Hello, and welcome to my favorite murder, the many So, where we read your emails, your stories and emails.
Emails and stories and anything in between.
Friends and neighbors. I think you're first.
Yeah, yeah, okay. The subject line of this email is my younger sister did the illegal part. Hello Karen and Georgia. You guys are the best and seeing you in Chicago was a highlight of twenty twenty five. You absolutely crushed it. My story firmly falls into the oldest sister puppeteering younger sister category. We love those. The year was two thousand and nine and it was a summer afternoon in the South Side of Chicago. I am the eldest of five kids.
At the time, I was nineteen, My twin sisters were eighteen, and my twin brothers were thirteen. Jesus, this lineup has probably tipped Cairen off to our Irish catholic ness and Georgia growing up. I had the ideas and my sister Bridget did the doing. She is deeply funny and gave little fucks, making her the perfect puppet. On this particular afternoon, we found ourselves sitting around plotting how we could get
alcohol for later that night. We had exhausted our rolodex of older cousins and we were not feeling brave enough to get a run. Did everyone call it this when you sit outside a liquor store and ask a cool looking adult to buy you beer?
Done it so many times?
My cousin Eileen, I remember she called it tapping shoulder.
That's so good.
I think they made that up. Anyways, we had no options left when an idea occurred to me, old people don't get carted. My plan took little convincing. Bridget was immediately in. I spent the next missus doubtfire style, transforming her from sunburned teenager into the most convincing grandmother our resources could manage.
Oh my, I.
Would have never crossed my mind because I can't act too. I would have been laughing or crying the whole time.
Or just being like a scared Oh my god. We used an old Halloween wig, an obscene amount of makeup we relate, and the oldest looking clothes we could find in my mom's closet. Bridget practiced her old lady walk and satisfied with the results, we were off.
If this works, then I'll believe in, God.
Here we go. We loaded into our hand me down nineteen ninety nine silver Grandmarquis.
Amazing.
That's an old lady car. Ye never more grateful for this geriatric monstrosity of a car than in that moment. Surely any liquor store employee seeing someone exit this vehicle would assume she's at least sixty five. We parked and Bridget shuffled in. We held our breath and watched from the car as she made her way to the back of the store. She paused in front of the bier, then grabbed a case of twisted teas.
Oh my god, so grandma you know? Yeah, well Grandma's dring.
Old people love twisted teas. She later said that she panicked and could not decide what a grandmother would be buying at noon on a Tuesday. As she hobbled up to the counter, she suddenly realized that she had forgotten about her chipped black nail polish. Jesus, the attendant did not seem to notice. He smiled and asked, ah, fun party night. She put on her best fake granny voice and replied, er yes. He handed her the change, completely unaware that she was a high school senior and told
her to have a good day. We started cheering as she walked out, She looked at us, jumped straight into the air and I shit, knew you not clicked her heels together before sprinting back.
To the car.
Worked.
It fucking worked. The afternoon ended. There's a picture.
Okay, Oh my god?
Uh huh. The afternoon ended with us driving to the bar where we knew my grandpa Charlie and his Jimmy we're at. Bridget cruised in and sat down next to them, still fully in character. She tried to talk to them for five minutes, but they wanted absolutely nothing to do with this random old woman. Finally, she ripped off the wig and yelled, Papa, it's me. The entire bar erupted. My grandpa was a little horrified, but mostly amused. We decided not to push our luck and never dusted off
that old lady wig again. Despite none of us liking twisted teas, you better believe that we forced our way through them that night.
Yeah.
I'm attaching pictures of Grandma Bridget for your viewing and sharing pleasure, as I believe the statue of limitations has expired on this stay sexy and don't underestimate a bad wig. Maggie.
I can't wait to see this. Yeah, i'd totally buy it one hundred percent. Look at that outfit.
It's fucking brilliant.
It's so good.
It's like not too over the top, it's not, but it's enough. The teeth give it away because she's got perfect teeth.
