473 - Parker Posey

On today’s episode, Karen covers the murder of Lita McClinton and Georgia tells the story of the Texas Seven prison escape. For our sources and show notes, visit www.myfavoritemurder.com/episodes http://www.myfavoritemurder.com/episodes. Support this podcast by shopping our latest sponsor deals and promotions at this link: https://bit.ly/3UFCn1g. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  This is exactly right.

• 0:06Speaker 01

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• 0:36Georgia Hardstark?

  Everyone loves the idea of spending an afternoon curled up with a good book.

• 0:40Karen Kilgariff?

  Well, grow up, because it's almost impossible.

• 0:42Georgia Hardstark?

  Luckily, you can take your next great story with you on Audible.

• 0:45Karen Kilgariff?

  Audible has a massive selection of titles to choose from, including This American Life, new books by Michael Connelly, along with classics from Magathah Christie, and so much more.

• 0:54Georgia Hardstark?

  Whether you want a mystery, a true crime story, or something completely different, there's always something new to listen to.

• 1:00Karen Kilgariff?

  New members can start listening with a 30-day free trial at audible.com/mfm.

• 1:04Georgia Hardstark?

  Audible, stories that speak to you.

• 1:06Karen Kilgariff?

  Goodbye.

• 1:24Georgia Hardstark?

  Hello.

• 1:26Karen Kilgariff?

  And welcome.

• 1:26Georgia Hardstark?

  To my favorite murder.

• 1:28Karen Kilgariff?

  That's Georgia Hardstark.

• 1:29Georgia Hardstark?

  That's Karen Kilgariff.

• 1:30Karen Kilgariff?

  And we're trapped in a seventh grade in 1974.

• 1:35Georgia Hardstark?

  I have an itch on my nose immediately. Why? I was in an MRI the other day for my tits. Immediately got a fucking itch on my nose as soon as I was in there.

• 1:43Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes, of course. That's your system going, "Do not submit to the laws."

• 1:49Georgia Hardstark?

  Think of something else. Think of something else.

• 1:51Karen Kilgariff?

  MRI?

• 1:51Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:52Karen Kilgariff?

  Those things are the worst.

• 1:53Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:54Karen Kilgariff?

  I absolutely got out of the first one I had to go into.

• 1:56Georgia Hardstark?

  You got out? Oh, you claustrophobic?

• 1:58Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, yeah. No one warned me about anything that is involved in going through that.

• 2:02Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, shit.

• 2:02Karen Kilgariff?

  So the loud noises and the thing.

• 2:05Georgia Hardstark?

  Sit still.

• 2:06Karen Kilgariff?

  All of it, you have to be, do not move. And mine was for my brain, so I had to be real still. And then it's like clank, clonk, nuclear war.

• 2:15Georgia Hardstark?

  It's loud and scary and weird.

• 2:16Karen Kilgariff?

  This is so scary. And then someone was like, you didn't take a Valium? And I was like, no one offered. No one offered.

• 2:23Georgia Hardstark?

  I kind of find it relaxing, to be honest with you.

• 2:25Karen Kilgariff?

  To be in there?

• 2:26Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 2:27Karen Kilgariff?

  Do you mean kind of like how a baby likes being wrapped up like a burrito, maybe?

• 2:30Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, it's like, I can't listen to a book. I can't do anything but listen to the clanging. The clanging starts to sound like music at some point.

• 2:38Karen Kilgariff?

  Wait, how many times have you been in an MRI machine?

• 2:41Georgia Hardstark?

  Weirdly, quite a few. Weirdly.

• 2:44Karen Kilgariff?

  Over 10?

• 2:45Georgia Hardstark?

  No, no, no, no. Like, under five.

• 2:47Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay.

• 2:48Georgia Hardstark?

  Maybe four.

• 2:49Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay.

• 2:49Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah. And I don't mind it, but yes, you can't be claustrohobic.

• 2:53Karen Kilgariff?

  I think they should walk you through the vibe before you get in there, for sure.

• 2:57Georgia Hardstark?

  Definitely.

• 2:58Karen Kilgariff?

  It's gonna sound like the building is starting to burn down around you.

• 3:01Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 3:02Karen Kilgariff?

  That's just the way the machine works.

• 3:03Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 3:05Karen Kilgariff?

  Uh, what's going on with you? Less MRI stuff. So we tried to talk about this last week, but the episode last week, there was so much actual in-episode conversation.

• 3:15Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 3:15Karen Kilgariff?

  That we ended up recording for two hours and 20 minutes and having to cut it down to that episode last week. So we got rid of a bunch of TV, just chit-chat at the top of just shows we were watching.

• 3:26Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 3:26Karen Kilgariff?

  So for me, the thing that should live to this week, which lots of people are talking about now, is the Netflix show Adolescence.

• 3:33Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, my god.

• 3:34Karen Kilgariff?

  Which is simply, truly, one of the best things I've seen in a long time on TV.

• 3:38Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, it's so hard to watch. It's so hard to watch, and I don't have children. I can't imagine what it's like watching with children.

• 3:44Karen Kilgariff?

  Horrible. But also, the whole thing of like, they're doing episodes in one continuous shot. They're doing, it's like, they're tackling massive, like, social issues of the day, global social issues.

• 3:57Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 3:58Karen Kilgariff?

  All in one shot, kind of like a play. Leave it to the British, once again, to just be nailing, uh, like, a six-part series.

• 4:07Georgia Hardstark?

  I can't get past the one-shot thing, because I just keep thinking about, what if you're the one extra, or the one rando who just fucks up? And they have to start from the beginning of the show. I just, it stresses me out more than, so I can't really pay attention as much.

• 4:21Karen Kilgariff?

  They've gotta have like outs. They've gotta have like little kind of like cuts and clips and ways to fix things. But, and I also think it's because Stephen Graham is the actor that plays the dad, but he also wrote it with his writing partner. So as an actor, I feel like when they were making those plans, he was probably thinking of all of those extras, true teenagers that they're getting to, you know, 50 at a time to act in these scenes. Like, they must have planned for that in some way.

• 4:51Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, there's gotta be. Yeah. Cause like one kid looks at the fucking camera and the shot's ruined.

• 4:55Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 4:56Georgia Hardstark?

  Right? So maybe they have multiple cameras going at the, I don't know.

• 4:59Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, they must have a backup plan, but also there is, now everything's going around on social media. So there's this amazing clip of the boy who is the star, who's never done anything before and is incredible. Can't remember his name.

• 5:10Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 5:10Karen Kilgariff?

  And then the woman he's in a scene with, I believe her name's Erin O'Connor, cause she's from another show that I wanted to recommend from before. And it's the same team as the people in Adolescence, except for it's a Victorian boxer, female bandit series called Swinging Away, or something like that. It's great.

• 5:30Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 5:30Karen Kilgariff?

  But anyway, they talk about how this boy accidentally yawned in their scene. That's super intense and it's like the psychologist and the, and the boy kind of arguing. And at one point, he kind of just like loses himself or whatever. And he tells the story. He's like, he yawns. And she just improvises, "Am I boring you?"

• 5:49Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 5:50Karen Kilgariff?

  And they get, they just like stay right into it. So there's like real theatrical training.

• 5:56Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 5:56Karen Kilgariff?

  This is the Brits.

• 5:57Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 5:58Karen Kilgariff?

  This is what they have over us, which is they respect acting.

• 6:01Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, but you know what they don't have?

• 6:02Karen Kilgariff?

  What?

• 6:02Georgia Hardstark?

  Parker Posey.

• 6:06Georgia Hardstark?

  And that is my thank you Jesus TV show moment right now.

• 6:12Karen Kilgariff?

  No, Tim. Nobody wants to live in Thailand.

• 6:17Georgia Hardstark?

  I want.

• 6:18Karen Kilgariff?

  Thailand, sorry.

• 6:20Georgia Hardstark?

  We were so bummed when we found out Jennifer Coolidge wasn't gonna be back for this season. But the only person that could, that Mike White could have replaced her with, that I'm not mad about, I didn't know until I saw her, was Parker Posey.

• 6:32Karen Kilgariff?

  Piper.

• 6:33Georgia Hardstark?

  Piper, now. Where's my LaRice pan?

• 6:37Karen Kilgariff?

  No, now I have to drink myself to sleep. It's like so satisfying to walk around my house talking to the dogs in the Parker Posey voice. It is so. And also, who deserves the star turn on White Lotus, season three, more than Parker Posey?

• 6:55Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, true.

• 6:56Karen Kilgariff?

  I almost said more than Papa.

• 6:58Georgia Hardstark?

  Papa. Yeah, it's incredible. I love it. Thank you, Mike White, for bringing her to our shores. I don't know.

• 7:05Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, thank you, Mike White, for highlighting the super talented women of Hollywood in the way only you can.

• 7:12Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, truly.

• 7:13Karen Kilgariff?

  So great.

• 7:14Georgia Hardstark?

  Since we're doing this in one take, should we?

• 7:16Karen Kilgariff?

  Should we not mess up?

• 7:19Georgia Hardstark?

  Should we?

• 7:19Karen Kilgariff?

  And nobody yawns?

• 7:20Georgia Hardstark?

  Keep on going. Actually, I yawn sometimes when I'm stressed out. So like, I thought it's kind of brilliant, too, that like, they kept it, because it makes sense.

• 7:29Karen Kilgariff?

  Completely. Or like, he's posing like, I'm bored.

• 7:32Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 7:32Karen Kilgariff?

  And then it's like, yeah, you've seen kids do stuff like that, especially when they're in trouble.

• 7:36Georgia Hardstark?

  Fucking brats. Okay.

• 7:37Karen Kilgariff?

  For murder.

• 7:38Georgia Hardstark?

  Hey, we have a podcast network called Exactly Right Media. Here are some highlights.

• 7:42Karen Kilgariff?

  That's right.

• 7:43Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, it's me. Okay. Breaking news, guys. It's finally here. The Knife, a true crime podcast, premieres today on the Exactly Right Network.

• 7:55Karen Kilgariff?

  Woo, woo, woo.

• 7:56Georgia Hardstark?

  Yay. Our newest podcast. Please go follow The Knife. Host Hannah Smith and Peisha Eaton bring you the untold stories of people whose lives have been forever changed by crime. This is about the survivors, about the people we always talk about who are left behind, you know, trying to deal with their new reality.

• 8:15Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes.

