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This is exactly right. of AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile customers compared to 12 months on the Boost Mobile Unlimited Wireless plan
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as of January 2026. For full offer details, visit BoostMobile.com. Hello and welcome to My Favorite Murder.
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The Minisode. Where we read you. your stories. We haven't done this in a while. It's been a while. It feels like it's been six months.
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Yeah. Let's really do it. Let's do it for real, though. You want to go first? I would like to, if you would please let me.
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This is a good one. I'm going to read you the subject line. The subject line is my godfather was a Zodiac suspect.
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Is this familiar? Not yet. Okay. Hey, besties. I was born in Vallejo, California.
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We met her at the... That's all it took us. I don't know why. we met this person in line in the VIP meet and greet line at our Oakland show.
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She was like, no, no, no, no. We were like, send it in. Send it in. So Molly pulled it.
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And here we are. Hey, besties. I was born in Vallejo, California. And my dad's side of the family has deep roots there in parentheses and some good connections to Sonoma County.
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Hi, Karen. We already said hi. My dad was my original murderino. He was obsessed with the JFK assassination and the Zodiac killer.
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and he passed that fascination right down to me. I remember reading Robert Gray Smith's Zodiac
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when I was about 13. Yes. That's how it always happens. My dad graduated from Vallejo High in the early 60s
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and I loved asking him what it was like living there during the Zodiac years. He said he actually was acquainted
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with a few of the Vallejo victims and clearly remembered the fear and the buzz around town.
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I mean, insane. Terrifying. One day his friend, let's call him Joe, who would later become my godfather,
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called him and said, hey, the Solano County Sheriff is running ballistics on every registered 9mm in the county
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and asked me to bring mine in. Do you want to bring yours in too? Not wanting to miss out on history,
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my dad said, sure. So they brought their guns in for testing. While my dad was waiting in the hall,
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he asked an officer, are you really calling everyone with a registered 9mm? And the guy goes,
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oh no, your buddy in there, he's a suspect. Holy shit. This woman told us this, like, as she was walking away.
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And we were like, wait, wait, what are you talking about? Apparently, Joe matched the physical description.
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Stocky build, short hair, dark framed glasses, a bit of a loner, and a military background.
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Needless to say, Joe was not thrilled to hear someone had reported it. The fear.
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A little while later, my godfather was woken up in the middle of the night by the sheriff knocking on his door, asking to come in.
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Thinking fast, he called a lawyer friend who told him not to let him in without a warrant.
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And that was that. No arrest, no follow-up, no mention of him anywhere in the Zodiac books or documentaries.
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So I'm guessing they didn't have much on him. I actually grew up in the same house my dad did in Vallejo.
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That'd be cool. Most of the neighbors had been there for decades, and they all knew each other.
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Fun fact, Arthur Lee Allen, the longtime Zodiac suspect, lived just two blocks away.
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Holy shit. One of my neighbors told me that before he was a known suspect, he once invited her over to see his knife collection.
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Cool. She said something about him made her so uncomfortable she left almost immediately.
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Yeah. Because he's the Zodiac Killer. He's the Zodiac Killer and you have a system set up in your body to tell you you know that.
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Yeah. As for my godfather, Joe, he never did anything truly suspicious over the years.
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They all had their eye on him. He was quirky, sure, but apparently not enough to stop my recovering Catholic parents from making him my godfather some years later.
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My dad passed away over a decade ago and Joe about five years ago. I really thought one of them might drop a deathbed confession, but no dice.
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Loved seeing you at the Oakland show. I'm late to the MFM party, but have been binging for three years and still catching up.
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I love that you can be late to a party like from three years ago. That's pretty.
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Yeah. That party's long. love to you both and thank you for everything you do stay sexy and don't get suspected christina
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wow that's a good one that's a goody well i have a true crime one middle school wolf and sheep clothing it called hey friend arenos oh i am my best friend bean love your podcast and have become so much more aware of our surroundings since we started listening in 2017
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We know how much you love a personal serial killer experience, so let's get started.
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Love is the incorrect word, but awesome. Right. Also, hi, Bean. Hi, Bean. We grew up just outside of Poughkeepsie, and they wrote it phonetically, but I know Poughkeepsie, New York,
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and attended Arlington Middle School from 1996 to 1998. Right. Kendall Francois, nicknamed Stinky for very clear reasons, was our hall monitor during that period.