Right, she should have yellowed those up a little bit. The glasses are perfect.
Lush is perfect fucking blazer.
I think this scarfer around the head tied under the chin is an overplay, yes, but it's still gish. Yeah, it gives. And as long as she was kind of crouched over and talking in the old lady voice.
Eyed purse, Oh my god, Like I hate that we just gave a bunch of teenagers a fucking there's.
A great phone over.
There's one on her across the top of the fucking Grand Marquee closing like a pin up.
Girl. Will put them on our Instagram.
That second picture is absolutely joy Also, I think the Grand Marquee was fifty percent of that. Yes journey.
It's a giant silver like cop car.
It's a total Grandma car.
I want it, Okay, I want bridges to have become an actress, and I want her sister who wrote it.
In to be a makeup artist. Oh my god, that's what happened in the end.
What if it's Maggie Gillenhall and.
Her sister Bridget Bridge agil at all, Bridgie Chilly, you know.
The infamous Bridget Chillan.
Wow.
That was That was one for the Ages, so epics, so good?
All right, wow, okay, Well I'll have to follow that one with uh tornado story. Oh yes, dear Karen and Georgia, let's jump right in. In April of nineteen seventy nine, my mom, Vicki was sixteen, a junior in high school in her Wichita Falls, Texas, and dealing with a breakup.
On the dresser in her bedroom.
She had her class ring, her mom's class ring, and her recent excess class ring. The ex mark had come by asking for the ringback, but my mom refused and simply told him that she'd give it back later.
Sure she wasn't ready.
No nobody could have known how much later that would be. On April tenth, nineteen seventy nine, a massive tornado ripped through town in an event now known as Terrible Tuesday.
Oh you love tornado, I do.
The tornado touchdown at five fifty five pm, traveled eight miles through the city, killing forty two people and destroying more than one hundred commercial businesses, two schools, and more than three thousand homes.
Oh my god.
On that evening, my mom, her parents, and her brother, who had come by the house for dinner, were getting ready to eat when the tornado warning hit. My granddad ordered everyone into the car to drive out of town. My mom argued because even at sixteen, she knew that being in a car during a tornado is a famously bad idea. But Dad said get in. And when the Texas Dad says that you get in. The only one not required to leave was her brother, who stayed behind. I guess he was over eighteen, so he's.
Like, fuck you, I'm just going to hang out here.
In the tornado house.
They drove out of town a bit, but then couldn't go anymore as there was too much traffic with cars pulled over as everyone was.
Trying to leave.
That's so scary.
That's like why you don't get in your car and trying to drive somewhere.
Also, that's when the LA fires were happening and I had fires literally in a ring around my neighborhood. Yeah, I left my house because I was like saying, I can't get out while everyone else is trying to get out.
Exactly. That's exactly why I left, like before I needed to. Yeah, that's and my cousin was one of the ones got stuck in the palisades, like driving out and her car got fucking burned.
For really, she run. Yeah. So later that day I was like, I'm not.
Doing this nod terrifying. Yeah. So my mom watched the tornado as it barreled through town. It was over a mile wide and looked like a massive black wall. When it passed, they drove back toward their house and realized at the end of their block that all of the houses were leveled. It went from a normal neighborhood and houses to nothing. Her brother, who had stayed behind, survived by sheltering in a closet under the stairway, and when he emerged, the entire second story of their house was gone.
So I can show you a photo of the houses before and after of the house beautiful, oh seventies looking normal house. Oh, then that like if her brother hadn't there, he would have died, right, he was hiding like there somewhere there isn't it? Fucking but like that's an uninhabitable tear down, yes, and so random, Yeah, we'll show it on her Instagram, Okay. And so the entire second story was gone, which meant my mom's room and the class
rings were gone as well. Remember that my mom really only cared about the class rings and even searched in the ditch behind the house. She never found them. In the end, my grandparents decided to sell the lot rather than rebuild, and the rings were presumed lost. Fast forward ten years to nineteen eighty seven. Vicki and Mark exchange different rings. What so they get back together and get married and then emoji with a heart's in its eyes.