• 8:15Georgia Hardstark?

  Post-crime. And they do it so beautifully.

• 8:17Karen Kilgariff?

  If you like The Opportunist, then The Knife is going to be your favorite new true crime podcast. Hannah and Peisha pitched this idea to us, and we were just like, of course, we would do anything to work with you guys.

• 8:28Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 8:29Karen Kilgariff?

  We've been talking it up. We've been building it up. And the day is finally here, and we're so excited. So when you're done listening to us on this episode, please go over to The Knife's feed, listen to episode one, rate, review, like, follow. Please do everything you can to support the show. We love it. We know you're gonna love it, too.

• 8:45Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, for sure. So then on Barry Bones, Kate and Paul start a two-part series on the Wolf family. What starts as a normal day in a quiet North Dakota farming community in 1920 takes a dark turn when a neighbor discovers farmer Jacob Wolf, five of his children, and a hired hand, all brutally murdered. So you have to listen as Kate Winkler-Dawson and Paul Holes try to crack this 105-year-old cold case.

• 9:10Karen Kilgariff?

  If anyone can do it, they can do it.

• 9:11Georgia Hardstark?

  Absolutely.

• 9:12Karen Kilgariff?

  I'm so excited to listen to that series.

• 9:14Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 9:14Karen Kilgariff?

  It sounds amazing. Then over on Do You Need a Ride, Chris and Karen, welcome the very hilarious John Milstein to discuss extreme skateboarding tricks that I like to practice outside of Costco at around 7:00 in the morning with my skateboarding buddies. If you haven't seen John Milstein's videos, he posts the most hilarious videos where he puts on like the same outfit that people at Staples wear to work, and then he walks up and down the aisles talking about how we all have to go to Staples and take over. And like literally is just walking around a real Staples.

• 9:46Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, my God.

• 9:46Karen Kilgariff?

  Pretending to incite revolution or whatever. He did a thing where he set up, he set up a little thing in the park, and he put about like maybe 10 or 15 chairs out. And then he put up a picture, a very large printout of a picture of his mother, and then began to give a speech about how much he loved his mother.

• 10:05Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, my God.

• 10:06Karen Kilgariff?

  And people came and sat down.

• 10:07Georgia Hardstark?

  Aww.

• 10:08Karen Kilgariff?

  And watched him do it. Like, he just is very inventive and very, very hilarious comedian.

• 10:13Georgia Hardstark?

  I love it. And also, we want to wish Bridger Weineger a happy fifth anniversary of I Said No Gifts. I can't believe it's in five years.

• 10:20Karen Kilgariff?

  Isn't that crazy?

• 10:21Georgia Hardstark?

  The hilarious Chris Fleming joins him to celebrate with a two-hour podcasting extravaganza filled with betrayal, chaos, and some special surprises. And I bet there's a gift for him.

• 10:31Karen Kilgariff?

  I bet there's a gift that he gets upset about.

• 10:33Georgia Hardstark?

  I bet.

• 10:33Karen Kilgariff?

  But I don't know. So you can listen to that today. Then next week, you can go to our YouTube channel, and you can watch the entire episode on video because it's over in the video studio. It was a big deal. Gotta love Chris Fleming. So go over to youtube.com/exactlyrightmedia to watch that.

• 10:51Georgia Hardstark?

  There's so many videos over there. You guys, check it out. And finally, in merch news, our super-popular, always sold-out Still Life crew neck that Karen is holding up. Which you can watch if you're looking at our YouTube page. Right now, it's back in stock. You gotta get there before it's gone. So go to exactlyrightstore.com and get it before it's gone again. This is like a really popular print. It's so gothy. I love it so much.

• 11:15Karen Kilgariff?

  It's great.

• 11:16Georgia Hardstark?

  Get it before it's sold out.

• 11:17Karen Kilgariff?

  Also, you can get the Fuck You, I Married joggers. They're restocked now. They're hostile on the outside, but they're so soft and cozy on the inside. And then if you wear those two items together, this sweatshirt and then some Fuck You, I Married joggers, men are legally not allowed to come within 10 feet of you.

• 11:35Georgia Hardstark?

  That's so true.

• 11:36Karen Kilgariff?

  That's our guarantee to you.

• 11:37Georgia Hardstark?

  I love it. I walk Cookie in my Fuck You, I Married joggers and nobody approaches me. It's great.

• 11:42Karen Kilgariff?

  I should put on the Fuck You, I'm Divorced joggers and see if anyone approaches me.

• 11:46Georgia Hardstark?

  They will.

• 11:46Karen Kilgariff?

  Ah, I said.

• 11:48Georgia Hardstark?

  Like the opposite. Hey, can I?

• 11:50Karen Kilgariff?

  Hey.

• 11:53Georgia Hardstark?

  The holidays are coming, which means we'll all be spending more time away from home.

• 11:57Karen Kilgariff?

  Whether you're visiting family or doing something actually fun, you want to know your home is protected while you're away.

• 12:02Georgia Hardstark?

  That's why now is a good time to think about home security with SimpliSafe.

• 12:06Karen Kilgariff?

  Unlike traditional security systems that alert you after a break-in starts, SimpliSafe is designed to help stop intruders before they get inside. These days, you're worried about your house, you're out of town, and then something comes up and you get to look on your phone. And SimpliSafe is going to show you not only the video of like, it's a raccoon at your front door, but also that they have staff that's sitting there, they already know. And if it was something different or worse, they would have already been on it.

• 12:32Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, I really think that's invaluable peace of mind that just like relying on your neighbors, paying attention is not going to give you. We've partnered with SimpliSafe to offer our listeners their biggest savings of the year. 70% off your new system with professional monitoring when you visit simplisafe.com/mfm.

• 12:49Karen Kilgariff?

  That's simplisafe.com/mfm. And when you order, write in MFM at checkout and it tells them we sent you. And it really helps the show.

• 12:56Georgia Hardstark?

  SimpliSafe, ahead of crime in real time.

• 12:59Karen Kilgariff?

  Goodbye.

• 13:00Speaker 04

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 13:31Karen Kilgariff?

  Am I about to tell you a story?

• 13:33Georgia Hardstark?

  You are.

• 13:34Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay. Do you have all your beverages? Do you have at least two?

• 13:37Georgia Hardstark?

  I have at least two beverages. I'm taking my shoes off, actually, under the got to get those foot listeners.

• 13:43Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay. Here's a great email that Maren found, just to kick this off. So it's a letter from a listener. It says, "Greetings, Team MFM. Longtime murderino and now author of 'The Devil Went Down to Georgia,' which was exerted, excerpted, in people. It's spelled excerpted, but I think it's pronounced exerted. Just landed on Oprah's Daily's list of best true crime books

• 14:06Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 14:07Karen Kilgariff?

  of all time. And then in parentheses, it says, "Gulp. It's one of the very few books about a murdered black woman, and the story is incredible."

• 14:14Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, my God.

• 14:15Karen Kilgariff?

  They go on to explain the story. I will not do that now. And then it says, "I first wrote about the story as a writer for Atlanta Magazine and have now revisited it, looking at it through the lenses we peer through today. The power dynamics between men and women, domestic abuse, racial and economic disparities in the justice system, systemic racism, and how we continue to give rich white guys the benefit of the doubt.

• 14:38Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 14:39Karen Kilgariff?

  I truly believe this one will resonate with your audience. Please let me know if you're interested in covering, and I'll send over a book. Thanks, Deb."

• 14:47Georgia Hardstark?

  Deb, like, the author of this book, sent us an email?

• 14:49Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes.

• 14:50Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, my God.

• 14:51Karen Kilgariff?

  Just to say, hey, you might want to think about doing my story.

• 14:54Georgia Hardstark?

  "The Devil Went Down to Georgia."

• 14:55Karen Kilgariff?

  "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" is the name of the book. Maren read that book without finding this letter, and she noted that it was an amazing read. She loved reading it. This is a researcher who has to read a lot of books. So when researchers say, "I loved the book," that's really very meaningful.

• 15:12Georgia Hardstark?

  What's the author's full name, Deb?

• 15:13Karen Kilgariff?

  Her name is Deb Miller Landau. And "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" is basically the primary source used in today's story. But let me intro it for you. We're all very excited that there was actually that letter waiting for us from, oh, who knows, 2017? Who knows when she sent it?

• 15:32Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 15:33Karen Kilgariff?

  So this story starts, it's January 16th, 1987. A cold, overcast winter morning in Atlanta, Georgia. And Lita McClinton is at home in her townhouse in the affluent Buckhead neighborhood. Now, this is sometimes referred to as the Beverly Hills of the South. Famous residents like Tyler Perry, Robert Downey Jr., Elton John have all lived there at some point. And Lita has a big day ahead for her that morning. It was just her 35th birthday.

• 16:01Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 16:01Karen Kilgariff?

  Couple of days before. But today, she has an important court date. A judge will be deciding how she and her estranged husband of 10 years' assets are going to be divided once their divorce is finalized. So essentially, today is kind of the first day of the rest of her life. You know, she's like finally out of this marriage. Her best friend, Poppy, has come to visit. Poppy brought her three-year-old daughter because Poppy wanted to be there with Lita on this day and kind of go through with her, make sure she was okay. It's kind of such a potentially stressful day.

• 16:34Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 16:35Karen Kilgariff?

  But Lita isn't expecting anybody else at the house. So when the doorbell rings at 8:15 a.m., she has no idea who it could be. She puts her robe on, she goes downstairs, she looks through the peephole, and she sees it's a flower delivery man. And so she opens the door and says, "Good morning." He's holding a big box of long-stemmed roses that are wrapped in a big pink ribbon. She thinks maybe they could be a belated birthday gift from a friend. So she does not see it coming.

• 17:03Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, that's such a good ruse because it's not like, "I didn't order anything from wherever the person's from," but it's like, "Someone random sent you flowers."

• 17:10Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes.

• 17:11Georgia Hardstark?

  It's totally an anonymous thing you could get away with for opening, getting someone to open her door.

• 17:14Karen Kilgariff?

  Absolutely. I mean, we've seen it in a lot of movies.

• 17:16Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 17:17Karen Kilgariff?

  And it's the kind of thing where, especially at this point in her life, it was the perfect ruse.

• 17:21Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 17:22Karen Kilgariff?

