh my god; no but
Karen: Michelle Kwan just punching somebody in the face.
*Georgia laughing*
Georgia: Yeah. There’s something in hockey that, cuz they’re so bulked up and have so much padding on, that the punches and the whole fight is in slow mo, so you can see their face, and I’m all like, “Seeing this is going to make me cry!” It just, stresses me.
*Karen laughing*
Karen: I bet they never cry.
Georgia: No, but you know when you’re really angry and you’re trying not to cry?
Karen: Yes.
Georgia: I always wonder if they’re feeling that.
Karen: it is funny, that that is a sport where fighting is completely allowed, accepted, and the refs pretend they’re going to do something and they just let them fight it out.
Georgia: Totally.
Karen: It’s very violent.
Georgia: So, and one would think with wrestling, with it being like, almost like an acrobatic feat, it’s not like, you’re not really hurting the person-
Karen: Right.
Georgia: -that you wouldn’t get hurt, then, but I mean, there’s so many accidents that happen and so many bad wrestlers that don’t know how to interact with other wrestlers when they’re fighting.
Karen: They also do that stuff, I remember seeing that documentary, I just saw part of it about Mankind
Georgia: ugh, he’s amazing, where he fell through the chain-link fence…
Karen: But there was a part where he just gets clocked in the head with a folding chair, and it’s a real folding chair. It’s not, they don’t use like, they don’t mock anything up, they pick up a real metal fucking high school auditorium folding chair, and hit each other in the head with that!
Georgia: They don’t do that anymore. You’re not allowed to hit in the head anymore.
Karen: Because the Mankind rule?
Georgia: I think because of the Chris Benoit rule.
Karen: Really?
Georgia: Yeah.
Karen: Because they realized how bad it is.
Georgia: Yeah. I think he did a lot to make that a not-allowed anymore. Umm, so yeah, so let’s see. Wait. So the repeat concussions can lead to dementia, which can contribute to severe behavioral problems, blah-bitty-blah,
Karen: page turns
Georgia: wait there’s one other part of the, yeah.
Karen: Sorry, I took us down a, me flying out the truck path.
Georgia: No, and we’ve talked about it before. 85-year old Alzheimer’s patient. Lifetime chronic concussions, head trauma.
Karen: He kind of didn’t even know what he was doing. Maybe.
Georgia: I think it’s just such a severe personality change, like, you know, you and I when we’re 85, we’re going to act in similar ways that we do now, we’re not going to kill people, we’re not going to, like-
Karen: You promise?
Georgia: I’ll try my best to live to be 85.
*both laughing*
Karen: let’s get that done first.
Georgia: Can we just achieve that?
Karen: At that point, we might just start killing people because no one would suspect us.
Georgia: I mean you might as well, right?
Karen: Yeah.
Georgia: So, yeah, he just was a different, a different person with different emotions and different moods, than the person he was raised to be and was for years and years probably.
Karen: So sad.
Georgia: It’s so sad. So Chris Benoit. That’s my favorite murder this week.
Karen: That’s a good one.
Georgia: Thank you. What’s YOUR favorite murder, Karen?
Karen: *high pitched voice* Georgia, my favorite murder, *regular voice* ummm, uh, is, I got the idea from my friend Carol Craft, who is listens, high-eee. Um, she and my sister have worked together, uh did work together at Loose-Sutten Grammar school in Novato, California. For years, she was the school’s secretary. She’s one of the funniest persons on the planet. Carol Craft, is the greatest. And she, my sister, when she told my sister she’s listening to the podcast, my sister said, uh, what’s your hometown murder? And Carol immediately said, “Duh, it’s Jennifer Moore.”
Georgia: Ooooo
Karen: And then I remembered and Laura remembered and the reason so I started looking it up cuz I was like, “Oh, is that that thing?” and the memory, um, the kind of like central memory I have around it is, my mother. Okay so, my hometown is Petaluma, which is the first city in Sonoma County. And Novato is the last City in Marin County and they are right against each other. So my high school, a bunch of people who lived in Novato, drove up to Petaluma to go to my high school because there wasn’t a Catholic high school in Novato.