Fast forwards sixteen more years to two thousand and three. I'm thirteen years old, the middle of Mark and Vickie's three daughters. The family who rebuilt the old lot is still living there. Their nineteen year old son is in the backyard when their dogs dig something up, and what do they find? A writer high school class of nineteen seventy nine ring with the initials M l oh.
The photo of it too.
This is from Molly. You fucking kill this email. Mollys, look at that vintage classics.
Unbelievable.
They borrow a yearbook, realized the former resident is now married to a guy named Mark, and call my mom. My mom brought my sisters and me in on the news, and one night we played a game of asking my dad if he could remember what his class ring looked like. He ended up describing me at all wrong classic and then my mom said did it look like this and held out the ring to him. He was shocked and amazed. Of course, stay sexy and give your ex his class
ringback so it's not lost in a tornado. Or maybe don't Mollie.
Oh my god, I know that is when you start like, when it started going that direction, I was like, they found the ring, Like, how is that possible?
And just in the backyard sitting there. That's why you need to always bring a name metal to Texas and bring it with you everywhere you go. That's literally what I want to.
Say from house to house. Okay, I'm not going to read you the subject line. It says, hey folks, my maternal great friend father or Papa Pete as my family called him was a character. He was a raging alcoholic who, to me sounds like a total piece of shit, but at his core cared for his children, my grandmother and her siblings. The closest fictional character I can compare them to is Frank Gallagher from Shameless.
Oh fuck, that's rough.
He frequently went on drinking and gambling binges where his family wouldn't hear from him for weeks. He gave classic drunk advice, my favorite of which being if you have nowhere to sleep, sleep on a grave because no one will bother you. And then it says classy, but that's really true. I kept thinking about that, where I'm like,
that's really true. Yeah, you go into a graveyard at night, you're alone pretty much, Yeah, kind of, Well, some drinking teenagers, but they're scared of you and ghosts and ghosts, but they're also scared of you. So, without further ado, it's the late sixties in the small town of Watumpka, Alabama, population of about four thousand people at the time. My great grandmother big Mama no I'm not kidding, gets a
phone call from a sheriff in Texas. Ma'am, are you the wife of Pete Brooks, Yes, ma'am, your husband is dead. He'd drunk himself to death. You're gonna have to come to Texas to collect his body. Big Mama, who's only about thirty at the time, while holding this charming nickname, by the way, is devastated. She takes her two young teenage daughters on a road trip to Texas to bring the body of their father home to Alabama to be buried. They enter the police station, they explained that they are
there to collect mister Rook's remains. The young mother and her daughters are brought around the corner to the cells, only to find Pete Rooks drunk off his ass and slurring his helloes to his wife and daughters. What Pete had gone on a bender so grandiose that it carried him three states away. Upon being arrested for god knows what, the sheriff must have asked him who he could call
to come pick him up from the station. Pete knew no one would come pick him up up in Texas, all the way from Alabama now, and he was out of money, so, being the genius he was, he told the shareff to call his wife and tell her that he had died.
Okay, the sheriff is so complicit and it's so not okay, and it was your job to not do that.
This is this is a real bros before host situation. That is like, and that's the.
Diastation that they went through the whole time before knowing that, just because you were like, come pick me up.
Yeah, and the share was like, let's do it.
Boys club. Wow, that's why the girls clubs must we must get serious about the girls club. Yes, because the boys have been boys club and for far too long.
You've had your fucking day.
Can you imagine how furious you would be? Okay, he knew that the only way his wife would come pick his dumb ass up in a whole other state after no contact, no apology, and no money to fund the trip was over his dead body. I can't even imagine that twelve hour car ride of shame home. And that's my crazy great grandparents' story. JS.