  But instead of delivering flowers, this delivery man pulls out a gun, pulls the trigger twice, the first shot misses her, the second shot hits Lita in the head, and within minutes, she's dead. These are the first moments of a tragic, convoluted homicide case that takes investigators from Georgia to Florida to North Carolina, and then all the way to Thailand and back.

• 17:45Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 17:46Karen Kilgariff?

  This is the story of the murder of Lita McClinton. And so, we already said it, but Deb Miller Landau, murderino, wrote the book, The Devil Went Down to Georgia, about this case. And Maren also used an episode of 2020 as a source, and that episode was entitled, "A Puzzling Murder." And the rest of the sources are in our show notes, if you want to go see those. Okay, so let's talk about Lita McClinton. She's a black woman and an Atlanta native, and her parents, Emory and Joanne McClintock, are wealthy, well-connected public servants with long and impressive careers. Lita's father holds a high-ranking post with the US Department of Transportation, and her mother will be elected to the Georgia State Legislature.

• 18:28Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 18:29Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah. Back in the 60s, Joanne campaigned and organized with Martin Luther King Jr. She would later served as the campaign manager for Atlanta's first black mayor, who was also the first black mayor of any major southern city, Maynard Jackson.

• 18:45Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 18:45Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah. And as a local reporter named Mark Winnie says, quote, "Lita was a true daughter of Atlanta." So unsurprisingly, given their stature, Emory and Joanne have big expectations for their daughter, Lita. She's educated in private schools, she participates in debutante and cotillion balls, she eventually graduates from college with a political science degree, and she has an exceptionally bright future ahead of her. But in 1976, Lita starts dating a man named Jim Sullivan, and her parents, to say the least, are not thrilled. So when Jim and Lita meet, Lita's in her early 20s, and she's an assistant manager at a high-end Atlanta boutique. So it's like she's just out of college, essentially, trying to get

• 19:29Karen Kilgariff?

  on her feet and get a career going for herself. Like, what, it's the, what am I going to do with my degree, kind of days of her life.

• 19:36Georgia Hardstark?

  Totally. And I need a job, so this one fits, kind of a thing.

• 19:39Karen Kilgariff?

  I can get this done.

• 19:40Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 19:40Karen Kilgariff?

  One afternoon, Jim, who's in his late 30s, walks into that shop and is taken aback by Lita's beauty, style, and charm. The problem is, Jim isn't southern, he's from a white, working-class family. He's 10 years older than Lita, and on the surface, the only thing they really have in common is that they were both raised Catholic. Jim is not the man that Lita's parents would have picked for her. But he showers her with attention, affection, and gifts, something that Deb Miller Landau will later liken to love bombing.

• 20:13Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, yeah.

• 20:13Karen Kilgariff?

  Of course. And even though Jim Sullivan doesn't come from much, he is ambitious. He's dreamed of being rich since he was a boy, and he does have some money to his name. He earned himself an economics degree in college. He finds work as an accountant, and then he settles into a comfortable life with a wife and four children in Massachusetts.

• 20:33Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, shit.

• 20:34Karen Kilgariff?

  So that's the beginning of his life way back when he got out of college. But Jim is the kind of man who always wants more. So when one of his uncles, a man named Frank Beener, who owns a successful beverage company in Macon, Georgia, starts thinking about retiring, he doesn't have, Uncle Frank doesn't have any children to take over the business. Frank knows how ambitious and business savvy Jim is, and so he takes his nephew under his wing to teach him the ropes and take over the company.

• 21:02Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 21:03Karen Kilgariff?

  So Jim and his family move down to Macon, but immediately there's an issue in that it's just basically Jim rubs people the wrong way, including his uncle's business associates. Jim is arrogant, he's stubborn, and as Deb Miller Landau writes, quote, "Nothing rubs southerners rarer than unchecked superiority, especially from a northerner."

• 21:23Georgia Hardstark?

  Sure.

• 21:25Karen Kilgariff?

  So the relationship between Jim and his uncle Frank sours within a year.

• 21:28Georgia Hardstark?

  Yikes.

• 21:29Karen Kilgariff?

  This is that kind of personality.

• 21:31Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 21:31Karen Kilgariff?

  That's like, oh, you immediately got there and started making enemies.

• 21:35Georgia Hardstark?

  Super cocky and just like, yeah.

• 21:37Karen Kilgariff?

  It gets so fraught at one point that Frank starts to rethink the succession plan without Jim. But before he can make that change, Frank Beener suddenly dies of cardiac arrest. Since his succession plans were not officially amended, Jim ends up inheriting his uncle's $3.2 million beverage business.

• 21:58Georgia Hardstark?

  Shit.

• 21:59Karen Kilgariff?

  So this is the late 80s.

• 22:01Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, man.

• 22:02Karen Kilgariff?

  What do you think it's worth in today's money?

• 22:03Georgia Hardstark?

  I'm gonna say 15.

• 22:06Karen Kilgariff?

  16.

• 22:06Georgia Hardstark?

  Whoa.

• 22:07Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, a lot of money.

• 22:09Georgia Hardstark?

  Inflation.

• 22:10Karen Kilgariff?

  Baby.

• 22:11Georgia Hardstark?

  Baby.

• 22:13Karen Kilgariff?

  So not long after Jim's marriage falls apart, his wife divorces him, takes their kids back up north, and her parting words reportedly are, quote,

• 22:21Georgia Hardstark?

  I curse you with my dying breath.

• 22:24Karen Kilgariff?

  Wrong island.

• 22:25Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh shit.

• 22:26Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay. You're thinking of Galapagos.

• 22:28Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, yeah.

• 22:29Karen Kilgariff?

  Her parting words are, money doesn't make you happy.

• 22:32Georgia Hardstark?

  Ooh.

• 22:33Karen Kilgariff?

  Jim responds by signing away full custody of his four children, and he basically exits their lives and does not come back.

• 22:41Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow, okay.

• 22:42Karen Kilgariff?

  So now it's 1976. Oh, sorry, that wasn't the late 80s. It was the mid 70s, so.

• 22:47Georgia Hardstark?

  That's why I got it wrong.

• 22:48Karen Kilgariff?

  That's, that's right.

• 22:49Georgia Hardstark?

  If you had told me the right year, I would have got 16. 16?

• 22:52Karen Kilgariff?

  I thoroughly apologize. So now it's 1976. Jim meets Lita in the upscale boutique. Their relationship blossoms. He tells her all about how he's inherited his late Uncle Frank's business, and just a few months after they meet, the two become engaged.

• 23:08Georgia Hardstark?

  He must have been so charming if he could sweep her off her feet, because she's no dummy, you know?

• 23:13Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes, and she's grown up in like Atlanta society.

• 23:16Georgia Hardstark?

  Totally, she's this bright future.

• 23:18Karen Kilgariff?

  She's met charming men before, not new. Yeah, he must have been real good at it.

• 23:23Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 23:23Karen Kilgariff?

  Here's how good he is at it. He never mentions to Lita that he's been married and that he has four children.

• 23:29Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay, that's a little piece of info you're gonna wanna.

• 23:32Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 23:32Georgia Hardstark?

  Share.

• 23:33Karen Kilgariff?

  Just not him, he doesn't mention it. Lita's parents, Emory and Joanne, are devastated when they learned about this engagement. They tried to give Jim the benefit of the doubt, but they just can't stand him. It's that simple. And they're mostly troubled by Jim's cockiness and his disrespect, and the way he always deflects when people ask him about his background. I always think that's so funny. It's like people do that all the time where it's like, oh, you know, just this and that. It's like, sorry, you don't think that people who wanna know certain information about you aren't going to see that as exactly what it is?

• 24:05Georgia Hardstark?

  Right, and then as to people who are like, let me tell you my whole backstory, even though we just met in the bathroom line?

• 24:10Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 24:10Georgia Hardstark?

  Let me tell you every single fucking thing that's ever happened to me in my life? I can't imagine deflecting and being like, I don't know what happened to me when I was a kid.

• 24:16Karen Kilgariff?

  I just know it wouldn't work.

• 24:17Georgia Hardstark?

  Let me get my notes out, yeah.

• 24:18Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes, exactly. And it's like, well, you're a stranger, I owe you this full explanation.

• 24:23Georgia Hardstark?

  I saw a thing that was like, it was a meme that said like, I don't overshare to get closer to you. I overshare, because my personality needs context.

• 24:33Georgia Hardstark?

  I was just like, yes. You know why I'm the way I am? You're not gonna like me.

• 24:40Karen Kilgariff?

  And also, you have free reign and will to not like me. But there's a reason I'm like this.

• 24:47Georgia Hardstark?

  It takes context to like me. Ooh, that's like, that hit me.

• 24:51Karen Kilgariff?

  But also, that's our idea.

• 24:53Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 24:53Karen Kilgariff?

  That's also old kind of trauma thinking.

• 24:56Georgia Hardstark?

  Totally.

• 24:57Karen Kilgariff?

  Which is like, there's a lot of people are like, I just like your shirt. I like you automatically. And we're like, I know you don't like that.

• 25:05Karen Kilgariff?

  You know who's not doing stuff like that? Jim Sullivan and his type, who are like, you will like me.

• 25:11Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 25:12Karen Kilgariff?

  And I'll sue you if you don't. So Emery and Joanne desperately want their daughter to get away from this guy. But of course, instead, Lita just falls deeper in love. So on the night before Lita and Jim's wedding, he drops a bombshell on her. He finally comes clean about his ex-wife and his four kids. And then immediately, he pulls out a prenup and urges her to sign it.

• 25:38Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 25:39Karen Kilgariff?

  And also, here's where I think that age difference really comes into play. And this is the kind of age difference thing that like, a lot of people never talk about, but it's like, undue influence over people who have not been in the world very much is a big part of why that is. Those kinds of, that age discrepancy is a problem.

• 25:58Georgia Hardstark?

  It totally is. Like, the difference between you at 20 something and you at late 30s is, you're a whole different person.

• 26:05Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah. And somebody who you think he hung the moon.

• 26:09Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 26:10Karen Kilgariff?

  And the night before, you're locked, all your dreams are coming true. He's like, except for that if you don't sign this, we're not doing it.

• 26:16Georgia Hardstark?

  Cause he knew that if he told her a couple of weeks before, she'd have time to stink it through. Oh my god, it's fucked up.

• 26:21Karen Kilgariff?