Georgia: You went to a Catholic high school?
Karen: Yeah.
Georgia: Wow.
Karen: A really small one. So I had a ton of friends that lived in Novato. They’re kind of like, those two cities, you’re going back and forth a lot up there, and Novato is kind of like a bedroom community for people who work in San Francisco, Commuters and stuff. Cuz it’s really nice and close to the city but still outside enough so that you are in a nice, kind of country, suburb. And it’s basically, it’s tons of tracked homes, and beautiful little like shopping areas, and oak trees, and rolling fields, and stuff. It’s a really lovely little city.
Georgia: Sounds really charming.
Karen: It is charming. So my mom used to work at the Kaiser in San Raphael, which is the next big city down below in Novato, and so when the 101 got backed up, which it always did because it narrowed between Novato and Petaluma, so all of the traffic would get condensed, what everyone would do was get off the freeway and take the back roads. And so you go down Novato boulevard and Novato boulevard takes you out to like Stoney Point Road which is where the cheese factory is, and that’s where you take relatives that are visiting and it’s basically a cheese factory that’s way out in the country
Georgia: oh my god, I love it.
Karen: next to a lake.
Georgia: I used to have to drive by this whole area when I went to court reporting school in like, not San Jose but like…
Karen: Court reporting school?
Georgia: Yeah…
Karen: You never told me you went to court reporting school!
Georgia: Well I never finished…
Karen: But ‘scuze me, but that’s episode 1 information Goddamnit!
*Georgia laughing*
Georgia: Yeah, I worked, I went to court reporting school and never finished.
Karen: Did you get to do that machine?!
Georgia: Mm-hmm.
Karen: GEORGIA.
Georgia: Because I worked at a court reporting office, and these women made like, so much money and it was fascinating. Your’e sitting depositions, which is like, I would just sit and read depositions all day.
Karen: That’s amazing.
Georgia: Which is probably illegal… ummm… So, I decided to go to court reporting school. But it’s…
Karen: I’m jealous… I’m angry… I have all these feelings running through me right now.
*Georgia laughing*
Georgia: I’m sorry. Go ahead, sorry.
Karen: Um, no, we’ll talk later. *laughing* Um, so my mom was driving home on the, we call it the back roads. It’s basically, you’re cutting around through the country to get up to Petaluma out of Novato. And on the way out of Novato, there’s Indian Valley Golf Course, there’s Stafford Lake, and then you know, on, so it gets very country very quickly out, right outside the city.
Georgia: That’s cool.
Karen: So my mom was driving home one night and it was dusk, and she saw cops on the side of the road, and she saw them pulling garbage bags out of a ditch. And when she got home, she saw on the news and I’m almost positive we were there with her, because I can remember, but I do this all the time, where I can write memories very easily, but, I feel like, I remember my mom having a freak out because she saw on the news they had finally discovered the body of the little girl who had gone missing 4 days earlier.
Georgia: Oh no!
Karen: And that was this girl Jennifer Moore. So, my mom actualy saw them find the body. Which is-
Georgia: Wow.
Karen: -when my sister reminded me of it in this text, I was like this is epic. I’m, I couldn’t be more proud.
Georgia: Isn’t it weird that your brain can just lose these, like we talk about this every week, MURDER
Karen: And I never thought about it.
Georgia: Lost.
Karen: yeah. It’s just kinda, not, filed so far back.
Georgia: Totally.
Karen: So essentially this is what happened. Jennifer Moore was 13 years old, and on Thursday, April 13, 1989, she called her mom at work crying because she had gotten three Cs on her report card, so her mom said, go walk down, buy some ice cream.
Georgia: Awww.
Karen: So this is another thing, where I didn’t look into it, but it pretty much sounded like, she was being raised by a single mother, and she was latch-keying just like we all did.
Georgia: Fuck.
