MFM Minisode 175

[0] This is exactly right.

[1] And welcome to my favorite murder, the mini -sowed.

[2] We're going to read the fast one.

[3] The quickie, you know.

[4] It's a quick one.

[5] Yeah, it's Friday for us.

[6] It's Monday for you.

[7] Welcome to Monday.

[8] It's a lot like Friday.

[9] Except it's the kind of future.

[10] Very similar these days.

[11] I'm going to go first.

[12] Yeah, do it.

[13] You?

[14] Me?

[15] Me?

[16] Oh, I said I'm going to go first.

[17] Oh, I said you want to go first, but I can go either one.

[18] You do it.

[19] Okay, fuck it.

[20] Let's do it.

[21] This is called the Cracker Bay.

[22] Murders.

[23] Loving it.

[24] Hi, everybody.

[25] Ever since I started binging your podcast not too long ago, I've been tempted to send in this hometown murder.

[26] I put off writing the email because, you know, laziness.

[27] But then I heard a recent episode where Georgia expressed such glee over visiting a state where she could finally eat at a cracker barrel.

[28] And I knew I had to share what is known here in Naples, Florida, as the Cracker Barrel murders.

[29] Shit.

[30] These murders took place back in 1995 when Naples was a seriously small town and violent crime was nearly unhurst.

[31] heard of in the area.

[32] Around 5 a .m. on November 15th that year, Donna Howell arrived at the Cracker Barrel restaurant to begin her shift.

[33] She pressed the restaurant's buzzer to be let inside, but after 15 minutes of ringing and pounding on the door with no sign from within, Howell sensed something was wrong and called the police.

[34] When authorities arrived and entered the restaurant, they found three employees dead inside.

[35] Vicki Smith, Jason Wiggins, and Dorothy Seidel were all found in the freezer floor with their hands duct tape behind their backs and their throat slid.

[36] Oh, God.

[37] Bloody shoe prints led from the freezer, through the kitchen, and ended up in the office where the safe was found open.

[38] Behind the restaurant, there were scattered bills, a knife, a pair of bloodstained gloves, an air pistol, and shoe prints leading away from the restaurant.

[39] In the days following the murders, police interviewed other cracker bail employees, and it didn't take long for the investigation to point to a couple of suspects.

[40] Brandy Bain Jennings and Charles Jason Graves, both former employees of the restaurant.

[41] Fuck.

[42] Jennings and Graves were arrested in Las Vegas about a month after the initial crimes were committed.

[43] They were driving a truck that had been reported stolen by another cracker barrel employee.

[44] Turns out the two had planned the crime for more than a month.

[45] Apparently, disgruntled over losing their jobs, Jennings and Graves were hoping to steal around $15 ,000.

[46] Whether or not they had planned on killing their former coworkers is unclear.

[47] But for whatever reason, Jennings slashed the throats of the three victims while Graves stood at the freezer door with a pellet gun to prevent their escape.

[48] Oh, my God.

[49] They probably thought it was a real gun, so they didn't like...

[50] Of course.

[51] So sad.

[52] Tried separately in the fall of 1996, Jennings was convicted of three counts of first -degree murder and one count of robbery with a deadly weapon and sentenced to three death sentences for the killing plus 15 years for the robbery charge.

[53] Grays was sentenced to three life sentences for the killings plus 15 years for the robbery.

[54] They both remain in prison today.

[55] Meanwhile, Georgia, that cracker barrel is still there and operating.

[56] eating.

[57] No. So if you ever make it down to the west coast of Florida, you can eat there if you want to.

[58] No, no, we're good.

[59] They make a mean Rubin sandwich.

[60] SSDGM, Andrea.

[61] Oh my God, that's, I mean, what a pointless, vicious, sociopathic crime.

[62] That's just horrifying.

[63] It just seems like every robbery that there is, especially of a fucking restaurant where people are just trying to to earn their, you know, wage is always going to go bad, it's always going to get caught.

[64] There's no fucking point in it.

[65] There's no point you're mad at the corporation and you're killing your co -workers.

[66] It's so short -sighted and insane and awful.

[67] It's just, yeah, wow.

[68] Yeah, horrible.

[69] And also, it's so sinister because the Cracker Barrel is such that like, corny family style, you know, the waitresses are so nice and warm and they treat you like they know you and it's like everything about the actual place is great.

[70] Aside from, of course, the severe cholesterol issues.

[71] But, you know, no, it's awful.

[72] Very bad.

[73] Okay.

[74] Okay, here's my first one.

[75] That time a psychic saved my best friend's life is the subject line.