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He was a huge, intimidating man who took pleasure in giving out too many detentions, especially to girls.
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Picture it. I was naive, sheltered, 11 years old with a bob haircut because my mom didn't have time to deal with knots,
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wearing dusty pink corduroy overalls and a brown floral long sleeve shirt. Bean was my very best friend, also a naive sheltered sixth grader, wearing brown overalls with a tan polyester short sleeve shirt, cucumber melon body spray and Claire's accessories.
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It was the 90s after all. We were going about our day and walking to lunch when Stinky stopped us claiming we were late to lunch.
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Late to lunch, I asked. How can you be late to lunch? We were both really good kids, but while I had a tendency to verbally stand up against any and all perceived injustices,
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Bean, on the other hand, was afraid of everything. Still is, actually. She shares your fear of moths,
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Karen. I once had to beat one to death with a flip-flop while she lost her shit cowering in a
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corner. She tells me every time that it's the fluttering that freaks her out. Yeah, that's very
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true. The audio is not great on those. So, of course, while I'm challenging Stinky and asking
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how one could possibly be late to lunch, not a class dude, Bean takes off running, leaving me to
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serve my lunch detention alone. It was the longest 30 minutes of my 11-year-old life with who we now
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know was an incredibly creepy and active serial killer who raped and strangled eight-plus women
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from 1996 to 1998. I didn't know that. I didn't recognize that name. No, I looked it up. It's just
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horrific. Oh my God. From that moment on, I avoided Stinky like the plague, ditching into bathrooms
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and classrooms whenever I saw him heading my way. At the beginning of eighth grade, Stinky was
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apprehended after neighbors complained about the terrible stench coming from his family's home.
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The next few months brought trials and discoveries and at least eight dead women, many of whom were
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sex workers. The missing woman had been stored in and around Stinky's house that he lived in with
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his parents. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole and died in prison of 2014 of,
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quote, natural causes. Fast forward 30-ish years later and Bean and I are still best friends.
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She's my person. Over the many years we've been friends, we've learned to accept each other's
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limitations and embrace our strengths, but she will never live down leaving me with Stinky
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in the hallway. Oh, my God. Right? The person writing this letter always gets to pick the restaurant.
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Oh, definitely. I mean, just like. Just has to give her one look. Stay sexy and at all costs, avoid the serial killer in the hallway, Lauren and Bean.
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Lauren and Bean. I mean, God damn it. In the school. And he was called Stinky because he always smelled like everyone called him that.
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And like, your like suspicious, weird, creepy feelings about this person turn out to be more than true.
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Yeah. The worst. The worst possible person. Oh, God. Well, here's another real one, real hometown.
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But the subject line is I was a dairy princess and my mother's connection to a double murder.
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Hello, MFM humans and creatures. I was listening to Karen's story from episode 190 about the murderous dairy princess.
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and I thought I'd write in and talk about my own experience of being dairy royalty.
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When I was 17, I made the dairy princess of my county. And for one year, I was the face of the dairy business in my area,
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spending my time talking about the importance of calcium to schoolchildren, handing out awards for best in show, eating far too much ice cream,
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and even once participating in a hand milking contest at the local fair. It's so country. I love it.
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This position has been around for years. In fact, my own mother was also the Dairy Princess.
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Oh, she's from a dynasty. Oh, yeah. And was the one who strong-armed me into competing for the title.
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My mother did scare the living shit out of my grandparents because they at one point believed that she had been the victim of a murder.
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And then in parentheses it says, spoiler alert, she lived. So on January 11th, 1979, two young university students in Bellingham, Washington named Karen Mandick and Diane Wilder were lured to a secluded home by Kenneth Bianchi.
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Yes, I remember that. One part of the Hillside Stranglers. He raped and strangled both women before leaving their bodies stuffed in the backseat of a car.
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In 1979, my mother was 19 years old, worked at a restaurant in Bellingham, and shared the same last name as one of the victims.