Karen: Um, so she goes to walk down to the Baskin Robbins on Novato Boulevard, which as I was reading this, I knew exactly where all of this was. As I was reading it. And so when the mom comes home from work that night, Jennifer’s not there. And she knows from the last time she talked to her, when she told her to go get ice cream, it was way, way, way too long for her not to be there.
Georgia: Yeah.
Karen: She knew she wasn’t a runaway. I read in this article, interestingly enough, the age 12-14 are prime runaway years, and so anytime someone is that age, and they call to report them missing, the cops have the habit of assuming this is what it is. Because that’s usually the, or it’s commonly the case.
Georgia: Yeah.
Karen: But of course the mother assured them, this is very wrong, she didn’t runaway, all of her stuff is in the room, her purse is in the room. All she did was take the money for the ice cream.
Georgia: I was a runaway – did you ever run away?
Karen: No. Uh, I think when I was like 5 cuz I was going to show my mom. And I basically took a suitcase out to the road, and I came back inside immediately.
Georgia: Yeah, I packed a suitcase, put it on the bed. I did stay out during my, when I was like 13, my drug years…
Karen: Yeah…
Georgia: Stay out all, like overnight. And they straight up called the cops. Yeah, I was a runaway.
Karen: Well they should’ve, though!
Georgia: Yeah
Karen: That’s good, though!
Georgia: Yeah I feel so bad about that.
Karen: Eh, you didn’t know; you were on drugs.
Georgia: Yeah.
Karen: So the cops checked her school records, they see that she’s had perfect attendance and that she’s, and you know, that’s not the person that we’re talking about, so they start looking into it, two days pass, and they start handing out the, ‘have you seen me’ fliers. Which, of course, again, seems a little late for me.
Georgia: Very late.
Karen: I don’t like it. But, I think that this is 1989, so back then they were like, “We just want to see.” Probably, is the idea, so on day 3, a person driving down Novato Boulevard sees garbage bags in a ditch on the side of the road and goes and looks in them, and finds Jennifer’s nude body.
Georgia: Oh that poor person who found them, do you think he knew what he was looking for?
Karen: Well there’s a very good chance he saw on the news, because this was all over the news, this little girl’s face, “Have you seen me?”, this little girl’s missing. So it did hit the news, like, the next night, so maybe that flier thing was just the cop’s like on the street doing it. Because I remember that, well, I shouldn’t say that because I don’t know the exact chronology. But-
Georgia: Do you remember like, the big like, is it the small enough town where that’s what everyone’s talking about?
Karen: 100%.
Georgia: Cuz this doesn’t happen.
Karen: 100%. This is a town, just like Petaluma, where people did not lock their doors back then. And when you see this picture, it’s such a 1989 picture. She’s got braces, she’s got these bangs, she’s got the big hoop earrings, she’s so cute and she just looks like a girl from your junior high.
Georgia: Those kill me! These sweet kids! I always, when I see them, I always say, “I’m so sorry!”
Karen: I know. I know. So yeah, this poor motorist. That is my theory, I should say. I think that that person saw that a girl was missing on the news, and then when they saw the garbage bags pulled over and checked, and then there worst nightmare was confirmed, so everyone, in the in between time of course, no one let their children leave the house. There were no latchkey kids once it was announced she was missing.
Georgia: Right.
Karen: So the cops look at the plastic bags, and inside, I should say a plastic bag, it’s just the one big garbage bag. At the bottom there were a Sunday school-like leaflets, and one of the police men recognized it as “Oh well my kids use those at their Sunday school.” So this is probably like a local church Sunday school leaflet. So they decide to start checking all the churches nearby, and they map out from her house to the ice cream parlor
Georgia: oh no…
Karen: What churches are in between? So they go to Bethel Baptist church on Novato Boulevard. And they notice when the cops show up there, they notice there’s 4 big garbage cans outside, two of them have garbage liners, garbage bags inside of them, and two don’t. So they go over and check, it’s the same type of garbage sack.
Georgia: So this had probably happened in the last, like, day…
Karen: Yes. Yeah, they immediately are like, okay, this is, you know, like this can’t be a coincidence.
