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Data accurate as of 220-26. Hey, listener. Karen in Georgia here. And do we have a summertime treat for you.
00:02:11
Kate Winkler-Dawson is back with brand new episodes of her true crime talk show, Wicked Words.
00:02:17
Each week, journalist, historian, and host Kate Winkler-Dawson interviews incredible filmmakers, writers, and podcasters about the true crime cases they know best.
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These are the stories behind the stories. So stay tuned at the end of this mini-show to hear the trailer for Wicked Words with Kate Winkler-Dawson.
00:02:33
And check out new episodes of Wicked Words every Monday wherever you get your podcasts.
00:02:37
Goodbye. Bye. Hello and welcome to My Favorite Murder. The mini-sode. The mini-sode.
00:03:02
See what I mean? That's what I meant. When we say it really fast. Oh, like say it actually fast.
00:03:06
Say it because it's the mini-sode. We say the whole intro fast. Let's try it again.
00:03:11
Okay. Hello and welcome to My Favorite Murder. The mini-sode. Oh, we're singing together.
00:03:17
you're right sorry i mess it up okay it's like i was it was speed over yeah lines okay ready here we go hello and welcome to my favorite murder
00:03:30
no now we're not doing together well we say and welcome together or i say i'm welcome yeah
00:03:37
and i say to my favorite murder you know what and you say the mini i'm actually not even interested
00:03:43
in what we say or how we say it. If we don't leave every part of that in, are we even like being genuine?
00:03:52
Quality content. Are we even real at all? Do we ever tell the truth? I feel like we're gatekeeping podcasting
00:03:59
and we don't leave all of that in. I think we're gatekeeping fucking up all the time.
00:04:04
All right, so it's settled. We're leaving it in. We're leaving it all in. You want to go first?
00:04:10
Sure. Sure. This first email says episode 426, Hindenburg secondhand hometown. Oh, shit. Yes. Keep them coming. Okay. It just starts. I email you yearly. Fingers crossed this one gets picked.
00:04:24
Wow, the tenacity. Thank you. The weekend after listening to episode 426, where Karen covered the Hindenburg disaster, I visited my 100-year-old grandpa who lives in Tom's River and worked in Lakehurst.
00:04:39
Ooh. 100 years. Hell yeah. A septuagenarian? Centuagenarian? 100 years. That's huge.
00:04:47
Happy birthday, grandpa. his family moved from Brooklyn to Lakehurst when he was a kid but I couldn't remember when exactly
00:04:53
so I asked him where he was when the Hindenburg crashed as he tells it his neighbor Joe Peterson
00:05:00
was looking out the window drinking a glass of water when he saw the explosion Joe and his wife
00:05:05
may drove over to pick up my grandfather and his parents to bring them to the crash site
00:05:10
my grandfather his parents and their neighbors watched it burn and my grandfather remembers a man
00:05:16
with a flower in his lapel coming up to their party. And then in parentheses, it says group.
00:05:21
And it says, and telling them in a daze that he had tickets to ride the blimp. So basically remember it was landing
00:05:29
because it was supposed to take off again. So that guy stood there waiting to get on that thing
00:05:33
and then watched it explode. During the months after the explosion, my grandfather would bike past the crash site
00:05:40
on the way to the local swimming hole and pick up pieces of the Hindenburg. Wow.
00:05:45
Wow. His memory at 100 is better than mine at 40. I get it. So true. And I left in the part where he
00:05:54
explained party means group because it was part of his retelling My grandfather didn start telling us stories until his mid 80s and he never thinks they particularly interesting He a World War II
00:06:07
vet and has a cigar box full of pictures from the war, including the aftermath of Hiroshima,
00:06:14
which he saw firsthand. So this person was at Hiroshima and the explosion of the Hindenburg.
00:06:21
Like, what are the odds? Historic person. He has an incredibly detailed memory of his life from a very young age, but again, didn't
00:06:30
find it worth discussing until we discovered the pictures and asked about it. You've got to ask you guys.
00:06:37
And then it just says, stay sexy, Liz. Liz. 40 year old Liz and her 100 year old grandpa.