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Wow. On the night that the murders took place my rebel of a mother decided to skip going home after her shift at the restaurant and instead went to her boyfriend house without informing her parents of what she was doing When my mom failed to arrive home that night my grandparents shrugged it off But when she still wasn home a full 24 hours later my grandma brought it up to her
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friend who was a clerk with the sheriff's department. This friend informed my grandma
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that she had seen my mother's last name on a victim report and that my grandma needed to call
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the police immediately. Instead, my tough as nails grandmother got into her car and drove directly
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to the police station, and according to her, caused such a ruckus in the front lobby that
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the two officers had to physically restrain her from trying to shove her way past the
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front desk. Once she'd calmed down, the police explained to her that no, her daughter was not the victim,
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but that she could file a missing persons report. My mom eventually went back to her own house where my grandparents promptly grounded her
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for scaring them to high heavens, and my mom wasn't allowed to drive herself to work again
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for the next four months. Wow. Kenneth Bianchi was found, questioned, and charged, and eventually sentenced to life imprisonment in the Washington State Penitentiary, where he still is today.
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When I was a teenager, my mother and I lived with my grandparents, and whenever my mom would start complaining about how hard it was to parent a teenage girl, my grandma would loudly exclaim,
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Remember the time you made me believe that you were a murder victim? This is what you deserve.
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Dang. Anyways, always remember to stay sexy and maybe don't stay so long at your boyfriend's house, Kat.
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Or at least call home. I mean, I'm yelling at myself back then from the future because I totally did that shit, too.
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I mean, I did the thing where you tell them you're going one place and then you go a different place.
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And then they call your friend. Your friend's like, I don't know what you're talking about.
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Yeah. That was a bad one. I mean, like, really, it's one of the reasons I don't want kids is because that shit happens all the fucking time.
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and you lose your mind over and over again and they don't care. No. I didn't care.
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No, of course not. It's like you don't even know what the big deal is. Yeah, calm down.
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Yeah. Okay. Hopefully this podcast is letting the young people know what their parents are actually worried about.
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In the worst way possible. Right. Yeah, that's a good point. I'm saying we're telling them in the worst way possible.
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We are. She thought she was crazy until I told her what the psychic said. Hello from Canada.
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A few years ago, I met with a psychic. During my reading, the psychic connected with my father, who had passed away when I was two.
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I didn't tell the psychic anything about me. She didn't even know my name. I was skeptical at the beginning of this reading, and I didn't want to give anything away to see if she was legit.
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She relayed things my dad wanted me to know, one being, quote, your dad wants you to tell your mom that it was him and they're called orbs.
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I had no idea what she meant by that and shrugged it off until a few days later when I was telling my mom about the experience with the psychic.
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When I told her my dad's comment, my mom got tears in her eyes and looked stunned.
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She began to explain to me that she had never told anyone this because she thought she was seeing things and didn't want anyone to think she was crazy.
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I know I got choked up when I read this. Here's her story. My dad had just died in a snowmobile accident.
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My mom gave birth to my brother three weeks after this, and I was two at the time.
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Can you imagine? God. You're grieving. You're grieving and you have to tend a newborn.
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And a two-year-old. Two-year-old's worse. That's true. She was devastated and struggling to take care of two babies by herself.
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One night, my grandma, Arlene, offered to take me for the night so my mom would just have to take care of one baby so she could hopefully get some rest.
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My brother was very colicky and she had finally gotten him settled. She had just laid down when he began to cry again.
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At this point, my mom broke down crying and screaming in her bedroom, feeling so overwhelmed.
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Suddenly, my brother stopped crying. My mom looked down the hallway into my brother's bedroom and saw these floating light balls going up and down over my brother's crib.
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My brother was mesmerized by them, which stopped him from crying, and they eventually soothed him back to sleep.
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I've heard a lot of great stories about my dad over the years, and everyone always says he had the kindest soul.
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I'd like to think that my dad continues to show kindness to us on earth and help us when he can.
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Thanks for taking the time to read this. SSDGM, Raina. P.S. I went to your show in Boston and delivered some Canadian Kit Kat to Vince after the show.
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I hope you got them. We did. P.P.S. I tried American Kit Kats while in Boston and they are truly trash.
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That's it. Oh, my God. Raina. Oh, my God. Also, I love like there's nothing better than a psychic story where the person can say I never told anyone that.
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Totally. You can prove a psychic was right. Oh, I fucking love those. Like the psychic that told my sister, be careful of gluten.
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And it was when Nora was like four years old. Right. And then she went on to have celiacs.
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Tell us, write us, please, if you have any psychic experiences, good or bad. Yes.