[76] Here's maybe one of my favorite greetings so far.

[77] Okay.

[78] Hello, spooky queens.

[79] Oh, I love it.

[80] My best friend of 15 years and I spent several years working in food service.

[81] during our younger days.

[82] We've both had our share of sketchy customers, but one of her stories absolutely takes the cake and still sends chills down my spine.

[83] My friend who will call Rosie had a regular customer at her chain restaurant waitstaff job, who seemed generally harmless, though definitely on the weird side.

[84] He would follow her around while she tried to close up her section for the night, telling her in detail about the fan fiction he was writing and other shit nobody wants to hear about.

[85] Oh my God, can you imagine trying to close your section and this person's following you wrong.

[86] I don't care what they're fucking talking about.

[87] And he's like, so on my blog, Monk has this other life where he doesn't have to wash his hands all the time.

[88] Fan fiction.

[89] So Rosie found him annoying as shit, but she's a nice person who wanted to keep her job so she never told him to fuck off.

[90] One night while Rosie was at work, I was at home with both of our husbands, both X's Now, and incidentally, both total shit.

[91] That's all parenthetical.

[92] Love it.

[93] When her then -husband got a phone call, he went white and it was obvious that something was very, very wrong.

[94] Rosie had called to let him know that she was coming home from work early because she had just gotten an incredibly fucked -up phone call and needed to leave the restaurant immediately.

[95] Here's what happened.

[96] Rosie was in the middle of her usual dinner shift when she got called into the manager's office because someone was on the phone for her.

[97] A lady on the other end who explained that she was a psychic and that one of her regular clients was none other than the weirdo restaurant customer.

[98] He had spent, all caps, thousands of dollars on her services over the last several months to talk almost exclusively about his obsession with, you guessed it, Rosie.

[99] So much so that the psychic knew where to call and who to ask for.

[100] Holy shit.

[101] After the guy had told her about his plan to gather some buddies, abduct Rosie in the parking lot after her shift, and then gang rape and probably murder her.

[102] What the fuck?

[103] She called Rosie to warn her Because according to the guy The plan was going to be executed eminently After hanging up Rosie somehow managed To keep calm and immediately called the police Who showed up at the scary guy's fast food job And put the fear of God into him There parentheses there wasn't enough for an arrest unfortunately She never saw or heard from him again She left her job soon after that incident And she's now kicking ass and taking names in nursing school She's on track to fulfill her lifelong dream of providing health care for women in need and delivering their babies as a nurse practitioner.

[104] She's an awesome mom, a badass role model, and I'm so fucking proud of her.

[105] Stay sexy and don't let the bastards grind you down, Whitney.

[106] Oh my God.

[107] He was going to a psychic.

[108] She's incredible and call this woman, which is like...

[109] Yes, to step in and be like, this isn't just pretend.

[110] Yeah.

[111] And he told her all that.

[112] Like, that alone is like, oh, this guy, he's not okay.

[113] Wow.

[114] Yeah, he's not fucking good.

[115] That's one of the crazier stories.

[116] Isn't that insane?

[117] Yes.

[118] Okay.

[119] This is just hometown story.

[120] It just starts.

[121] I was listening to the episode of bananas where Georgia says that she refuses to stand on balconies at parties.

[122] Do you have that fear?

[123] I won't.

[124] I won't.

[125] I get it.

[126] And since I share the same peculiar phobia, yeah, I thought I should write in about the most awful thing that happened.

[127] A few years ago, 2015, I was taking a summer course in statistics at Berkeley City College.

[128] I was taking it for fun.

[129] I was the only 30 -year -old in a sea of high school students in the class.

[130] I was riding my bike to class early one morning and passed a bunch of fire engines and police cars parked across the street from my classroom.

[131] Being a lifelong murderer, I tried to be a subtle looky loo and find out what was going on, but I couldn't see what all the emergency vehicles were gathered around.

[132] I looked up the local Berkeley news and saw that tragically in the wee hours of that morning, that day, a bunch of young people were having a party and the balcony collapsed, sending a bunch of people falling five stories to the ground below.

[133] This is my worst nightmare.

[134] I think, did she say what year this happened?

[135] 19.

[136] I mean, 2015.

[137] Oh, because I, there was one in the 90s while I lived up there.

[138] Oh, really?

[139] Yeah, yeah.

[140] It was really bad.

[141] Well, six people died.

[142] And five of them were Irish students spending the summer working and living in California.

[143] Oh, no. It's just one of the most awful things I can imagine and one of my biggest fears.

[144] I'm heartbroken for those young folks and everyone affected by the tragedy.