  Maybe even call the ex and see, see how he was as a husband. So Lita, of course, is shell shocked by the flood of information. And Deb Miller Landau writes in her book, quote, "The guests are coming. Everything is set. There's simply no backing out now."

• 26:36Georgia Hardstark?

  No.

• 26:36Karen Kilgariff?

  She's dizzy in love, naive and desperate to just get on with their life together.

• 26:41Georgia Hardstark?

  Cause it'd be on her if she had to cancel the wedding at that. You know what I mean? Like, people would be like, why are you canceling? Not him.

• 26:47Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes.

• 26:48Georgia Hardstark?

  And she's so fucked up. I don't, yeah.

• 26:50Karen Kilgariff?

  The agreement where it's like, we're gonna share our lives together. If that's the plan, then you have to say, we're gonna share our lives together, but you won't be getting any of this money that I kind of throw around, that I use to lure you into this relationship.

• 27:03Georgia Hardstark?

  Right, right. Like, there's a clause and a contract to our love.

• 27:07Karen Kilgariff?

  No one's anti-prenup.

• 27:09Georgia Hardstark?

  Right. It just feels-

• 27:10Karen Kilgariff?

  You can't talk about it the night before.

• 27:12Georgia Hardstark?

  No, and, yeah, you can't.

• 27:13Karen Kilgariff?

  It's just that.

• 27:14Georgia Hardstark?

  That's right.

• 27:15Karen Kilgariff?

  It has to kind of be the understanding of like, it's a mutual agreement.

• 27:18Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah. Vincent, I don't have one, just in case anyone's thinking that I'm trying to-

• 27:21Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, I'll call him on the phone on my drive home from this recording. We'll just see.

• 27:26Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 27:26Karen Kilgariff?

  Don't worry, listener, I'll get to the bottom of Georgia's-

• 27:28Georgia Hardstark?

  Part of his prenup is that he can't talk about his prenup. No kidding.

• 27:32Karen Kilgariff?

  So, Lita is forced to sign the document. The next day, she marries Jim. Her mom, Joanne, will later call their wedding, quote, "The worst day of my life."

• 27:41Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, God.

• 27:42Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah. So, Lita and Jim settle into a huge house in Macon, Georgia, near the Beverage Company. They're now living in a well-to-do, tight-knit community, far removed from the sprawling metropolis of Atlanta. And at this time, interracial couples are rare in the South. Georgia had only recently repealed laws criminalizing marriages between black and white people.

• 28:04Georgia Hardstark?

  Jesus.

• 28:05Karen Kilgariff?

  Only recently, because it's the, at this point, the late 70s.

• 28:08Georgia Hardstark?

  It's still, like, sickening.

• 28:10Karen Kilgariff?

  So even in the big city, their relationship drew attention, but now that they're in Macon, the judgment around their relationship is even more acutely felt. But while Jim, as a white male owner of a multimillion-dollar business, inherently has power, Lita feels very alone in this upper-crust, very-white Macon community. And then Jim discourages her from working, so she's isolated even further. But she takes action. She manages to become very active and influential in Macon's charities and organizations. And in 1979, she ends up mentoring the first black Miss Macon, a woman named Yvette Miller. So she starts getting involved in her community.

• 28:51Georgia Hardstark?

  You gotta have those work girlfriends. It's like vital, whether or not it's like a job or, you know.

• 28:56Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes.

• 28:56Georgia Hardstark?

  Terrible work, you gotta have those girlfriends.

• 28:59Karen Kilgariff?

  And your own kind of life. I mean, I think that is the thing that women have really come to terms with these days.

• 29:06Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 29:06Karen Kilgariff?

  It's like, you have to build an interior life and an exterior life, no matter what your situation is.

• 29:12Georgia Hardstark?

  Totally.

• 29:13Karen Kilgariff?

  Problem is, though, in this situation, behind closed doors, the Sullivan's relationship is unraveling. Jim's behavior has become very odd with this kind of huge influx of money and business and everything. For example, he starts wearing his dead uncle's clothes, including his underwear.

• 29:29Georgia Hardstark?

  What?

• 29:29Karen Kilgariff?

  While at home, but then when he goes out in public, he changes into the expensive outfits that kind of fit the occasion.

• 29:37Georgia Hardstark?

  That's creepy.

• 29:38Karen Kilgariff?

  It's insane. He also becomes so obsessed with saving money. Listen to this.

• 29:43Georgia Hardstark?

  No.

• 29:43Karen Kilgariff?

  He makes her use the plastic covering that comes with their dry cleaning to wrap leftovers so they don't have to buy Saran Wrap.

• 29:51Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, my God. First of all, the microplastics and toxins that are in, like, that's the first thing.

• 29:57Karen Kilgariff?

  Insane.

• 29:58Georgia Hardstark?

  Secondly, what the fuck?

• 30:00Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, he clearly, it isn't helping him to have all this money.

• 30:04Georgia Hardstark?

  No.

• 30:04Karen Kilgariff?

  It isn't benefi-, his life isn't becoming richer.

• 30:07Georgia Hardstark?

  His ex-wife was right.

• 30:08Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes.

• 30:08Georgia Hardstark?

  You're going.

• 30:09Karen Kilgariff?

  You're going to be unhappy.

• 30:11Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 30:12Karen Kilgariff?

  So, that's just a little example of the kind of Howard Hughes stuff he was starting to pull.

• 30:17Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 30:18Karen Kilgariff?

  Deb Miller Landau reports, Jim gives Lita a very tight weekly allowance of $150 a week. And that's worth around $700 a week today.

• 30:28Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 30:29Karen Kilgariff?

  Which might sound like a lot, except Lita has to buy everything for the household.

• 30:34Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 30:35Karen Kilgariff?

  From groceries to dog food to gas for the cars.

• 30:38Georgia Hardstark?

  What?

• 30:39Karen Kilgariff?

  And everything that, in terms of entertaining other wealthy people.

• 30:43Georgia Hardstark?

  No.

• 30:43Karen Kilgariff?

  So, they have dinner parties, she has to have the house looking beautiful and immaculate with all the best furniture and all the best.

• 30:50Georgia Hardstark?

  Food and drinks and.

• 30:51Karen Kilgariff?

  Exactly.

• 30:52Georgia Hardstark?

  Fuck that.

• 30:53Karen Kilgariff?

  It all comes out of that allowance. Also, her hair and nail appointments and her clothes. She can look together and play the part. Jim's so restrictive with their finances, Lita struggles to pay for meals while she's on lunch dates, even though they're millionaires.

• 31:09Karen Kilgariff?

  Then the inevitable, Lita begins to suspect that Jim is having affairs. She finds a blonde hair in their bathroom. Then a Christmas card addressed to Jim arrives at their house, but inside is a lot of stuff about missing all of your kisses. It's specifically written to him, then the inside is as if he lives by himself. So Lita reaches out to the woman who sends that card, and she basically confirms her husband's infidelity. But Jim not only sweet talks his way out of any consequences with Lita, but he begins to shower her with lavish gifts and a bigger weekly allowance. So essentially, she's kind of gaslit into forgetting about these indiscretions.

• 31:53Karen Kilgariff?

  And then about 10 years into their marriage, Jim abruptly announces he's selling the beverage company and that they're going to move to Palm Beach, Florida. And Lita clearly has no say in the matter. They move into a massive 17,000 square foot mansion in a community that's even wealthier and whiter than the one they just lived in. And for perspective, this new house that he buys is just down the street from Mar-a-Lago.

• 32:19Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, shit.

• 32:20Karen Kilgariff?

  So it's in the heart of that. So Jim sets out to woo the Palm Beach crowd. He wants to be one of them, one of the players, but he soon realizes having a black wife will not be advantageous for him in that crowd. In fact, he comes to understand Lita is simply not welcome in certain circles. We call those circles racist circles. So true to his ambitious form, Jim just starts leaving Lita at home. And it's around that same time, he begins an affair with a local socialite named Suki Rogers. When Lita finds another woman's underwear in their bed, this is Deb Miller Landau, refers

• 33:02Karen Kilgariff?

  to it as, quote, "the bra that broke the camel's back." So Lita packs her bags, heads back to the townhouse that they used to live in in Atlanta, and she files for divorce. After years of enduring her husband's callous controlling behavior, Lita's finally breaking free from him. But now she faces the grim reality that because she abandoned her career, or the beginnings of a career, and she signed that prenup, that she basically might leave this awful marriage without a penny. So she decides she's going to sue Jim for divorce and fight for, you know, what she rightfully deserves. So this brings us back to that winter morning in 1987, when Lita is getting ready for that morning in divorce court. The doorbell rings.

• 33:47Karen Kilgariff?

  She opens the door to a flower delivery man. She greets him. He pulls a gun, shoots once and misses, shoots again and hits her in the head. And then he runs upstairs. Lita's friend Poppy and Poppy's toddler hear those gunshots, and they run and hide in a closet. They don't know what's going on. When Lita's neighbors hear the noise, they look outside and they see a white, middle aged man running down the street. So the police are called and they arrive on scene almost immediately. And although Lita is taken to the hospital, she's declared dead. They believe she died minutes after the gunshot wound. She's only 35 years old. And we'll learn later that on the same day,

• 34:30Karen Kilgariff?

  Jim will write in his diary, quote, "Suki and I celebrate with champagne and caviar."

• 34:35Georgia Hardstark?

  Celebrate what? He doesn't say. Okay, fucking idiot.

• 34:39Karen Kilgariff?

  So from the moment they hear the news, Lita's parents are absolutely convinced Jim Sullivan killed their daughter. Not only were Lita and Jim in the middle of a bitter divorce, but the idea and the fact that she's murdered on the morning of the hearing where they decide how much she's going to get, makes it clear that this is just not a coincidence.

• 35:00Georgia Hardstark?

  100%.

• 35:01Karen Kilgariff?

  There's no deliberation. Jim gets everything. That's the reason it happened on that day.

• 35:06Georgia Hardstark?

  Shit, man.

• 35:07Karen Kilgariff?

  Except Jim does have an alibi, and it's airtight. At the time of Lita's murder, he was in Palm Beach with Suki.

• 35:15Georgia Hardstark?

  Right, okay.

• 35:16Karen Kilgariff?

  But still, the police head to Florida to question him. They administer a polygraph, he passes it, but he's still not ruled out. They start looking at other potential suspects, including Poppy's husband, a man named Marvin Marable. Marvin doesn't like Lita because he thinks she's encouraging Poppy to leave him. In fact, in their investigation, police discover that Marvin has bugged their house phone and recorded hundreds of hours of conversations between Lita and Poppy.