Georgia: Oh that’s amazing.
Karen: Or it would be a very, the probability of that being a coincidence…
Georgia: I love when puzzle pieces fit together, you know?
Karen: Yeah! And that there, you know, this might be a little make up work, but everything I read in this, it was like, the cops were like, eagle-eyed, and I think that is that thing where a tiny town, where it’s everybody’s daughter.
Georgia: Totally.
Karen: So they see that, they match, they see that it’s a match of the same type of garbage bag, and they go and immediately get blood hounds. And they have the blood hounds they have the scent on Jennifer’s clothing, and then the blood hounds take them directly back to Jennifer’s house. So they know that this is the, this is where she ended up. This is the church. So she basically took a short cut from her house through a creek area-
Georgia: No…
Karen: -that was in the back of the church and then up through the church. So they go into the church to look for evidence, and they talk to the pastor there, who shows them something weird that he had noticed. There was a coffee cup that had been, like the coffee had been spilled in the library. But no one had picked the coffee cup back up off the floor. So it was just this coffee stain, and it was weird to him because beverages were not allowed in the church library, so you know, it’s weird enough that someone made that spill, but that they didn’t even clean up half of it basically.
Georgia: Yeah, weird.
Karen: So the crime lab comes, pulls up the carpet, tests it, there’s blood and bleach, so…
Georgia: In the same spot?
Karen: Yeah.
Georgia: oh, so he spilled the coffee over it to hide it?
Karen: Yes. Yes.
Georgia: Wow.
Karen: So there was a big blood stain, but so he was like, “Nope, it’s a coffee stain, here’s a coffee cup!” You know?
Georgia: Ohhh… yeah…
Karen: “Don’t worry about this ‘coffee stain’”.
Georgia: Oh my goodness…
Karen: Yeah. So they get onto that immediately. And then when detectives searched the rest of the church, they find a brown bomber jacket at the bottom of the clothing donation bin. And it’s the jacket Jennifer wore when she left the house to go get ice cream.
Georgia: Whoa.
Karen: So now they know, and they checked the pockets, and there were rubber bands for her braces, were in the pockets, so they knew it was hers.
Georgia: Oh…
Karen: So now they know this is, we’ve got a location. So the pastor remembers that he’d gotten to work early Friday morning, she had disappeared Thursday. And when he got there, the door was not only unlocked, it was ajar. So basically, there were three people on Thursday night that were at the church that could have been involved.
Georgia: *gasp*
Karen: One was the janitor, one was the youth pastor, and one was the teenager that was helping the youth pastor with gardening.
Georgia: Can I guess?
Karen: Yes.
Georgia: Uhhh, the um, youth.
Karen: Hell yeah it’s the youth pastor!
Georgia: Oh! Wait… no I was guessing the kid…
Karen: OH SHIT!
Georgia: DAMNIT!
Karen: Um, you know what’s really funny that you just said that? And maybe this is the way it’s going? I read a bunch of articles about this but it’s such a small town and it was so long ago I could only get these little short ones from the LA Times, and of course Wikipedia, but then I found the transcript for a TV show for a show called “I Detective.” Have you ever seen that show?
Georgia: Nuh-uh.
Karen: I don’t think it’s on anymore, it was on, um, it was on like court TV, it’s that old.
Georgia: Yeah.
Karen: But basically they would lay out a true crime story, and then they would tell you the evidence that the cops found.
Georgia: Oh!
Karen: And then they go, “Is it A, the youth. B…”
Georgia: I remember this!
Karen: Remember that? And you would make a guess, then they would tell you what the right answer is and why. So you were kind of basically learning how cops do their procedural shit as you watched.
Georgia: Oh that sounds fucking awesome.
Karen: So I stumble upon a transcript for the episode about the Jennifer Moore murder.
Georgia: Holy shit…
Karen: So, um *laughing* You just intuited something, I think you should be very proud of yourself.
Georgia: But at the same time, I felt that the youth pastor and the janitor were two obvious.