[145] On a lighter note, last year I was working as a marijuana delivery driver and one night all of my deliveries were concentrated around the UC Berkeley campus for guys with super Irish sounding names.

[146] I asked the first guy on my route if he was here for the summer work program and he said that he was and that earlier that day everyone in the program had learned about marijuana delivery.

[147] It was great.

[148] It was a great night and I gave a of Irish kids weed and had a lovely time chatting with them.

[149] They helped me create new positive memories that come up whenever I hear about the summertime Irish population in Berkeley.

[150] Stay sexy and blaze it, Lily.

[151] Love it.

[152] It just makes me think of everyone's wild Chris Fairbanks on Duny Ride will go into a kind of a rasta character and blaze it sounds like something that character would say.

[153] Oh, I want to hear that.

[154] It's very funny.

[155] I love it.

[156] It's very funny.

[157] I love it.

[158] that I love that she was looking to do some like memory replacement so she's not always hanging on to the same idea but fuck I mean what a terrible group tragedy yeah that is horrible stay in the apartment everyone yeah blaze it indoors not on blaze it out a window front porch sidewalk it's legal now legalize it sorry I'm stealing Chris's bit because I remember the one in the 90s that happened And I can still see the clip that was on the news because, and this is maybe something you remember from San Francisco, those back porches or like kind of like, they were like fire escapes basically, right?

[159] Yes.

[160] And they were wooden and they were basically built after the fact attached onto the apartment building and the staircases would go up and there would just be a landing.

[161] Yeah.

[162] Right?

[163] It was like they had to put it in for fire.

[164] I think there was one in Boston, not that long.

[165] go too that was like yes horrifying that maybe that's the one I'm thinking but any either way there's been tons and it's like when those things don't get built to code and then you got 40 people standing on right balcony I mean horrifying everybody be careful yeah check your don't go to parties anymore if you're going to go to a party that has a balcony get it checked by the city zoning commission call don't be afraid to call the city no oh it's not going to happen anytime soon no don't go to parties Period.

[166] One more reason to stay home.

[167] This just starts, hello.

[168] I have a badass Nana story for you today.

[169] Bit of a background.

[170] My Nana is 90, lives alone and is very proper.

[171] Parentheses, always looks immaculate in matching outfits and some sort of pearl.

[172] Hell yeah.

[173] Hell yeah.

[174] She's incredibly independent, perfectly healthy, and no new friends is her motto.

[175] Wait, is that she means.

[176] Does that mean that she's like, everyone's an old friend to me?

[177] Or is it like she doesn't want me new friends?

[178] She's done with making friends.

[179] How come I felt that at like 38?

[180] I know.

[181] Thank you, Nana, for validating.

[182] Yeah.

[183] You don't need that many.

[184] And you certainly don't need new ones, especially if you've been around for 90 years.

[185] That, God damn it, that makes me laugh.

[186] A couple years back, her bridge club of 50 years dissolved.

[187] And she told me there was no point in finding a new one because they'd all die soon.

[188] Oh, God damn it.

[189] I miss my grandma.

[190] I told my grandma was like 102.

[191] I drove her twice a week to her.

[192] It wasn't mahjong, but it was some card gin rummy or some gin game.

[193] Whist, I mean, an old lady card game?

[194] Yeah, like the Jewish Community Center.

[195] I would drive her in mid -town.

[196] How old did she live till?

[197] 104.

[198] God, that's amazing.

[199] Those last couple years, I don't think she was counting the cards right, but that's okay.

[200] I mean, hey, look, she got to go.

[201] Get out of the house.

[202] Stay home.

[203] Stay in the house.

[204] But stay home.

[205] And don't go to party.

[206] Okay, sorry, go.

[207] After my grandfather died, she was living alone in the country and unfortunately got robbed twice.

[208] They took all her jewelry and obviously she was feeling fairly vulnerable.

[209] So she made the decision to move into the city a block away from my parents.

[210] After finally settling in, a year later, her house burned down.

[211] I'll never forget that day because I was visiting home and was supposed to have tea with her.

[212] I was walking over to her house when I saw two fire engines down the street and black billowing smoke.

[213] I started to run, realizing that it was her house, frantically trying to pick her out of the crowd that had gathered.

[214] I found her standing with her arms crossed.

[215] Oh, no. I love this woman so much.

[216] I found her standing with her arms crossed, calmly staring down the fire.

[217] She looked at me and said, dear, I'm so sorry to say we'll have to postpone tea.

[218] Oh, my God.

[219] My mom immediately grabbed me. me she shoved some money in my hand and said, go get your grandmother some gin.