• 35:47Georgia Hardstark?

  That's a sacred conversation space.

• 35:50Karen Kilgariff?

  And then he sends those tapes down to Florida for Jim to listen to, and the two men bond over their shared marital issues.

• 35:57Georgia Hardstark?

  Gross.

• 35:58Karen Kilgariff?

  So while Marvin clearly dislikes Lita, there is no solid evidence tying him to this murder, but he does end up getting probation for illegal eavesdropping. The good news about those recordings is they provide information, like the fact that Lita, who, just for clarity, is legally separated at this point, talks to Poppy about the men she's dating. So Jim immediately seizes on this and tells investigators, one of those men might be Lita's killer. Detectives look into that lead, nothing comes of it. So time passes, and meanwhile, Jim sells the townhouse Lita was living in, turns a profit of around, in today's money, $375,000.

• 36:41Karen Kilgariff?

  And that, with that, cuts his last ties to the McClinton family. Just eight months after Lita's death, Jim Sullivan marries Suki in Palm Beach.

• 36:50Georgia Hardstark?

  Dude.

• 36:51Karen Kilgariff?

  Back in Georgia, detectives continue to track down leads. They're working with three descriptions of different men they believe were all tied to the murder. One was provided by Lita's neighbors, who saw the man fleeing. They got a very good look at that shooter. The other two descriptions are from a local florist shop near Lita's townhouse.

• 37:10Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, yeah.

• 37:11Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, so the florist remembers selling roses to a man around 8:00 a.m. the morning of Lita's death.

• 37:17Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 37:17Karen Kilgariff?

  The florist remembers this customer was strangely ambivalent about what kind of roses he wanted to buy, and that he wasn't alone. He pulled up with another man who waited out in the car. It was a sales transaction that was bizarre enough that the florist thought these men were going to rob him.

• 37:34Georgia Hardstark?

  Jesus.

• 37:35Karen Kilgariff?

  So, yeah, so he committed their faces to memory and then called the police and was able to describe them.

• 37:41Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 37:42Karen Kilgariff?

  So the sketches of these three men are drawn up based on their descriptions, but investigators don't know who they are. None of them look like Jim Sullivan, though. Detectives start wondering if Lita's death could have been a murder for hire. And the evidence starts supporting this idea. So, police learned that calls were placed from rest stop payphones and from a Howard Johnson motel near Atlanta to Jim's home in Palm Beach around the time of the murder.

• 38:09Georgia Hardstark?

  Jesus.

• 38:09Karen Kilgariff?

  And, right, and then they learn some suspicious phone calls Jim made to people in Atlanta around the same time. One was placed three days before Lita was killed. And that same morning, a strange man in a baseball cap banged on Lita's door around 6:00 a.m. She heard it, but it freaked her out so much she didn't answer it, but she called friends to tell them what happened. Hours later, around 8:00 a.m., Jim calls Marvin Marable, Poppy's husband, and asks for confirmation that Lita still lived in that townhouse. Marvin and Poppy were divorced by this point, so Marvin genuinely did not know where Lita was.

• 38:50Karen Kilgariff?

  An hour later, at 9:00 a.m., Jim calls Lita's neighbor, a man named Bob Christensen. The two men knew each other as neighbors, but they hadn't spoken in over a year, so Bob was surprised to get this call from Jim. Jim claimed that he was checking in on Lita after hearing that there'd been some, quote, "suspicious activity" at the townhouse. But technically, he would have no way of knowing that there was any suspicious activity because Lita wasn't in conversation with him.

• 39:18Georgia Hardstark?

  I'm sorry, but these people are bad at this.

• 39:20Karen Kilgariff?

  Really bad.

• 39:21Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 39:21Karen Kilgariff?

  And it's also, it's that kind of late 80s crime where you're just like, oh, this is all so, just laying out right there.

• 39:28Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, it's like, it's tragic in its just blatant stupidity.

• 39:33Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 39:33Georgia Hardstark?

  You know?

• 39:34Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 39:34Georgia Hardstark?

  It's just so infuriating.

• 39:36Karen Kilgariff?

  So infuriating. So, none of this looks good for Jim, obviously, but it, there's still no conclusive proof that he is involved with Lita's death. Police are trying to find these three unidentified men for this case, knowing that if they can identify them, they might be able to solve it. So Detective Zero in on those calls placed from that Howard Johnson's motel room. They learned three men stayed together in that room and arrived in a car with North Carolina plates. Then they learned they booked the room under the name Johnny Fur, Fur with two Rs.

• 40:13Karen Kilgariff?

  So there are around 150 men with that name Johnny Fur in North Carolina alone.

• 40:22Georgia Hardstark?

  Interesting.

• 40:23Karen Kilgariff?

  But at this point, it was being used as an alias because they learned that all the details associated with this motel reservation are fake.

• 40:31Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 40:32Karen Kilgariff?

  Meanwhile, down in Florida, Jim gets into, and so this is like when these things kind of like, if you're too cocky about your very overt murder-for-hire plan.

• 40:44Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 40:45Karen Kilgariff?

  Things start to come together against you.

• 40:48Georgia Hardstark?

  Right, because you think you're smarter than everyone, so you don't take steps to like.

• 40:52Karen Kilgariff?

  Not be dumb.

• 40:53Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 40:54Karen Kilgariff?

  Because, and listen how dumb this is. Jim gets into a fender bender in his Rolls Royce, and even though he's not at fault in this fender bender, the responding officer notices that Jim's driving with an expired registration and on a suspended license because he has 18 traffic violations, so they suspended his license. So the cop writes Jim a ticket. Again, Jim is a millionaire. He could have just paid the fine and been done with it.

• 41:21Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 41:22Karen Kilgariff?

  But instead, he goes to traffic court to fight the ticket, and he tells the judge that it was actually his wife Sukie, not him, who was driving that day. And in sworn testimony, Sukie backs Jim's story up.

• 41:36Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, Jesus, honey.

• 41:37Karen Kilgariff?

  The judge is so confused by this whole story that he ends up dropping the charges. But officials in the courtroom find the exchange so weird, they dig into the police report, and they confirm that Jim was in fact driving the car that day. So the state of Florida takes both Jim and Sukie to court for perjury.

• 41:58Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 41:59Karen Kilgariff?

  Which, who were those court officials?

• 42:01Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 42:02Karen Kilgariff?

  Like, who were the ones that were standing there being like, wait, what's going on here?

• 42:06Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 42:07Karen Kilgariff?

  Because crucial, actually, to that, so.

• 42:09Georgia Hardstark?

  Don't lie in court.

• 42:10Karen Kilgariff?

  Right.

• 42:11Georgia Hardstark?

  If you can get caught easily.

• 42:13Karen Kilgariff?

  You're there to lie to get yourself out of a fee that you deserve to pay.

• 42:18Georgia Hardstark?

  Totally.

• 42:19Karen Kilgariff?

  And have the money to pay.

• 42:20Georgia Hardstark?

  Totally.

• 42:20Karen Kilgariff?

  But you're wearing your dead uncle's underwear, so you're not gonna pay it.

• 42:23Georgia Hardstark?

  Ooh, I forgot about that part.

• 42:24Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay. Okay. At this point, Suki and Jim have been married for less than three years. But this incident is the final straw for Suki. Not only does she dump Jim, but during their bitter, very public divorce proceedings, Suki shocks everyone by testifying in court that Jim admitted to her that he had Lita murdered.

• 42:45Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, my god.

• 42:46Karen Kilgariff?

  So now the FBI is called in.

• 42:48Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 42:50Karen Kilgariff?

  There are two big problems. Detectives still can't find the men who were staying at the Howard Johnson's. Plus, the statute of limitations for a federal murder-for-hire case is only five years, so time is about to run out.

• 43:02Georgia Hardstark?

  Fucking hate those.

• 43:04Karen Kilgariff?

  So, in a total hail mary move, the US Attorney files charges against Jim that specifically involve using, quote, "interstate commerce facilities," which in this case refers to calling state from Georgia to Florida

• 43:16Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 43:17Karen Kilgariff?

  to carry out a murder-for-hire. The judge dismisses this case over lack of evidence, and Jim is allowed to leave the courtroom a free man that day. It's a devastating blow for Emery and Joanne McClintock, who are certain that Jim's just got away with having their daughter murdered.

• 43:34Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 43:35Karen Kilgariff?

  So, in the early 1990s, they file a wrongful death lawsuit against Jim Sullivan, and that jury rules in their favor. Jim is found guilty and is ordered to pay the McClintocks $4 million in damages, which is over $11 million in today's money. But because Jim is a trained accountant, he manages to hide his assets. Then he appeals the ruling, and he wins after arguing that the case was filed after the statute of limitations in Florida had already expired, which was only two years for a wrongful death suit.

• 44:09Georgia Hardstark?

  Stop it with these statute of limitations. Like, they're just baiting criminals to be better at their fucking crimes.

• 44:17Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes.

• 44:18Georgia Hardstark?

  It's so ridiculous.

• 44:19Karen Kilgariff?

  It's terrible. So, it really does seem at this point like Jim Sullivan is about to get away with murder until 1998.

• 44:27Karen Kilgariff?

  More than a decade after Lita's murder, when a tip rolls in from Beaumont, Texas. There, a woman named Belinda works as a receptionist for a local law office, and something's been weighing on her mind very heavily and for a long time. Belinda confides to a lawyer at this law firm about her ex-husband from North Carolina, a man named Tony Hardwood. I thought the name was Harwood when I was first reading this. And I'm like, the name is Hardwood. Tony Hardwood floors. With the word hard in her last name. Oh, yeah. I'm not blinking at that. You don't care. People don't want it to be Hard Stark. They just don't. They'll write anything else because it just doesn't somehow compute in their heads. So I'm not blinking at that.

• 45:11Karen Kilgariff?

  But Hard Stark is like a conceptual name that actually sounds really cool. Hardwood is just a type of floor you're standing on. It's jokes, too. Tony Linoleum here to testify. Okay, so Belinda says that Tony used to pick up gigs as a mover in some of his work. And on one of these jobs, he moved furniture from Georgia to Palm Beach for a rich client who later asked him to carry out a murder for hire. Belinda witnessed the rich man giving Tony a big envelope of cash at one point. And she says that the rich man was white. His wife lived in Atlanta and she was black. And that Tony told her he couldn't get the wife to answer her front door.