00:06:44
I would love more stories if you have them and if you can get him. I would too. A hundred year old grandpa telling his stories and we get to tell them secondhand on this podcast.
00:06:55
I wish this podcast was going on with my grandma who lived to be 104 was still alive because her stories from escaping Russia are epic.
00:07:05
I think I have them somewhere, but yeah. Did she have an accent? She had something wrong with her vocal cords.
00:07:11
So she talked really adorably and then very high. little so you couldn't really tell but she could speak yiddish for sure okay so she didn't have a
00:07:21
russian accent no russian accent so she had assimilated because was she a kid when she
00:07:25
came to america yeah that she was like a teenager by the time she came to la so she was like a
00:07:31
you know preteen when she came to america wow yeah oh man that would be i mean i've tried to
00:07:38
secretly record my dad that's illegal in california it is it's illegal it's actually
00:07:43
impolite and a real breach of privacy because he tells great stories, but he's just like the frog
00:07:50
in the box from that cartoon where the second you're like, gather around everybody, he doesn't,
00:07:55
he won't do it. This is not an ad. In fact, they haven't had an ad with us for a while,
00:07:59
but StoryWorth that we did ads for a while back where you send someone story prompts and they
00:08:05
write them really did help my dad write out a lot of things that I wouldn't have known about him.
00:08:10
That's cool. Okay. This story is like a great example of one of the reasons I've always been obsessed with hometowns.
00:08:20
Like this is a classic someone's hometown story. Nice. This one's called Tragic Fate of a Forgotten Childhood Item.
00:08:28
Hi, friends. I'm writing to tell you a story about the tragic fate of a long forgotten childhood item.
00:08:33
As a millennial daughter of boomer parents, one of my perennial tasks is to help my mom organize and scan the thousands of printed photos stored in unorganized Robermaid tubs in her attic.
00:08:45
One day, while sorting through images of my early childhood, I stumbled across a sweet picture of my brother and I squeezed into a brightly colored Mickey Mouse themed sleeping bag.
00:08:55
Immediately hit with a wave of nostalgia for an item I had totally forgotten existed, I asked my mom, whatever happened to that thing? I loved it.
00:09:02
My mom looked at the photo, took a beat and replied, oh, it went to the girl who fell.
00:09:09
And then it starts with the story. Just 10 minutes away from my childhood home in Anchorage, Alaska, there's a park slash highway rest stop called McHugh Creek.
00:09:18
It's basically a cliffside with spectacular views of Cook Inlet just outside the city limits.
00:09:23
The thing about Alaska, even in the big city of Anchorage, is that civilization gives way to the wild with little transition.
00:09:30
This park is a perfect example of this. As kids, we used to scramble over rocky hills,
00:09:36
dodging bear poop and spent porcupine quills with the audible hum of the busy highway just beneath us.
00:09:42
The focal point of this park is a waterfall which flows into a rocky pool. One day in the mid-1990s,
00:09:48
we went to McHugh Creek for a picnic with my grandparents who were visiting from out of state.
00:09:52
There was a group of teenagers, two boys and a girl who were climbing over the park barriers
00:09:56
around the waterfall. My mom, a seventh grade public school teacher, told them to mind the park signage.
00:10:03
But as teenagers are wont to do, they declined. An hour or so later, as we were eating our picnic lunch, we heard a terrible cascading scream.
00:10:12
The kind of guttural sound that can't be faked. The teenagers who had hopped the park barriers were climbing up the rocks next to the waterfall.
00:10:22
The two boys made it up to the top, but the young woman slipped. She fell 20 feet down into the rocky pool below.
00:10:30
Even in Alaskan summer, the water would have been frigid. As other park goers raced to pull her from the water,
00:10:36
my dad ran back to her car and grabbed anything that might help, including our beloved Mickey Mouse sleeping bag.
00:10:43
My dad and grandpa helped get her up to the road where the paramedics could reach her,
00:10:47
and my dad, unable to do anything else, wrapped the sleeping bag around her. My mom says the image of the ambulance doors closing on this poor girl draped in her kid's sleeping bag is seared in her memory.
00:11:00
While I can find no record of this event online, my mom remembers reading in the local paper that she died a day or two later in the hospital.