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The good or the bad or the better. My favorite murder at Gmail A psychic that got proved right or the worst psychic you ever Exactly I want those ones too That happened to my mom She was devastated when she found out she was scammed Oh Yeah
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Okay, my last one. And it just says, my dad, Forrest Gump. Oh. Hi there. Growing up, all of my friends were convinced that my dad was in the CIA.
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That's so cool. Let's get right to it. It was a funny joke sometimes actually believed,
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as he was stoic, stern, and was usually seen wearing a full suit. While his actual profession was way less interesting, his life has not been.
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As a child, he grew up across the street from Paul Cox, a.k.a. the blackout murderer Georgia covered quite some time ago.
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One of his brothers was and is close with the family. Do you remember that one? Not off the top of my head.
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I don't either. There have been so many murders. This joke has gone on for two seconds.
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This joke itself has gone on for two seconds. Fast forward to when he was in his early 20s living in NYC.
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My dad and his friend were pulled over, car searched on one of the nights that Son of Sam struck in Queens.
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Keeping it in NY, my dad bore witness to and survived 9-11. I've never felt luckier than when I was able to watch my dad walk through the door of my childhood home that day.
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Jesus. So sad. So sad. That's like we're still unpacking 9-11 and then and we're doing this stuff that's happening now.
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Totally. Collective trauma. Yeah. So it's just piling up. Yeah. But more people in therapy now.
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Sure. OK. Still in NY. He was also witness to Sully landing the plane in Hudson River.
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What? As if the 9-11 experience wasn't trauma enough for one lifetime. 16 years later, he came to visit me when I was on a work trip in Vegas.
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If you can guess where this is headed, yep. We happened to be there during the Harvest Festival shooting, all caps, staying in the hotel room next to the shooter.
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Shut the fuck up. That feels to me like an email filled with lies because that's insane.
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Oh, okay. It's always been an inside joke with my family that my dad is in fact a real life Forrest Gump.
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He is also the most compassionate, strong, badass dad a woman could ask for. Love your pod.
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Thank you for keeping me company and my neurotic thoughts for all these years. Love, Sam.
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Sam. Sam. Wow. Sam, I want more details. I like. That's wild. Did they go out to some weird like thing to look at in Vegas and come back in there like the entire like all of this is closed down?
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I mean like. Or did they hear the gunshots through the wall? Are they there? That's so fucking scary.
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Oh, it's so horrible. Okay, here's my last one. It's quick. PSA for all the murderino moms to be. And I just loved this. Hi, all. I wanted to share a small way to give back to victims and their families that most aren't too familiar with. Pregnant mothers can donate their placentas to the training of cadaver dogs. The human tissue needed to train the dogs can be costly for these organizations, and a donation can go a very long way in training multiple animals.
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Wow. I Googled some search and recovery groups in my area and just asked them if they were interested in a donation.
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Then I told the hospital staff and brought a small cooler to my birth. The nurses and doctors were very helpful and I took home a baby and a placenta at the end of it.
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Then the search and recovery team were able to pick it up for me and I got to meet the dogs who would be benefiting from my donation.
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Wow. So stay sexy and donate your placenta, Lauren. Lauren, I mean, that's like way to go.
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I know. You've invented a whole new way to help. That's incredible. That's really smart.
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Yeah. Also, you know, some people eat the placenta. We're not talking about that today.
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That's not what we're talking about. Just crime. Not murderinos. Yeah. We can bury them for cadaver dogs, but I can't talk about it.
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Other than that, we are not talking about hippie moms trying to get those vitamins.
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I mean, get what you need. I'm not shaving anyone, but I just don't want to talk about it.
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I mean, it's because then you have to, in your mind, eat it. Yeah. It's a picture.
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Yeah. OK. The first time someone told me that is like a fun aside in conversation.
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I was devastated for like eight months. I just like they do what? I'm sorry. What?
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It's wild. Thanks for listening in, guys. And write in your stories, please. Yes, we love your stories.
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Thank you so much. Stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie?
00:20:03
This has been an Exactly Right production. Our senior producers are Alejandra Keck and Molly Smith.
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Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo. This episode was mixed by Liana Squalachi. Email your hometowns to myfavoritemurder at gmail.com.
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And follow the show on Instagram at myfavoritemurder. Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:20:22
And now you can watch us on Exactly Right's YouTube page. And while you're there, please like and subscribe.
00:20:27
Goodbye. Thank you.