• 45:53Karen Kilgariff?

  So Belinda suggested, because she didn't really understand that her ex-husband was actually acting as a hitman. Yeah. She suggests that he poses as a floral delivery man. So she realizes this is all real. And it's like, oh, my God, and that makes me like feels terrible and has to tell this lawyer. Okay. The lawyer sits on this information for a second. And then he sees an episode of Extra outlining Lita's case. Shit. So it has made it all the way to like tabloid TV. You have to say it. Extra.

• 46:31Karen Kilgariff?

  Then he called, my god, that show was just like in all of our lives like it was the seven o'clock news.

• 46:37Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, it was better.

• 46:38Karen Kilgariff?

  It's like hard copy, extra.

• 46:40Georgia Hardstark?

  Yes.

• 46:41Karen Kilgariff?

  Entertainment Tonight.

• 46:42Georgia Hardstark?

  Yes.

• 46:46Karen Kilgariff?

  Don't all have a seizure. Okay, so when this lawyer sees that, he calls the FBI and he gives them this information Belinda's told him and it blows the case wide open. Authorities tell Belinda to reach out to her ex-husband to try to get him to talk more.

• 47:01Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, yeah.

• 47:01Karen Kilgariff?

  And she does. Their conversation is monitored by the police.

• 47:05Georgia Hardstark?

  I love those recordings of someone trying to fucking get information from someone and pretending that they're like, I just love hearing those because some people are so good at it and some people are so bad at it, but the criminal still fucking talks no matter what, like.

• 47:19Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 47:19Georgia Hardstark?

  Or they, you could tell they know and they're like, I'm not saying anything.

• 47:23Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, I don't know why you're trying to get me to say that exact phrase.

• 47:25Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 47:26Karen Kilgariff?

  But I'm not saying it.

• 47:27Georgia Hardstark?

  I love those.

• 47:28Karen Kilgariff?

  It's the same thing where it's like when people have to like recite lines or whatever, it's like acting's really hard.

• 47:33Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 47:33Karen Kilgariff?

  Like the idea that you're just gonna be like, I'm having a casual.

• 47:36Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 47:37Karen Kilgariff?

  Ex-wife, ex-husband conversation with you, no big deal.

• 47:40Georgia Hardstark?

  Totally.

• 47:40Karen Kilgariff?

  Remember the thing you said to me? Trying to sound casual.

• 47:44Georgia Hardstark?

  Jesus.

• 47:45Karen Kilgariff?

  When I try to sound casual, I try to make my voice as high as possible.

• 47:48Georgia Hardstark?

  That's good to know.

• 47:49Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, don't use that against me. Okay, so Belinda asks Tony about Lita's murder and he says enough to place himself at the scene of the crime. Also, when they look at those sketches that the police had, Tony looks like one of them. So that's enough to arrest Tony in North Carolina. He's interviewed for several hours. He admits to taking Jim's money in exchange for Lita's murder. He also claims he didn't actually pull the trigger. He claims he found another person to actually carry out the hit, but he is unclear on who that person is. But Jim Sullivan is named as the mastermind behind Lita's death and of course, he starts to realize Tony's arrested, it's the inevitable.

• 48:32Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 48:33Karen Kilgariff?

  Future for him, so he flees the country and is living entirely off the grid because Jim is a white male millionaire.

• 48:40Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 48:41Karen Kilgariff?

  And it's like, K bye, see you later.

• 48:43Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, goes to Taiwan.

• 48:44Karen Kilgariff?

  He ends up on the FBI's Most Wanted list. He's also featured on America's Most Wanted. Still, no one can find him. But then the Florida Supreme Court reverses the lower court's ruling that Jim does not have to pay that $4 million damage to the McClinton family.

• 49:01Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 49:02Karen Kilgariff?

  And they do that on the grounds that Lita was killed in Georgia.

• 49:07Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 49:07Karen Kilgariff?

  So the court should have been respecting the Georgia statute of limitations, which is longer than Florida's statute of limitations.

• 49:13Georgia Hardstark?

  I could have told the judge that. Like, and I'm barely a lawyer.

• 49:17Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah. You just got to be a lawyer from nine years of this podcast.

• 49:21Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 49:22Karen Kilgariff?

  So Emery and Joanne win this case.

• 49:25Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 49:25Karen Kilgariff?

  They know they're not going to see that money.

• 49:27Georgia Hardstark?

  No.

• 49:27Karen Kilgariff?

  But it does feel to them like a small symbolic step toward justice. At least something is happening in the right direction on this case.

• 49:34Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 49:35Karen Kilgariff?

  So this is now 15 years after Lita's murder. It's 2002, and someone in Thailand is watching America's Most Wanted, and they recognize the man on the screen as a man who lives in their condo complex with them.

• 49:48Georgia Hardstark?

  Fuck, man.

• 49:49Karen Kilgariff?

  So they call the police, and in early July of 2002, police officers show up to Jim Sullivan's secret beachfront condo in Thailand.

• 49:58Georgia Hardstark?

  Taiwan.

• 49:59Karen Kilgariff?

  Taiwan, you mean? After 15 long years, Jim Sullivan is finally arrested for the murder of Lita McClinton. He's brought back to Georgia for the murder trial, and as part of his plea deal, Tony Hardwood testifies against him.

• 50:14Georgia Hardstark?

  Nice.

• 50:15Karen Kilgariff?

  Tony winds up pleading guilty to manslaughter charges as part of this deal. In 2006, a racially diverse jury of nine women and three men find Jim Sullivan guilty of the murder of Lita McClinton.

• 50:28Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh.

• 50:29Karen Kilgariff?

  When that sentence is handed down, Emery and Joanne burst into tears and hold each other in the courtroom. It's now been nearly 20 years since their daughter was murdered.

• 50:38Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, Jesus.

• 50:39Karen Kilgariff?

  Jim Sullivan is sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He is still in prison today. Tony Hardwood serves 20 years, and he gets out in 2018 and is now free. No one else has been charged in Lita McClinton's murder. Tony Hardwood will eventually refute the idea of the two other men from the flower shop.

• 50:59Georgia Hardstark?

  Hmm.

• 50:59Karen Kilgariff?

  He claims he purchased the flowers himself. There was no second person present. He just implicates a man he will only refer to as, quote, "John the bartender" as the actual hitman that day.

• 51:11Georgia Hardstark?

  So he just won't, yeah, okay.

• 51:13Karen Kilgariff?

  He can't either deal with the fact that he did it or there is somebody else that he's not, he's not ratting out.

• 51:18Georgia Hardstark?

  Which is chilling.

• 51:20Karen Kilgariff?

  Once Jim Sullivan's guilty verdict is finally handed down after all those years, Joanne McClinton talks to reporters and she says to them this one quote, "He's taken something we can't ever get back. There is no closure when you've lost a child. You can live with it better, but there is no closure," end quote. In 2023, Emery McClinton passes away after a long illness at the age of 90. Joanne McClinton is still alive in Georgia today.

• 51:48Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 51:49Karen Kilgariff?

  There's a bronze sculpture commemorating Lita McClinton's life at Atlanta's Oakland Cemetery. The plaque on it reads, quote, "In loving memory of dearest Lita, the giver, whose inner beauty was blinding, smiles, love, and tears." And that's the tragic story of the murder of Lita McClinton.

• 52:08Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 52:10Karen Kilgariff?

  So go read The Devil Went Down to Georgia.

• 52:14Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 52:15Karen Kilgariff?

  To read all of the details of this crazy horrible case.

• 52:20Georgia Hardstark?

  And the crazy details and so long for him to get fucking justice.

• 52:26Karen Kilgariff?

  I know.

• 52:26Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow. Great job.

• 52:27Karen Kilgariff?

  Thank you.

• 52:30Georgia Hardstark?

  The holidays are coming, which means we'll all be spending more time away from home.

• 52:33Karen Kilgariff?

  Whether you're visiting family or doing something actually fun, you want to know your home is protected while you're away.

• 52:39Georgia Hardstark?

  That's why now is a good time to think about home security with SimpliSafe.

• 52:42Karen Kilgariff?

  Unlike traditional security systems that alert you after a break-in starts, SimpliSafe is designed to help stop intruders before they get inside. These days, you're worried about your house, you're out of town, and then something comes up and you get to look on your phone and SimpliSafe is going to show you not only the video of like, it's a raccoon at your front door, but also that they have staff that's sitting there, they already know, and if it was something different or worse, they would have already been on it.

• 53:08Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, I really think that's invaluable peace of mind, that just like relying on your neighbors, paying attention is not going to give you. We've partnered with SimpliSafe to offer our listeners their biggest savings of the year, 70% off your new system with professional monitoring when you visit simplisafe.com/mfm.

• 53:26Karen Kilgariff?

  That's simplisafe.com/mfm. And when you order, write in MFM at checkout and it tells them we sent you and it really helps the show.

• 53:33Georgia Hardstark?

  SimpliSafe, ahead of crime in real time.

• 53:36Karen Kilgariff?

  Goodbye.

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• 54:07Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay, so we left off with your story in prison. And we're gonna stay there for the beginning of my story, just for a moment, because this is the story of a brazen prison break by a group of inmates who managed to evade capture for six weeks. This is the story of the Texas Seven. And you like prison breaks and stuff, right? Like you've done it a couple times.

• 54:29Karen Kilgariff?

  I find it very exciting.

• 54:30Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay, well, this one is, hold on to your pants.

• 54:33Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay.

• 54:33Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah. Wherever you got, grip something. The main sources for the story are a 60-minute segment from 2001, a Crime Library article by Gary C. King, and then this old-school, like, crime show called Mug Shots. That was very...

• 54:51Karen Kilgariff?

  Mug Shots? What year?

• 54:53Georgia Hardstark?

  Mug Shots. It's got like, eh, you know, it's like...

• 54:55Karen Kilgariff?

  They come and turn to the side.

• 54:57Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, they're like, here's the, we're gonna, yeah. I don't know what year it is, but I hope it's old, because it felt like it. And the rest of the sources can be found in the show notes. So, we're starting with the main mugshot guy, George Rivas. He's 30 years old and he's serving 17 life sentences.

• 55:14Karen Kilgariff?

  Uh-oh.