00:11:09
We all do reckless things as teenagers, and it's sobering to think that one decision, one slip, one day at the park could have such devastating consequences.
00:11:18
Yep. now raising a daughter of my own i can only hope that our little mickey mouse sleeping bag
00:11:23
provided that girl with some ounce of warmth and comfort stay sexy and mind the park signage
00:11:30
kp also that was it's kp's hometown right yeah kp was there for it no her mom well yeah she was
00:11:40
she was at the park because the family was having yeah she doesn't remember it right so she's little
00:11:45
enough kid but if she was older it's firsthand experience of death even though it's like it's
00:11:52
not your grandma because she old it not this reason that makes sense it like sudden shocking young person Everyone panicking No one knows what to do until the ambulance gets there Like huge effect
00:12:08
Well, I think it's also for us, her mom's point of view of the story and her mom has kept that
00:12:14
story in her for so long and never thought to share it. And yeah, I don't know. It's amazing.
00:12:21
It's amazing. It's tragic. So sad. Hey, everyone. It's Cal Penn, host of Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club.
00:12:31
This week on the podcast, I'm sitting down with Will Wheaton, who played Gordy Lachance in Stand By Me 40 years ago and now narrates Stephen King's The Body, the novella that inspired it all.
00:12:44
We talk about what it's like to return to a story that shaped his life, channeling his memories of River Phoenix and the recording booth,
00:12:51
and why the friendships you have at 12 might be the most important ones you'll ever have.
00:12:56
I know Gordy Lachance. I am Gordy Lachance. Like, I mean, even when I was a little kid, I was Gordy Lachance when I didn't know it.
00:13:05
Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club, on the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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as of January, 2026. For full offer details, visit boostmobile.com. Okay, well, I'm going to take us on a left turn right now.
00:14:46
Great. Because the subject line of this email is, my grandpa robbed his own bank.
00:14:51
Hello, all. Long-time listener, first time hitting send on an emailer. I've started many emails, but this one is my current favorite.
00:14:59
So it's going off into cyberspace and hopefully landing on a future episode. Hey, congratulations.
00:15:05
Hi. it's future us talking past you saying congratulations currently i come from a
00:15:13
shortish bloodline of bankers my mom's dad retired from banking after working his way
00:15:18
up through the ranks my mom retired a few years ago after nearly 40 years in banking
00:15:23
and i'm currently chugging along with a whopping seven years in the industry i currently do marketing but also help out regularly on the front lines as a teller
00:15:34
Luckily, my only interesting stories aren't that interesting, and I've had a pretty uneventful teller career thus far.
00:15:41
I thought I knew my family's stories too, but recently learned that that isn't the case.
00:15:46
Last week, my mom stopped by my branch, and I was showing her our new fancy toy, the cash recycler.
00:15:53
And then in parentheses, it says, it's the machine you might find behind the teller that spits out the cash rather than keeping a bunch in your drawer, helps with safety, accuracy, speed, etc.
00:16:03
Interesting. Yeah. We were talking shop and as a former compliance and risk manager, she brought up security and what we do in case of robbery. And then she says, you know, your grandpa used to test that as his job.
00:16:16
Was he a secret bank shopper? Bank robber. Yeah, but like a secret shopper. Bank robber shopper, yeah.
00:16:22
Oh my God. Okay, tell me everything. He's, you know what he is, is a secret bank shrobber.
00:16:28
Shrobber. Sorry. Sorry, that was stupid. No, thank you. Then she drops the figurative bomb, figurative in parentheses, that in the 70s, 80s, to ensure that staff was following proper robbery protocol, my grandpa would dress up as a robber in all caps and go pretend to rob his own bank.
00:16:48
No. Think fire drill, but for robberies. And not just kindly walk in with a sweet note, all caps, he was armed.
00:16:57
And to absolutely no one's surprise when hearing this, he even had the cops called on him, like by his own co-workers who were probably scared for their lives.
00:17:07
Can you imagine being a sweet 17-year-old working your summer job at the local bank when someone comes in, guns a-blazin', demanding all your money, just for it to be old Arden, making sure you didn't give it all away?