Shit, you got one of those stories, email them to us. Please fucked up things someone's ever done to you?
Also, if you feel shamed, yeah, maybe not that bad. If you have a story that where you feel like you're supposed to feel shame or that somebody's bad, they're not right. Write it in. Let's let us decide.
Yeah, we'll tell you the truth.
Um, okay, we'll tell you the truth.
Let's see. Okay.
Oh and this is it's a Memorial Day when this comes out, So this is kind of a Memorial Day story. Hello ladies and Emotional Support animals. I was born and raised in Buffalo, New York. My family traveled from Italy sometime around eighteen ninety and decided to make the city of Good Neighbors their home. In nineteen ninety six, my grandfather embarked on a dedicated search to locate his missing uncle, Bartholomew,
who had served in World War Two. Initially, the family had been informed that he was missing an action, but later but the military communicated that he had been killed in battle, with no remains discovered. Due to the onset of Alzheimer's disease, my grandfather's pursuit was tragically interrupted. However, in twenty nineteen, my father took it upon himself to continue the search. He began reaching out to distant relatives he had never met and joining Facebook groups dedicated to
the families of missing veterans. After years of tireless research, my father discovered a cemetery in Luxembourg that still contained approximately one hundred unmarked graves. Given that Bartholomew's last known location was in this area and he had been missing for seventy five years, it seemed to be the most likely place to find him. In a remarkable turn of events, several family members submitted DNA samples, which ultimately allowed us
to confirm Botholomew's identity among the unmarked graves. WHOA I know after all that time?
So I wonder if the army or whatever it was has some sort of procedure to keep something so they contest totally.
And then his remains were repatriated to Buffalo for a proper military burial, just in time for would have been his one hundred and fourth birthday. On Memorial Day WOW on Saturday, June first, twenty twenty four. Bartholomew received full military honors and was laid to rest with his family. Bring enclosure to a story that has resonated in our family for generations. Is a profound and moving moment. To know that after so many years, he will finally rest
with those who loved him. My Papa, who passed away on October fourteenth, twenty twenty four, has now been reunited with his beloved uncle SSDGM K. Wow, that's a powerful story. Yeah for Memorial Day, totally.
Wow.
Well, if you're enlisted, if you're in any part of the military in this country, thank you for your service.
Yes, thank you.
And thank you to World War Two veterans for fighting Nazis.
Yeah, literal Nazi.
Very important to fight Nazis.
Let's do it. Okay.
My last email, the subject line is a fun train derailment question mark. Hello murder pals. I know you're awesome. You know you're awesome. We don't need to discuss it. Some random Wednesday in two thousand and seven, my grandfather picked me up from school, just like any other day. We made some small talk on the way home, and when we walked in the door, he told me that he had a gift for me. While I waited, my grandmother showed me a brand new diamond ring he had
just given her. This was weird since my grandparents weren't exactly well off. My gift was a brand new laptop. Since our household computer was of the nineties and it was on its last leg. I was eager to get on MySpace in less than a fifteen minute wait time. So I stopped wondering if my grandfather had pulled a bank job, and I went on to my room right, and I don't ask questions questions, just log on. Fast forward to a few hours when the nightly news came on.
Being a teenager, I didn't watch the news, but I happened to walk through the living room at just the right time to see my grandfather on the screen talking about how something felt like an earthquake. Super Confused, I stopped to listen. That afternoon, he had stopped at a convenience store. It was one of those stores you wouldn't know was a store if unless you were a local, just a boring, tiny building on the side of the road.
There's nothing unusual about him stopping there. But what he conveniently didn't mention at all that day was that while he was there, a fucking train ran through the store.
Well, I forgot about the train completely right.