• 55:15Georgia Hardstark?

  At the John B. Connolly Penitentiary in southeastern Texas. So, fucking, long time in prison in Texas.

• 55:23Karen Kilgariff?

  Can I just say this? When we talk about jailbreaks being exciting, like, for example, if you go listen to infamous international Pink Panthers.

• 55:33Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 55:33Karen Kilgariff?

  Those are some great jailbreaks by people who like to steal diamonds.

• 55:36Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 55:37Karen Kilgariff?

  When we're talking about a man who has 17 life sentences?

• 55:40Georgia Hardstark?

  Yes.

• 55:41Karen Kilgariff?

  That's bad. We don't want those people.

• 55:43Georgia Hardstark?

  100%.

• 55:44Karen Kilgariff?

  Unless?

• 55:45Georgia Hardstark?

  Let me tell you something about that.

• 55:47Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay, I was just scared that I sounded like I was backing up...

• 55:49Georgia Hardstark?

  No!

• 55:50Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay, multiple murderers escaping jail.

• 55:51Georgia Hardstark?

  Only people would think, who think that comment on Instagram, so you're fine.

• 55:55Karen Kilgariff?

  Who are those people?

• 55:57Georgia Hardstark?

  So this prison is between San Antonio and Corpus Christi. George is there for armed robbery and aggravated kidnapping. And that is bad. I'm not fucking making any excuses. In 1993, in his early twenties, he had robbed several stores in El Paso. He kind of like, I don't know, he really enjoyed robbing places.

• 56:18Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay.

• 56:18Georgia Hardstark?

  As a teenager and into his twenties, even though he was like going to college. He had children and a wife, a seemingly normal life. It's just he had this rebellious streak in him that made him keep doing this.

• 56:31Karen Kilgariff?

  Made him put guns in people's faces?

• 56:32Georgia Hardstark?

  Yes, and that is traumatic for a lifetime for all of those people. But the kidnapping part refers to handcuffing some store employees and locking them in a different part of the store.

• 56:43Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, okay.

• 56:44Georgia Hardstark?

  So that's counted in Texas or we know wherever else as kidnapping. So he didn't abduct anyone. He didn't kill anyone. And the number of life sentences in Texas is equal to the number of hostages you took or like the number of kidnappings, not the severity of the crime.

• 57:00Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay.

• 57:00Georgia Hardstark?

  So 17 people in the store that he put in the, you know, bathroom or whatever is 17 life sentences.

• 57:07Karen Kilgariff?

  Got you.

• 57:07Georgia Hardstark?

  So for a young man, that is 30 years. That's the rest of your life in your mind.

• 57:13Karen Kilgariff?

  Entirely.

• 57:13Georgia Hardstark?

  And there's no parole happening.

• 57:15Karen Kilgariff?

  Right.

• 57:15Georgia Hardstark?

  So, you know, he goes in in his early twenties. By late 2000, in his 30s, he is a model prisoner. His behavioral record is impeccable. He's what's considered a trustee, meaning an inmate who's seen as well behaved and responsible. And so he has a coveted job in the prison's maintenance department. He's also totally fucking over it.

• 57:37Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 57:37Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, I mean, who isn't in prison? Like, that's not special. But he's despondent at the idea that he will be spending the rest of his life behind bars. So he starts to cook up a plan. And he was going to school for engineering when he got caught.

• 57:51Karen Kilgariff?

  Hmm.

• 57:52Georgia Hardstark?

  Like, he's a smart guy. He's a planner. He's a thinker.

• 57:55Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 57:55Georgia Hardstark?

  You know? The first step of his plan is recruiting other inmates. George had been more of a career criminal, as I said, but some of the people he chooses have been convicted of horrendous crimes. So this is not a feel-good story in any way.

• 58:12Karen Kilgariff?

  Great.

• 58:12Georgia Hardstark?

  Violent crimes, including rape, murder, and a horrific incident of physical abuse against a child. It's, these are not fucking good guys. For George, he doesn't really care. He might not even know what they're in there for. Who knows? But for his plan to work, most of the other guys involved have to have that same job assignment that he does in the maintenance department. So that just kind of happens that that's who he teams up with.

• 58:37Karen Kilgariff?

  Right.

• 58:38Georgia Hardstark?

  They are often left alone in there to complete tasks, maybe with one or two maintenance workers, but no corrections officers because they're trusted. The other men George recruits are named Patrick Murphy, Donald Newberry, Larry Harper, Joseph Garcia, and Randy Halprin. And they're all in their twenties and thirties, and they all have very long sentences. So they have incentive to escape. The final inmate who doesn't work in the maintenance department is also let into the plan, and his name is Michael Rodriguez. I'm not going to get like too into the weeds with the escape because it's complicated and there's a lot of luck involved. They got away with some, like, a lot of things had to be on their side that day for them to have gotten away with it. The prison has three guard towers staffed by armed guards, and it's surrounded by double

• 59:23Georgia Hardstark?

  12-foot fences topped with razor wire. So they're not going over the top of that. They're not running off. There's also a patrol vehicle staffed with another armed guard, which moves around the outside of the complex. But none of that matters because George's plan is to take over a small portion of the prison by force.

• 59:40Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh.

• 59:41Georgia Hardstark?

  So on December 13th, 2000, George and almost all of the members of his crew are at their jobs at the maintenance building. They ask one of the guards if they can stay behind during lunch break to wax the floors or some such shit. The guard lets them, which isn't rare. It's not the first time it's happened that they're left pretty much unsupervised. One maintenance supervisor stays behind with the group, but all of the corrections officers go to lunch. So it's not a, you know, an officer who stays behind. It's like a civilian. Through a series of events that involves some planning and as I said, some straight up luck, the men are able to overpower guards and maintenance workers, like multiple guards and maintenance workers, steal their weapons and then change into the clothes of those

• 1:00:26Georgia Hardstark?

  maintenance workers and corrections officers. It's complicated, but they fucking pull it off beautifully, unfortunately. At this point, the rest of the inmates have driven over in a maintenance truck, which really is scheduled to be going into town that day. So no one looking from afar questions seeing it at the gate. And so at this point, they run over there, two are in the cab, four are hiding under a big piece of plywood in the bed. And then George, who at this point has snuck into the patrol tower, opens the gate, goes down into the truck, hops in and everyone drives away. Like in a truck, easily.

• 1:01:01Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:01Georgia Hardstark?

  You know? When they leave, they have taken with them 16 guns of varying sizes, ammunition, as well as money, credit cards and IDs from the prison workers and guards. So they just like were immediately armed and dangerous.

• 1:01:16Karen Kilgariff?

  And this is stuff they got their hands on within the jail?

• 1:01:20Georgia Hardstark?

  Yes, by overpowering the guards and maintenance workers.

• 1:01:22Karen Kilgariff?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:01:23Georgia Hardstark?

  You know? Authorities at the prison figure out what has happened pretty much immediately and they know that the group of escaped inmates is heading towards town. So they're out there looking for the truck immediately. It's an immediate manhunt. But what they don't know is that one of the inmate's father had also been in on the plan.

• 1:01:40Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh.

• 1:01:41Georgia Hardstark?

  And he had left a car in a local Walmart parking lot, four miles away from the prison. So they take that truck to the parking lot, they hop into this car instead and they're out of town.

• 1:01:51Karen Kilgariff?

  Come on, boy dads. Let's be better than this.

• 1:01:54Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:55Karen Kilgariff?

  Let's not.

• 1:01:56Georgia Hardstark?

  Don't supply your kids with a getaway car.

• 1:01:58Karen Kilgariff?

  I mean, I wonder if it's that kind of thing where it's just like you get out and I'll make it so that you can stay out type of thing. No one wants anyone to be in jail. That's the thing too, is like prison is hell. I mean, any.

• 1:02:10Georgia Hardstark?

  Sure.

• 1:02:10Karen Kilgariff?

  Right? So that idea of like, you're in jail, you have 12 life sentences and you're getting bummed, where it's like, plan for that.

• 1:02:20Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:20Karen Kilgariff?

  Act accordingly.

• 1:02:22Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah. Learn something.

• 1:02:23Karen Kilgariff?

  The high of the risk.

• 1:02:25Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 1:02:25Karen Kilgariff?

  Isn't going to be worth it.

• 1:02:26Georgia Hardstark?

  Especially in Texas.

• 1:02:28Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay, so anyway, some codependent dad is like, don't worry about it, you're gonna be okay.

• 1:02:32Georgia Hardstark?

  I've got you. Yeah, as long as you come home for whatever. So the group stops overnight in San Antonio, then proceeds to Houston. They rob a Radio Shack in a suburb called Pearland, Pearland, probably. The group arrives at the store right around closing time, and this is kind of their MO. The clerk at the store named Michael, he's only 19 years old, and when they take their guns out, he starts hyperventilating. And one of the robbers reads his name tag and says, quote, "Calm down, Michael, take deep breaths." So they're actually like, kind of nice to him? After tying Michael up and putting him in the store's bathroom, the inmates start taking cash and electronics out of the store. But while they're doing this, Michael's dad pulls up into the parking lot to pick him up. And it's like, closing time, so there's no other cars.

• 1:03:18Georgia Hardstark?

  Like, it's, it's very sketchy. George Rivas ends up tying him up as well and puts him in the store's bathroom with Michael. When Michael is interviewed about his experience with the escaped convicts, he later says, quote, "They were nice guys," end quote. So like, oh, I don't think George Rivas had intentions to hurt people. I think, it almost seems like it was a game to him, to rob places. You know, like a me against the world kind of a thing, you know?

• 1:03:42Karen Kilgariff?

  Can't accept.

• 1:03:44Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:45Karen Kilgariff?

  I mean, it's nice.

• 1:03:46Georgia Hardstark?

  No, I'm not saying he's right.

• 1:03:47Karen Kilgariff?

  They gave him a nice breathing technique, and so I'm sure Michael's like, but don't you think that's the ultimately, it's like, well, what's he supposed to do? He's not gonna cry and say that was the most traumatic thing that's ever happened.

• 1:03:57Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 1:03:57Karen Kilgariff?

  He has to be like, it's okay.

• 1:03:59Georgia Hardstark?

  There's no like, good, calm robbery. Like, that's not a thing.

• 1:04:03Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:04Georgia Hardstark?

  No. And as I said, some of the criminals were originally convicted of some very awful crimes, so it means nothing.