00:17:20
And then it just says, oof. Oh, my God. They don't let 17-year-olds be tellers, do they?
00:17:27
I bet they do. I mean, they must because this is a banking family writing this email.
00:17:32
I'm learning this information on the teller line of my own bank with my coworkers not any time in the previous 36 years of my life.
00:17:40
And of course, my mom waited until after my grandpa died, so I can't even fact check.
00:17:45
Dude, I have so many questions. Right? Yeah. Because they just referred to it as their bank.
00:17:54
Yes. Meaning the bank that she works at Right Because I for a second thought that this was from just a really rich person that like my grandpa had a bank And so he was testing But he just worked at the bank He just worked there
00:18:05
It wasn't his bank. The amount of people who could and should have been shot in these stories is ridiculous.
00:18:13
I think the only reason that people didn't get shot more back then is because most people were drunk during the day.
00:18:20
They had gone to a wonderful liquid lunch. They had their cigarettes to calm them down. So like a bank robber is no big deal.
00:18:28
Just smoking. Oh my God. The cherry on the top, at least to me, is that my grandpa was known by
00:18:35
everyone he knew as a very kind, caring, gentle man with a strong faith. I got into trouble for
00:18:41
saying dang in front of my parents. Oh shit. Don't tell them about this podcast.
00:18:46
oh fuck you cannot let anybody in your family listen to this podcast i don't know why that
00:18:53
makes dang is such an old word that no one says anymore but i do i think we should i think dang
00:18:58
needs to come back for sure dang i need to readjust my mindset to just a simple dang mindset
00:19:05
but oh dang and darn it i like a darn it too oh so the sentence is i got in trouble for saying
00:19:11
dang in front of my grandparents while grandpa was at work traumatizing Roberta and making George
00:19:17
shit himself at 2 30 on a Tuesday. Oh my God. I love the olden days. Right. And then it says,
00:19:26
well, that's my story. My family is relatively non-newsworthy. And then in parentheses,
00:19:30
not complaining. So I'll be writing high on this one for a while. Stay sexy and maybe don't try to
00:19:36
rob your coworkers? Erin. Erin, you fucking found the magic. What? The magic. The magic sauce of hometowns,
00:19:45
which was just as much the one you told, which is the heavy, sorrowful, and yet what we like to talk about side.
00:19:54
And then we come in with some grandpa icing to just be like, life contains multitudes.
00:20:00
Some grandpa, like 1970s, 80s shenanigans. Yeah. Just did he wear a mask? Did he wear a balaclava on his fucking face like a straight up robber?
00:20:11
What kind of gun? What whose plan was this? I think we want I'm going to ask for stories that were shenanigans from the past, like pre
00:20:22
Internet that couldn't happen now. That's what we want. We want stories that that are you kidding me?
00:20:27
That couldn't happen now. Let's say you're sitting in the way back seat of the car with no seatbelt.
00:20:32
Like that's a regular thing that happened. Like we want to tell the kids like how lucky we are that we survived to this day.
00:20:40
Yes, for sure. And that basically the world we live in now is because people started suing the fuck out of each other.
00:20:47
And then everyone went, oh, yeah, don't do that. Stop doing that. You can't smoke at the gas station while you're waiting for your tank to fill up, which is one of my earliest childhood memories.
00:20:57
My God, everything's so fucked. watching my mom light a cigarette and roll the window up as we were waiting for the gas to get
00:21:04
filled up. Vince won't even let me roll my window down when we're at the gas station and he's putting
00:21:08
gas in the car or get out of the car. Like he has strict rules of like, he's just like, stay here.