Karen: I di-
*Georgia laughing*
Karen: I just cheered because it was the youth pastor!
*both laughing*
Karen: There’s always going to be victims in this show.
Georgia: Mm-hmm.
Karen: Um, so it turns out that the kid that was helping the youth pastor garden had a record, and was a bad kid, but his grandma had come and picked him up at 6:30 that night, and so he had an alibi. And then the janitor wasn’t at home when they went to go question him. So he was really high up on the list. And then they go visit the youth pastor, and he’s a 29 year old ex-marine named Scott Williams. He owns a gas station nearby. He’s a Sunday school teacher.
Georgia: *groans*
Karen: Whatever, he works at the church all the time, so he’s ‘well-liked’ by the community, all this stuff we always hear. So they go talk to him, and he admits that he was the last person to leave on Thursday night. And he can’t account for his whereabouts that night. He’s kind of saying there was a meeting at the gas station. “Oh! But I did miss it because I was, uh, you know, the gardening or whatever…’
Georgia: *groans*
Karen: And he’s real evasive, so they’re like, we don’t like this guy..
Georgia: It’s not adding up.
Karen: Yeah, exactly. And then he suggests he take a polygraph. And they’re like, “well that’s a good way to dissuade anybody here, you’re insisting you’re innocent.’
Georgia: Yeah.
Karen: Well he fails the polygraph test. And at the end of it, the polygraph examiner, who I believe was from the FBI, cuz they brought the FBI in really early.
Georgia: That’s so smart.
Karen: So smart.
Georgia: I wish more of that would have happened.
Karen: Yeah.
Georgia: On a lot of cases.
Karen: Yeah. Just get the big boys, and it’s not an insult. So they bring, so at the end of the polygraph, the examiner says, “You killed Jennifer Moore,’ and he cracks and cops to the whole thing.
Georgia: Holy shit.
Karen: Which I think is so brilliant! Cuz usually in movies and stuff, the polygraph examiner is just all dry, and all, did you, did you not, and making checks, and doesn’t care.
Georgia: He was like, looking at this evidence, here’s the conclusion.
Karen: And basically played a poker game of like, wow, you did it. And then he was just like, “You’re right. I did it.”
Georgia: I just think that’s like interesting, had he ever killed anyone? Or hurt any, had a record?
Karen: No.
Georgia: No priors. That’s so interesting to me because I feel like the people who crack and break down are almost… like, the people who insist and just fucking lie about it, are more sociopathic to me than the people who like, feel, they feel remorse. And so they break down and cry because they can’t even fucking deal with it themselves.
Karen: Right. And usually I would say, I would wager that those people are the ones that’s the one-off
Georgia: Totally
Karen: crime of passion, or the moment, or the, you know, whatever it is.
Georgia: Opportunity.
Karen: Well, exactly. And that’s what this was. Because, he shows them the rope burn on his hand where he strangled her with a piece of rope, so he’s just like, the quote is, “I murdered her, I raped her, I strangled her. And I bludgeoned her.”
Georgia: Wowww…
Karen: So then they know, they know they have him, it’s not just like, coincidental, or that he’s been manipulated. He’s very specific and basically, totally barfed it out.
Georgia: What a piece of shit!
Karen: So then the cops go to his house, and they start talking to his wife, who of course is freaking out.
Georgia: Oh! The wife!
Karen: The wife, always.
Georgia: Oh, honey!
Karen: And she tells the cops that they’d recently gotten into a fight because of the huge bills he was racking up on those 9-7-6 numbers from the 80s. Do you remember?
Georgia: Porno… is it like sex talk numbers?
Karen: Sex talk numbers were, now they’re illegal.
Georgia: Are they illegal?!
Karen: They’re like, there’s all kinds of FCC regulations, so they’re not like, it used to be there’s 9-7-6 commercials
Georgia: I remember!
Karen: The second it was past 10-o’clock at night, that’s all TV was.
Georgia: Yeah.
Karen: And, when they look into it, he had huge bills, and his were for a child porn phone sex…
Georgia: There’s a-! How was there –?!