[220] We spent that night drinking gin and looking through the only thing she had grabbed, an old tin box with some photos and old papers.

[221] Cut to a couple years later, my nana had her house rebuilt, and she was sitting on her back porch.

[222] A strange man hopped over the fence and started peeing in her garden.

[223] She took one look at him and said, you shouldn't be here.

[224] Startled, he ran away.

[225] Later, the police came by asking if she'd seen a man of a similar description, turned out he'd just attempted to rob a couple of houses and it probably attempted to rob hers as well.

[226] Her back window had been smashed the night before, something she apparently wasn't too alarmed by.

[227] Where do you live?

[228] For real.

[229] I absolutely adore my Nana and I'm always inspired by her strength.

[230] She has such an awesome no BS attitude and I hope I'm lucky enough to be a badass Nana like her one day.

[231] Although the stiff upper lip mentality isn't always the healthiest attitude when it comes to mental health.

[232] I think it's gotten her through some pretty tough times.

[233] Wishing you all health and happiness.

[234] Stay sexy and when in doubt, have some tea or gin with your nana.

[235] Aw, Nana.

[236] Isn't that sweet?

[237] Hey, if you're going to write into us about your nana, please tell us her or your grandpa, please tell us their first name.

[238] We need to know who these people are at least a little bit.

[239] First names, a picture would be awesome.

[240] I mean, any of it.

[241] I have the picture of her standing in front of her burning house with her arms girl.

[242] She's angry at the fire.

[243] You got to be kidding me. Wow.

[244] She took it in stride.

[245] Good for her.

[246] Yeah.

[247] Handling shit.

[248] Karen, you know I'm all about vintage shopping.

[249] Absolutely.

[250] And when you say vintage, you mean when you physically drive to a store and actually purchase something with cash?

[251] Exactly.

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[263] Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify .com slash murder.

[264] Important note, that promo code is all lowercase.

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[266] That's Shopify .com slash murder.

[267] Goodbye.

[268] Okay, this is my last one.

[269] This is called Another Perplexing Public Pooper.

[270] Uh -oh.

[271] Dear Goddesses, Animals, At All.

[272] in your last minisode you mentioned a backyard pooper on next door and while you didn't specifically ask for more public pooper stories this one is too good to keep to myself i don't think i think it's a given that we want more public pooper stories no i wouldn't agree but i don't want to fight with you not during a quarantine um in the late 1990s i worked in a commercial law firm first off every tv representation of law firms is true uh that They are particularly lousy with sociopaths.

[273] So I'm a baby lawyer in this firm that only had five women in it.

[274] One day my coworker and I went to the restroom to cry, common occurrence, and discovered that someone had full on pooped on the floor right in the stall in front of the commode.

[275] What?

[276] Not an oops, I missed poop, but an actual, intentional, neat pile right there on the floor.

[277] Wait, was it bring your dog to work day?

[278] Was it bring your dog to the bathroom at workday?

[279] And then don't clean it up day.

[280] Needless to say, my female coworker and I called the cleaners and then used our lawyer interrogation skills to question the other women to find the culprit.

[281] Two had alibis and the other vehemently denied it and we believed her.

[282] We chalked it up to weirdness and went back to our soul -destroaring jobs looking at document discovery.

[283] Flash forward to two days later, a coworker calls me into the bathroom to see another pile.

[284] This time right in front of the stall door.

[285] another round of interrogations no leads this went on for weeks and the pooper got bolder and bolder until one day my co -worker opened the door of the bathroom to find the boldest pile yet this time right at the threshold she spotted it one second too late after she had already slipped in it no picture a cartoonish flailing woman in a suit arms akimbo trying to avoid the inevitable only to lay on ass down right on the pile no i'm glad i'm not ending with this and you have the ending story?

[286] Yeah, no more of these stories.

[287] Okay, sorry.

[288] Sorry.

[289] No, I'm telling people.

[290] We kept complaining but with no luck and eventually became a joke among the partners and we nicknamed the elusive offender, the fecal bandit.

[291] So one day, one of the senior attorneys gets fired and escorted out of the building for an unrelated gross violation of conduct, offensive enough that security was called.

[292] Lo and behold, we never encountered the clandestine work of the fecal bandit ever again.

[293] Turns out it was the seemingly normal, attractive, clean -cut lawyer, who, unbeknownst to all of us, was a secret shitter, among other things I can't mention for legal reasons.

[294] Wow.

[295] And a small handful of women at the law firm full of sociopaths could go pee without fear once again.

[296] He eventually got...

[297] I'm sorry, I just realized it was a man going into the women's bathroom and doing that.