00:21:13
Well, he's just like, this could start a fire. That could start a fire. He thinks everything
00:21:17
could start a fire. You're not supposed to use your phone when you're pumping gas. Did you know
00:21:20
that? Yes, I've heard that. I had a friend who, well, right when everyone got addicted to phones,
00:21:26
that became a real problem because it was like, is this true? Or is this just internet lore? And
00:21:31
then it'd be like, I'm doing it anyway, but it truly could. It truly could. I don't know about
00:21:36
phones these days, but yeah. Anyways. Have you seen those videos of the guys like in a mini mart
00:21:41
where their phone explodes in their pocket or their vape pen? Fuck that. Okay. This is a crazy
00:21:49
episode. Yeah, it is. This one's called per my last email. It's kind of long, but it's about the
00:21:57
mob. So we're okay. Great. It says, look, listen, you look fantastic. Per my last email, I have a
00:22:06
fairly decent story for you about my uncle in the mob. You asked for it. So here it is. I think this
00:22:11
is someone who maybe was on the podcast before and they were like, let me know if you want to hear
00:22:15
about the da da da da da. And we were like, yes, tell us about that. That actually might be per my
00:22:19
last email. Like why? Which great. And, but then also anybody starting per my last email as if
00:22:26
they're like, I'm just going to keep sending these to you until you read it. I love it all.
00:22:31
But yeah, it's good energy. Okay. Per my last email, I have a fairly decent story for you about
00:22:35
my uncle in the mob. You asked for it. So here it is. All names have been changed to protect the,
00:22:40
Well, all names have been changed. Get it? Because there's no one to say it. In the early 80s, my great uncle Frito.
00:22:48
Wow. Frito is F-R-E. Frito. Frito. Frito. Frito Lays. I know. I was like, huh? Yeah.
00:22:59
In the early 80s, my great uncle Frito died. He was the very Sicilian uncle of my father, therefore making him my great uncle as opposed
00:23:07
to a great uncle, which he was not. we went to his visitation and funeral and the following chaos ensued due to the fact that this
00:23:16
was a sicilian funeral the room was full of very dramatic crying women hairy men and wildly
00:23:21
unattended children yay 80s while i and my siblings were running around the funeral home
00:23:28
and drinking powdered chicken soup from the coffee machine you fucking remember powdered chicken soup
00:23:33
Oh my God. Yes. Did you just taste it? The cup drops? Yes. The water goes? The powder? I mean, was that it? Or was it pre in the cup?
00:23:43
No, I think you're right. I think it dropped powdered chicken soup. They made chicken soup like coffee.
00:23:48
Sorry. We were into bone broth before it was fucking trendy. Sorry. It was protein. It was 30 grams of protein.
00:23:55
And it was all the salt for the week that you needed. And it was amazing. Amazing. Such delicious chicken soup. Mostly enjoyed at hospitals.
00:24:05
I'm so glad that was brought up. These are the details that get you ready on this podcast.
00:24:11
A very solemn woman and her adult children entered the room. When my great aunt Dottie saw them,
00:24:17
she, all caps, lost her mind. In a full-on panic, she told family members that this woman and her
00:24:25
children had to leave immediately. She went bananas until they left. Dottie was not a nice
00:24:30
person either, by the way. And then it's, here's the story. Uncle Fredo worked for a crime family
00:24:37
in Milwaukee, which was part of the Chicago outfit of the mafia. He was in charge of quote,
00:24:42
coin operated devices like jukeboxes and vending machines and collected money for the mob.
00:24:48
Isn't that funny? Like when you see parking meter people taking the money, like it's just like
00:24:52
Those people used to be from the mob. The idea that you go into vending machines like that for a lot of people back in that
00:25:00
time, probably the whatever, the 40s to the 90s. Yeah. That's like, I'm the heiress to the vending machine fortune, to the powdered chicken soup
00:25:09
vending machine fortune. Oh my God. He also served as an enforcer when necessary.
00:25:16
And that says very troubling. As any good mobster, he was leading a double life.
00:25:20
The woman and children forced to leave the funeral were his wife and children, not his ex-wife, wife.
00:25:28
As in, he had two wives and two families. Oh. The wives knew about each other, but Dottie did not tell her children, adult children, anything about their other family.
00:25:39
So when they arrived, she forced them to leave, all caps, their father's funeral.
00:25:45
Because she didn't want her children to know she'd been lying to them their entire lives.