Karen: I mean, I don’t know, that’s all the line said.
Georgia: That seems like a fucking FBI set up right there.
Karen: I mean, yeah… I don’t think this needs to be said, but I bet they weren’t real children…
*both laughing*
Karen: Sorry.
*Karen laughing*
Georgia: I agree.
*Georgia laughing*
Karen: But I do want to clarify….
*both laughing*
Karen: These would be actresses.
Georgia: Yeah.
Karen: Phone actresses… anyway. So basically he tells the story he’s working outside of the church, and Jennifer is cutting through from the creek through the parking lot, and he sees her, and he gets this idea in his head, and so, that he’s going to like seduce her. So he says, “Hey do you want a coke? Come in, it’s hot outside” or whatever, and lures her into the library, makes a move on her, she freaks out, tries to run, he grabs her, rapes her, and as he said, strangles her and hits her in the head. All in the church library.
Georgia: Oh… honey…
Karen: CHURCH. Let’s just remember these things. This is, when people have any kind of a religious thing, that, sometimes let’s just be a suspicious of that, even on the outset.
Georgia: Yeah.
Karen: A lot of people use religion to hide behind.
Georgia: Yeah. Humans are humans, and just because you’re of a specific group of humans doesn’t mean that there, that you’re exempt from being a terrible person.
Karen: Exactly. Anyone that can go to that place on Sunday and sit there in silence, and act, anyone can do that.
Georgia: Yeah. And believe that they’re… they’re right and they’re a good person, it’s not like, you even are like, I’m hiding a secret, I’m a bad person. You’re just like, I’m exempted from this because, because… God
Karen: Yeah.
Georgia: And the bible.
*Karen laughing*
Karen: So, he got first degree murder, got a life sentence, no possibility of parole.
Georgia: Thank god.
Karen: Every ounce of this research, I was like, Yay cops! Yay Judge! It rarely happens. We can celebrate it. And that’s it. That’s the Jennifer Moore murder of Novato, California.
Georgia: That is… that is exhausting and sad and horrible.
Karen: Yeah.
Georgia: Is ‘latchkey kid’ still a thing?
Karen: I don’t think – well I was talking to my sister and I told her this is the story that I’m doing, and she goes, yeah, and that’s why we never let kids go anywhere ever by themselves EVER.
Georgia: Right.
Karen: Like, my, our friend Adrienne, who has a daughter who’s 18, and she was going to the dentist, to get, but she was going to be sedated.
Georgia: oh my goodness
Karen: And Adrienne called my sister and goes, “Can you go with her? Cuz she’s going to be sedated.”
Georgia: I’ve heard that about dentists offices, though, like there was, you know, one who would insist that the kid came alone, back there, and the mom was like, “Well go fuck yourself,” and wouldn’t take the kid to the dentist.
Karen: Yeah! Because, again, doctors, priests, whatever it is, we don’t know. We don’t mean that automatically that that’s a moral upstanding person.
Georgia: Totally. Well, I’m trying to think if I had a 12-year old son or daughter, would I be comfortable with them going home from school after school and being alone and like, yeah, kind of, would you?
Karen: Be comfortable with that?
Georgia: Yeah.
Karen: Not these days.
Georgia: Yeah…
Karen: I mean not with *sigh*
Georgia: I’m surprised I’m saying that, and being so naive, which I don’t know if it is, but 12 is pretty, I guess once I see a 12 year old, I’ll go, “Oh, never mind.”
Karen: I mean it’s weird, because we did it from when we were like 8.
Georgia: Oh, totally!
Karen: I think it’s that cultural thing, where like, when everyone does it, it’s not that big of a deal.
Georgia: Yeah. And also when you have siblings, it’s better... Cuz you have other people around, when it’s an only child, it’s a little…
Karen: Yeah you have other people to escape the house with.
Georgia: Totally
Karen: When a murderer comes in the front door.
Georgia: Or just, someone you’re supposed to be responsible for others, so you’re just a little more careful?