[298] That is a very bad sign.

[299] Yes.

[300] He eventually got hired by another law firm because he was...

[301] of course he did.

[302] And I presume he's still up to his putrid pastime.

[303] It goes to show you, you never know if that cute, rich guy has a pension for public pooping you didn't know about.

[304] Thanks for reading my story.

[305] Stay sexy and beware of the fecal bandit, Aaron.

[306] And we never read a pooping story again.

[307] I mean.

[308] I'm sorry.

[309] It just was so well written and so visual and a lawyer.

[310] And I was just.

[311] Well, it's that idea that sometimes we have, especially when we're younger, that if you have money that if you're good looking that if you have a good job somehow that that takes you out of the realm of something's mentally wrong with right i'm so glad i went first because i want you to end it okay okay because this is i think a pretty good ending okay this subject line is kid doesn't listen mom saves uh and the first line is i love you bitches so this isn't a murder but it is about me as a kid thinking i knew better than my mom i was probably about seven years old when we visited my stepdad's sister who was super rich.

[312] She had a bunch of livestock.

[313] And at the time, I felt I had a special connection with all the animals ever.

[314] Children, we all think that.

[315] It's so sad.

[316] It was true with me, though.

[317] Cats fucking love me. Sure.

[318] So I'm seven.

[319] Hi, I'm seven.

[320] We toured the cow pasture and rode ponies.

[321] I was in heaven.

[322] Later that day, while my mom was helping my aunt prepare dinner, I asked her if we could go back out to see the cows.

[323] She said, not now because she's busy.

[324] but that we could go out in the morning before we left.

[325] I knew that was a lie and that we wouldn't squeeze in the diamond.

[326] So this was my chance.

[327] Wow, that's like, that's the logline of my childhood.

[328] You're lying to me. I'll just do it by myself anyway.

[329] I asked if I could go alone and she said no, to which I continued begging, still a hard no. Obviously, I knew I'd be fine without her anyway.

[330] I snuck out of the house and ventured over to the pasture, climbed over the wooden fence, and walked over to the grazing count.

[331] One by one their heads raised up to see me And as I got closer A nervous pit in my stomach grew I stopped about 10 feet from the herd Feeling the unease that set in Because they were all now staring at me And not eating I slowly turned right back around And walked away Then I heard the low murmur behind me Grow louder and louder I looked back and the entire herd Was charging at me Oh my God I started running as fast as I could climbed the gate and for some reason turned around to see how far the stampede was when the fucking leader of the pack rammed me against the fence bucking his head against my chest over and over again.

[332] My feet dangling and the cow holding me up against the fence.

[333] Holy shit.

[334] Oh yeah.

[335] I started screaming for help when I realized my mom was already sprinting down the driveway to rescue me. My mom lifted me out of danger and then immediately yelled at me for not listening.

[336] Meanwhile, my older sister was, this is my favorite part.

[337] Meanwhile, my older sister was about 30 feet away, watching all of it and uncontrollably laughing.

[338] I fucking knew it.

[339] I was bawling and mostly felt betrayed by the animals who I thought were one with me. But also, fuck you, Lisa, for not helping me and fuck me for being dumb.

[340] Well, that's that.

[341] Stay sexy and don't pretend you're fucking Jane Goodall with cows when you have zero experience with animals, Katie.

[342] Oh my God.

[343] She could have been killed.

[344] This It reminds me of the dangling the feet in the hippo enclosure.

[345] Yes.

[346] Right.

[347] But this is a little more of that.

[348] This used to happen to me on my aunt jeans farm where you got this idea in your head of like, I'm out here with you every day.

[349] Totally.

[350] We're friends, whatever.

[351] They're animals.

[352] They don't, they're just like, get that thing out of here.

[353] I hope she's vegan now.

[354] That was so, I was so nervous.

[355] I was peeling my nail polish off as you told that story.

[356] I'm just like, that sounds like a nightmare.

[357] I bet she'd actually as opposed to being vegan.

[358] And she's like a double meat eater.

[359] She's like only meat lovers pizzas all day every day.

[360] I'll have a double cheeseburger.

[361] Motherfuckers.

[362] Yeah, motherfuckers.

[363] That was fun.

[364] That was a fun batch.

[365] You guys have time now.

[366] So send your stories into us.

[367] No more excuses.

[368] My favorite murder of Gmail or on our website or I don't know, other places probably.

[369] And thank you for always participating with us.

[370] We love it so much.

[371] And stay sexy.

[372] And don't get murder.

[373] murdered.

[374] Goodbye.

[375] Elvis, you want a cookie?