00:25:50
You'd think there'd have been two separate funerals, right? Or how about the wives, since they know about each other, get together and go, how are we
00:25:58
going to handle this? Yes. Yours first. Yes. Well, I guess mine is giving everybody a huge benefit of the doubt that they could even
00:26:07
have a sit down. It doesn't sound like it, but holy shit. In case you're wondering, Fredo died under suspicious circumstances that were never resolved,
00:26:15
but I've been given no further details on that. Dottie died years later of natural causes and her children still have no idea about the other family.
00:26:24
They were both truly assholes, she says. I was going to say, but now with the advent of 23andMe, they probably know a lot.
00:26:34
That's happening to so many people. Their children's children absolutely are going to put it together.
00:26:40
Secret Family Expose is what they should have named that company instead of 23andMe.
00:26:44
on a side note thank you for all that you do to promote awareness of mental health issues
00:26:49
championing women's causes and being your true authentic selves all the time i mean it's not easy thank you for creating this community and providing a voice for so many who
00:26:59
can no longer speak for themselves what you do is so much more than entertainment please never
00:27:04
forget that oh my god oh shit i'm getting i think i have to go get some powdered chicken soup and
00:27:10
be by myself oh my god stay sexy and don't be an asshole marie my name is changed to she her
00:27:19
i love her she's fun per my last email um re marie amazing job marie marie and she like took
00:27:30
a name from the podcast like that's the middle name you give everyone that's my because you can
00:27:36
say it like Marie. You can say it like a New York lady. Karen Marie Kilgareff. Yeah. That's a good
00:27:43
solid one. Wow. That was incredible. A plus plus. It's so funny though, because isn't that just the
00:27:50
way where it's an incredible story of, you know, secret families and all the different things and
00:27:55
the mafia, but really the star of that email was powdered chicken soup dispending machine.
00:28:02
Yeah, I mean, it's hard to top that ever, literally with anything, because it congeals, because there's so much salt in it.
00:28:08
You do not want to put anything on top. No croutons. Hey, everyone. It's Cal Penn. I'm the host of Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club.
00:28:21
This week on the podcast, I'm sitting down with Ray Porter, the narrator of Andy Weir's audiobook Project Hail Mary.
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Massive sci-fi adventure about survival and science and what happens when you wake up alone very far from Earth.
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I really had to make a decision because I caught myself getting that frog in my throat and starting to get teary as I'm narrating some of these sections.
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And it's like, OK, yo, yo, yo, is this indulgent? And I really thought about it I was like no at this point it would kind of be betraying the trust the author and the listener have in telling this story if I don go through it But there places in this book that deeply emotionally affected me
00:29:02
And I left it on the mic. That's great. Because it served the story. People will say like, oh, my God, I cried at the end.
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It's like, yeah, dude, me too. Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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For full offer details, visit boostmobile.com. The subject line of this one is just let the 12-year-old drive.
00:30:55
Ahoy hoy, murder friends. I've been meaning to write this story in since a minisode featuring a literal child
00:31:03
playing designated driver reminded me of this family story. I don't know the number. Guess it doesn't matter. I digress. Whenever my family's around the table
00:31:11
at Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc., someone inevitably brings up the time my great aunt
00:31:16
and uncle let my 12-year-old aunt drive to the coast. This was before my time, so while I've
00:31:23
heard bits and pieces of it over the years, I finally asked my mom what the real deal was.
00:31:28
Apparently, when my aunt was about 12, her aunt and uncle let her drive the car,
00:31:32
but not across the church parking lot like my cousin and I were allowed to do at that age.
00:31:37
Oh no, dear reader. They let her drive almost 60 miles between our small hometown and the Gulf
00:31:44
coast. This is what I want. This is what I want. Can you fucking imagine if that happened today?
00:31:51
Couldn't be done today. Hijinks. Shenanigans, you called it. Shenanigans. Oh my God. And then it
00:31:57
says 60 miles on the highway at 12. 12. Right now, you might be taking guesses as to the time period
00:32:05
of this particular story. Was it the 70s, the 80s? Nope, it was the 90s, the very early 90s,
00:32:12
but still. For years, the anecdote was that they let her drive to the coast, but according to my
00:32:18
mom, they actually let her drive home from the coast. This distinction has led me to conclude
00:32:23
that my dear aunt and uncle likely had a few drinks in whatever revelry that they got up to
00:32:29
with a 12 year old in tow and then decided it was probably better just to let her dry.