Karen: And a little more bitter like my sister was all of our lives.
Georgia: Abso-fuckin
Karen: Like she had to come take me to the bathroom
*Karen laughing*
Karen: So angry for 20 years
Georgia: My sister always had to pick my napkin up off the floor when I threw it on the ground when I was in a high chair. Fuck it. She hates me to this day.
*Karen laughing*
Karen: Like you were making her dance like a monkey for you?
Georgia: Mm-hmm. Like, “Get my napkin! Go pick that up!’ Hates me. Thanks mom and dad!
Karen: It’s a thing. It sucks to be the older sister. That’s for sure.
Georgia: That’s true, being the baby is the best.
Karen: Yeah.
Georgia: Well that was… Yeah.
Karen: Yeah. Um, well, that’s what we do! If you don’t like it, we understand.
Georgia: Yeah. myfavoritemurdershirts.com… page… we’re like, give us money now that we’ve ruined your day.
*both laughing*
Georgia: *singing* Now that you’ll have nightmares!
Karen: I think that the psychology of that actually holds up though. Like, “Thank you for ruining my day.”
Georgia: Yeah.
Karen: At least we’re doing something.
Georgia: With our lives.
Karen: You know what I mean? At least it’s something. It makes me feel alive.
Georgia: I feel like there’s little bits and pieces of this podcast that make, that’ll either make people safer, more aware, um, less naive–
Karen: Grateful?
Georgia: Yeah, and maybe somewhere like, grateful, yeah, maybe somewhere changed something for good? For the good?
Karen: Mm-hmm.
Georgia: Maybe someone will be on a jury some day and be like, “Oh you can’t let, this guy totally did it. And he did do it.”
Karen: Maybe we’ll win a Peabody award
*Karen laughing*
Georgia: That was the next thing I was going to say.
*both laughing*
Georgia: Maybe we’ll be crowned queen victori- Queen Vickie?
Karen: Well I mean, you know. It’s, ever- *laughing* “Finally! I’m Queen Vickie because of a podcast!”
Georgia: “When do WE get to be Queen Vickie? For once in our lives?”
Karen: “It’s always those British people that get to be the queen! Why can’t I?!”
Georgia: *laughing* but we are. We’re queen of fucking…
Karen: Murr-
Both: rrr-derrr podcasts
Georgia: Well, we’re going to put out, send us your hometown murders, please.
Karen: Don’t give up.
Georgia: Don’t give up. myfavoritemurder@gmail.com we’re about to record a mini-episode with a few of those. So you should tell us.
Karen: We’re also just be patient because we’re getting them from every direction. We get them on the twitter, which is ‘myfavemurder’, I’m sorry, ‘@myfavemurder. And people, we love it, people post them on the facebook page. And it’s great.
Georgia: Here’s the thing. The more clever and funny they are, and well written, the more likely we’ll read them.
Karen: -because the less work for us!
Georgia: Um, Um, yeah. We read them all.
Karen: Create that content. Yeah.
Georgia: Yeah.
Karen: Ummm
Georgia: Thank you guys for listening, and thank you again for rate, reviewing, and subscribing, and getting us fucking up on that ch– those charts are incredible!
Karen: That’s crazy, thank you so much for your support. We honestly are very touched, and, um, slightly freaked out.
Georgia: Totally. I feel like we’re beating a bunch of people at their own game. And it’s freaking me out.
*Karen laughing*
Georgia: I’m going to say it. Male podcasters. Male comedian podcasters.
Karen: Click, click, click, goodbyeeeee. Awww, bye you guys. Aw, dudes, bye dudes.
*Georgia laughing*
Georgia: Come one, everybody loves that, a little bit.
Karen: “Come on!” Well it’s just fun to, um, represent the ladies.
Georgia: It is.
Karen: Whateverrr. You know what? Stay sexy.
Georgia: Don’t get murdered.
Karen: Byeeee
Georgia: Byeeee.
*Karen laughing*
*Instrumental strum*
Feral Audio