According to the News, a train engineer ignored a stop signal when he was backing up on an offloading track, which caused three train cars to roll through a dirt barrier and hit the store thirty feet from where the track ends. The owner managed to get everyone out safely, including having to pull out a customer who went into shock and had to be sent to the hospital. My grandfather had only a tiny cut on his nose, probably from his glasses being pushed into his face from the
impact duda of a train train. I don't remember the store ever reopening, and eventually it was demolished. But as far as I know, trains have run without incident in my hometown ever since. Oh yeah, in the gifts, he stopped there to buy a lottery ticket. The ticket won him one hundred thousand dollars.
Sorry, what the fuck?
I was like he stole the money when like everyone had evacuated.
He says, yeah, not only did he survive a freak trained derailment, but he won more than my salary from the ticket he bought immediately before it happened.
What the fuck?
Stay sexy and avoid stores near train tracks, Brits or don't. And then our producer Kate Shallenbach looked the incident up and she says there was indeed a trained derailment near in Lancaster, South Carolina, in two thousand and seven. The train ran into a by Right convenience store, and Kate found a print interview quoting a witness who had stopped and to get a lottery ticket when the train crashed into the store. No one died in this incident.
I mean the time, the timeline that you're on in this life. If that's it, After that, that's pretty fucking great.
Constant whistling, constant chill attitude.
Yes, someone likes you.
Just just I am blessed.
Oh my god, wow. Okay. My last one is just about medieval family folklore. Oh just that.
Yeah, okay, Hi, Karen and Georgia. Greetings from Brussels. I'll get straight into it. I'm from the rural part of Belgium, Limburg. I've been to Belgium.
Isn't that weird?
Yeah?
Back in the late medieval times this area was mostly farms, tiny wooden houses with thatched roofs, and local pubs.
Take me so fun.
Life was fine if you were hard working. Unfortunately, I come from a long line of quote enthusiastic enjoyers of life not exactly align with the whole reap what you sew lifestyle. So my ancestors found a solution. A gang, not just any gang, the biggest and most notorious one in the region. Their name okay, here I go uh du Bacan writers, Brocken Writers writers literally the goat writers.
Oh, and that says.
I know goat writers. Folklore says they rode goats through the night. Some stories even mentioned flying goats. In reality, they were more into leaving threatening burn letters on people's doores, not to be confused with the mean girl burned the book, and since everything was made of wood and straw very flammable vibes, the letters basically said nice home, you got there, It would be a shame if it burned down.
People had to pay to avoid.
That shit like early mafia yeah, or Brussels Mafia.
Yeah.
My family name shows up in multiple court documents connected to this gang. I find that both cool and slightly concerning, and honestly a bit explanatory for how my family still operates today. No crime, just creative thinking. It doesn't end well though. Two of my ancestors were hanged in a nearby town after being tortured for a confession. When I was about eight, my dad took me there. The original gallows were still standing in front of the town hall.
WHOA my dad somehow arranged a meeting with the mayor to discuss our family history. I vividly remember us walking into the office and my dad immediately joking, so who here hanged my family? It remains one of my favorite childhood memories to this day. Now that I've uncovered my dad's side, I'm looking into my mom's. Apparently my grandparents were heavily involved in resistance efforts during.
The Nazi occupation.
Oh yes, they rarely talked about it because of the trauma, even though that's where their love story began. Wow, maybe a story for another day. Anyway, Thank you for being you heart emoji, stay sexy, and maybe don't trust anyone who rides goats.
M M.
Please write in the love story where your grandparents met during the resistance.
We need resistance love stories.
We need all resistance stories, any.
Any like today? Are there any resistance that's right?
Minneapolis? Come on, let.
Us write us at gu what is it? My favorite murder at gmail dot com?
Thank you, goat writers in the sky.
That's right, Stay sex and don't get murdered. Good goodbye, Elvis. Do you want a cookie?
This has been an exactly right production.
Our senior producer is Molly Smith and our associate producer is Tessa Hughes.
Our editor is Aristotle Ascevedo.
This episode was mixed by Leona Squalacci.
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Goodbye,