00:32:36
A couple of Mai Tais on the coast, on the Gulf coast. They let her keep the umbrellas,
00:32:41
the little umbrellas that was in there. That was her payment. Put it behind your ear.
00:32:44
Put it behind your ear. It just reminds me because when I was 12, my parents left me and my sister home alone
00:32:50
because Laura was 14. And the first thing I did after they left was drive the car. And my sister
00:32:56
was so angry and I was so excited except for I pulled it out of our driveway and drove down the
00:33:03
street and then had to make what was probably a 30 point turn in our next door neighbor,
00:33:09
the Withingtons grandma's driveway. Total nerds. No, no, no. Noni watched me because she lived in
00:33:17
a mobile home next to the family home, right? So it was like the family and then their grandma
00:33:21
lived next door. Noni. I love her. Noni. And she had a long kind of driveway with a real
00:33:27
angle to it. And I had to do my 25 point turn using this. So when I would go forward, I would
00:33:34
go, I couldn't see the street in front of me. Like it was bad. I did it as badly as I could.
00:33:40
She watched the whole thing and never told. Hell yeah. She was the greatest woman. She was the
00:33:47
greatest woman She no fucking narc No she not a narc Sorry I called her a narc because she no fucking narc No that not No it not her Can we do grandparents not narcing on you as a story too Okay Yes Grandparents keeping your secret
00:33:59
Yeah. Being on your side as opposed to their own children's side. Because they hate their own children.
00:34:05
Let's be realistic. Anyway, point being, it was so scary to drive 50 yards. And this 12-year-old drove 60 miles on the freeway.
00:34:15
Home with her drunk aunt and uncle. Okay. And then it says, I mean, I guess good on them for not drinking.
00:34:20
Yes, actually. I mean, sure. Sure. Okay. And then it says on a more personal note, I'll echo all of the many sentiments passed on by other murderinos about the community you've built and the lessons you've taught us.
00:34:34
While I'm not a day one listener, you two have been in my ear for years, getting me through earning my PhD.
00:34:40
Wow. Congratulations on that. And the nightmare that is the academic job market.
00:34:45
and then it just says stay sexy and maybe just have an adult designated driver and then it's
00:34:50
the initial c she her oh my god that's amazing that was amazing amazing thank you c wow i feel
00:34:58
like alohandra did you like write the last paragraph of each of these telling us that
00:35:02
we're doing good things because shit's been really fucking hard lately like shit's been a little
00:35:07
fucking rough lately in this and i just looked at the last one i'm reading and it says something
00:35:13
nice. And I'm like, Alejandra, guys, I wrote all of these. She's just going to edit it out.
00:35:19
We're being very thoroughly produced right in this time period. People are trying to get us through.
00:35:25
Appreciate you. Appreciate you. Leave that all in. Okay. Treasure from beyond. Get ready to cry.
00:35:34
Okay. This is my last story. Hi, Karen, Georgia, and all the Exactly Right crew.
00:35:38
I have many stories I could tell you, but this one is recent and close to my heart.
00:35:43
My mom passed away last week after several weeks on hospice. I had gone home for the night that after my dad called me with the news, I went back to
00:35:52
my parents' house so I could wait with my dad for the morticians to come collect her
00:35:56
body. My dad and I were both devastated, but he is a retired first responder and I'm a middle
00:36:01
school theater teacher. So we both have a tendency to be practical in an emergency.
00:36:06
Yep. After we said our goodbyes to my mom, we started clearing some furniture and things out of the way for the morticians so the gurney would fit.
00:36:15
We had folded the ironing board and I was trying to find a clear surface to set down the iron when I saw just enough room on one of my mom's bookshelves.
00:36:24
As I put the iron down, a book caught my eye. The complete language of flowers. Even though we were in the middle of something and I have no interest in gardening, I had an overwhelming desire to pick it up and look through it.
00:36:37
TikTok would say I have ADHD. A hundred percent. But I think something or someone else was prompting me because as soon as I picked up the book, a card my mom had written to my dad fell out.
00:36:52
Even though they lived in the same house, my mom would sometimes mail my dad cards so he would have something fun to open in between bills.
00:37:02
That's so sweet. That's love. That's love. She had addressed it but never stamped it or sent it.
00:37:07
It was dated August 2020 and it read something like this. Hi, darling. What a month it's been.
00:37:14
I hope you get a good feeling from this card. I love you today, tomorrow, and always.
00:37:19
I absolutely believe this small series of events was not a coincidence. It was my mom giving my dad a moment of comfort at such an awful time.
00:37:28
My mom never failed to let us know how much she loved us, even after she had taken her last breath.
00:37:36
Oh, here's Alejandra's part. Thanks for all you do. Your podcast has brought me comfort and laughs through many difficult times over the last several years.
00:37:44
Someday I'll send you some of my dad's crazy tales from his days as a highway patrolman.
00:37:48
old man yes please in the meantime stay sexy and know that you are loved lisa she her lisa lisa
00:37:57
god we're having our we're having our time already we don't need the fucking sweetest
00:38:03
hometown we've ever read but also to turn around so quickly after you went through something like
00:38:10
that to tell us a thing that you got to experience that was so beautiful like thank you for that
00:38:16
That's very generous of you. And also I 100% believe that your mom was like, look at that book.
00:38:25
I forgot that I left that card there. Definitely. Absolutely. Or I knew I left that card there, you know?
00:38:32
So good. You know what that reminds me of, Georgia, is you gave me and my sister one of the nicest
00:38:36
gifts one year, which was, I think maybe it was the year anniversary or maybe it was Christmas
00:38:43
after the first year my mom died. Yeah. It was just a little frame and it was my mom signature So it like off of a card I think or something It said love mom Yeah And every time I look at that it like when it your mom writing it your mom
00:38:59
Because it's that is there. That's them. Mine would be XOXO because they sign it the same way your entire fucking life.
00:39:06
Yes. And their penmanship and like, it's so personal. Yeah. I just so relate to how much that must have meant.
00:39:14
because it's like, it's the closest she could have been. Yeah. Your sister helped me with that.
00:39:19
You can get it on Etsy. And I think it's such a great personalized gift for sure.
00:39:24
So lovely. So lovely. Yeah. So personal. Yeah. Well, all right. I'm done having all these feelings.
00:39:30
This is just supposed to be a job. God damn it. This is just a job. I want to clock out now.
00:39:39
Okay. You know how. Stay sexy. And don't get murdered. We do know how. We do. Goodbye.
00:39:47
Elvis, do you want a cookie? This is Kate Winkler Dawson, host of the true crime talk show, Wicked Words, where I interview
00:40:00
journalists, podcasters, and authors about the fascinating behind-the-scenes stories
00:40:05
from their investigations into the world of true crime. These are the stories behind the stories.
00:40:12
Coming up on Wicked Words, I talked to prolific crime writer Patricia Cornwell about her book, Portrait of a Killer, Jack the Ripper, Case Closed, where she reexamines the evidence, documents, and records surrounding this infamous Victorian era case.
00:40:31
Veteran journalist Raina Peterson tells me her story of a brazen, uncatchable jewel thief
00:40:37
who tiptoed through the homes of Dallas's high society during the swinging 60s. Her 2024 book, The King of Diamonds,
00:40:45
investigates how this thief eluded police and the FBI for more than a decade. And I chat with award-winning journalist and podcast host Mandy Matney,
00:40:57
whose unflinching investigation of the Murdahl murders sheds light on one of South Carolina's
00:41:03
most powerful and corrupt political figures. So join me and a new special guest every week for Wicked Words,
00:41:12
where we take a deep dive into the stories behind the stories. Wicked Words premieres on Monday, July 1st on Exactly Right
00:41:20
with new episodes every Monday. Follow Wicked Words wherever you get your podcasts.
00:41:27
This has been an Exactly Right production. Our senior producer is Alejandra Keck.
00:41:41
Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo. This episode was mixed by Liana Squalachi. Email your hometowns to myfavoritemurder at gmail.com.
00:41:49
And follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at My Favorite Murder and on Twitter at My Fave Murder.
00:41:54
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