• 1:04:12Karen Kilgariff?

  There's a reason he was hyperventilating.

• 1:04:13Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, and he was right.

• 1:04:15Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:16Georgia Hardstark?

  Now, the plan is for the group to stay together until they've gotten enough cash through robberies to buy fake IDs, and then they will all go their separate ways. So seven dudes together seems like an obvious thing to me, but who am I?

• 1:04:29Karen Kilgariff?

  You mean like that people would spot them and be like,

• 1:04:31Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:32Karen Kilgariff?

  Hey, that's not a book club.

• 1:04:34Georgia Hardstark?

  How does the seating work in a car? Cause it was a small car, like someone's on the lap.

• 1:04:37Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, or someone's like, you get in the way back.

• 1:04:40Georgia Hardstark?

  In the trunk.

• 1:04:40Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:41Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:41Karen Kilgariff?

  The trunk. Who writes in the trunk on this one?

• 1:04:44Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, rock, paper, scissors. And so for the moment, they're actually enjoying their freedom. George later says, quote, "We were all ecstatic, honestly. We knew there was a serious manhunt, but every day was precious to us. The freedom of walking to the corner store and buying a soda, a newspaper, and the clerk saying, 'Good morning, how are you?' It was beautiful," end quote.

• 1:05:04Karen Kilgariff?

  That's how I used to feel when I lived in San Francisco and worked at The Gap. I get to do what I want. I mean.

• 1:05:11Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, but you still do.

• 1:05:12Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, I wasn't doing crime. I didn't do any crimes. I just took my 6:25 an hour and made something of myself.

• 1:05:20Georgia Hardstark?

  You sure did.

• 1:05:20Karen Kilgariff?

  God damn it.

• 1:05:22Georgia Hardstark?

  So George says that after he gets a fake ID, he just wants to disappear somewhere and get a job as a cook and live a normal life. Of course, it doesn't work out that way. Surprise, surprise.

• 1:05:31Karen Kilgariff?

  Never does with these jail breaks. Never does.

• 1:05:34Georgia Hardstark?

  Doesn't. The fun comes to a grinding halt and a tragic end on Christmas Eve. By this point, the men have made their way to the Dallas area, and they're gonna try to get everything they need to secure their lives in hiding at an Oshman's Sporting Goods store in Irving, Texas.

• 1:05:51Georgia Hardstark?

  Why is that funny?

• 1:05:52Karen Kilgariff?

  I don't know, we have one in Petaluma.

• 1:05:53Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, you do?

• 1:05:54Karen Kilgariff?

  It's that kind of thing, or just like, go to Osh, get everything you need to live.

• 1:05:59Georgia Hardstark?

  What's their jingle?

• 1:06:00Karen Kilgariff?

  I don't know if they have one.

• 1:06:01Georgia Hardstark?

  Go Oshman's? No?

• 1:06:04Karen Kilgariff?

  That's not familiar. No, that sounded good. I mean, it's just like one of those general, kind of like, overalls and hammers and maybe a Christmas tree.

• 1:06:11Georgia Hardstark?

  Tents, probably.

• 1:06:13Karen Kilgariff?

  Tents.

• 1:06:13Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah. So that's like they kind of are getting everything they need, so.

• 1:06:16Karen Kilgariff?

  Hummingbird feeders.

• 1:06:17Georgia Hardstark?

  Hummingbird feeders, and then necessity when you're on the lam. So right at closing time, three members of the group approach a manager at the sporting goods store, ask him to call all of his employees to the front. And we know that George is one of these three, but it's not totally clear who the other two are. They say they want to show the staff some pictures of some people who have been robbing local stores. So another ruse that like, sounds kind of legit.

• 1:06:41Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:41Georgia Hardstark?

  Like the flower delivery thing.

• 1:06:42Karen Kilgariff?

  Right.

• 1:06:43Georgia Hardstark?

  Right? And also like the manager's probably like a 23-year-old community college student who's like fucking exhausted, you know?

• 1:06:50Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes.

• 1:06:50Georgia Hardstark?

  So what is like, sure.

• 1:06:51Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:52Georgia Hardstark?

  Let's get this done. I'm trying to close out and count all my, count my registers. Right. It's like your friend at Staples. It's like, well, he's wearing the outfit, so I believe him.

• 1:07:00Karen Kilgariff?

  He must know what he's talking about.

• 1:07:01Georgia Hardstark?

  Exactly. Of course, as soon as the employees are assembled, they pull out the guns and force all the employees to go to a back room, tie them up, and then rob the store. And because it's Christmas Eve, there's 70 grand in the cash registers. And that's the year 2000. So in today's money, that 70 grand would be...

• 1:07:20Karen Kilgariff?

  $250,000?

• 1:07:21Georgia Hardstark?

  $130,000.

• 1:07:22Karen Kilgariff?

  Dick it damn.

• 1:07:22Georgia Hardstark?

  You overshot, which is like ambitious, though.

• 1:07:25Karen Kilgariff?

  That's me.

• 1:07:25Georgia Hardstark?

  You know?

• 1:07:26Karen Kilgariff?

  That's me in a nutshell.

• 1:07:27Georgia Hardstark?

  I feel like this 130 is wrong, not you. You know what I mean? Like, it should be.

• 1:07:31Karen Kilgariff?

  It should be a lot more.

• 1:07:32Georgia Hardstark?

  It fucking should be.

• 1:07:33Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:34Georgia Hardstark?

  The group takes all of it, and they also steal 40 guns from the store's inventory, which has to scare the shit out of the law enforcement chasing them, knowing that they have all these guns from the prison and ammunition, and they're stealing a bunch of guns, too. It just makes it that much...

• 1:07:46Karen Kilgariff?

  They have an armory.

• 1:07:48Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:48Karen Kilgariff?

  Like a traveling armory.

• 1:07:49Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, like they are armed and dangerous to the fucking teeth.

• 1:07:53Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:53Georgia Hardstark?

  So, they also take a lot of ammunition and lots of warm winter clothing. They also take the keys to one of the employee's cars, which is like such a bummer. If you work at Oshman's, like your car, your Toyota Camry, hand me down.

• 1:08:06Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes, exactly.

• 1:08:07Georgia Hardstark?

  Fucking guys take it.

• 1:08:08Karen Kilgariff?

  I wonder if they took those keys and then they made copies of those keys, because that's another thing you can get done, if it's anything like... It's Oshman's or Orchard Supply.

• 1:08:17Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:18Karen Kilgariff?

  Which one, which name is it?

• 1:08:20Georgia Hardstark?

  Oshman's.

• 1:08:21Karen Kilgariff?

  Oshman's.

• 1:08:21Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, but I know what you're talking about. You know, those small town hardware stores that don't exist anymore and sporting goods stores.

• 1:08:26Karen Kilgariff?

  Right? They kind of have everything. See you later. We used to be able to get it all done.

• 1:08:30Georgia Hardstark?

  They have the tiny model tents that you can't buy for your cat, which is so infuriating. Like, let me buy the tiny model tent for my fucking cat. It's a, it's clearly a cat bed.

• 1:08:40Karen Kilgariff?

  It's a cat bed, it's a cat toy.

• 1:08:41Georgia Hardstark?

  Like, stop.

• 1:08:42Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah. There's kind of nothing better than a small town hardware store.

• 1:08:46Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, my God, I could spend hours in, I remember the one in San Francisco in the Castro, when I used to do my, like, bank run, where I'd go from my job to the bank and I'd go to the fucking, spend so much time in that hardware store. It was beautiful.

• 1:08:59Karen Kilgariff?

  The hardware store that would have, like, front windows displays where it's like Dorothy walking down the yellow brick road, but they're like, but also nails.

• 1:09:05Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, it's springtime and there's just like weird stuff that's kind of pastel, but like, yeah. So, all of this robbing of the Oshman's might have gone off without a hitch, but an off-duty employee from that same sporting goods store, again, had been in the parking lot waiting to pick someone up, saw this, like, scene of, like, it should be closing time and there's unfamiliar people bustling around after hours and there's no employees anywhere. So this person calls the police. And one of the first two officers to report to the scene is a man named Aubrey Hawkins. He's 29 years old and he has only been on the job for a little over a year. And so, it's Christmas Eve, he's eating dinner at a nearby Olive Garden with his family when he gets the call over his radio and he leaves to respond to it.

• 1:09:49Georgia Hardstark?

  Officer Hawkins arrives at the same time as another police officer and that officer positions himself at the front of the store and Aubrey pulls around to the back. And it's possible that the escapees had a police scanner, so they knew that this is happening.

• 1:10:03Karen Kilgariff?

  Right.

• 1:10:03Georgia Hardstark?

  He gets to the back just as the whole group of escapees are heading out the back door and they immediately start shooting at the officer.

• 1:10:12Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:13Georgia Hardstark?

  We know that George is among those who shoot Aubrey because he will later take full responsibility for his death, but it sounds like the other two members of the group who are with him also fire a bunch of shots, so it's unclear. You know, which shot actually killed him, but they do shoot Officer Hawkins 11 times. They run over him with their car as they flood the scene. It's just so awful. Hawkins dies at the hospital shortly after his arrival. He leaves behind a wife and nine-year-old son. So it's just senseless and awful, but like, what are the escapees thinks going to happen when they bring 40-plus guns into the game? Like these, you know, George Rivas is trying to be like, I wanted it to be peaceful. I didn't want anyone to get hurt. But it's like, don't surround yourself with like violent criminals and guns.

• 1:10:57Karen Kilgariff?

  Well, you can't, there's no controlling it. You have to admit that you have unleashed this force.

• 1:11:02Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 1:11:02Karen Kilgariff?

  I don't understand, though, if people are witnessing what they think is some sort of a robbery, you're only sending two people over there?

• 1:11:10Georgia Hardstark?

  I think that they were just so close, they got there first.

• 1:11:12Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:13Georgia Hardstark?

  You know?

• 1:11:14Karen Kilgariff?

  God.

• 1:11:14Georgia Hardstark?

  So yeah, maybe the protocol was like, you should wait until there's more, but you know, it's a small town. He's a new officer. Maybe he just thinks he's pulling in the back. Like, they don't even know it's actually happening yet.

• 1:11:26Karen Kilgariff?

  And it's a true band of criminals armed to the teeth. It's worst-case scenario.

• 1:11:31Georgia Hardstark?

  Exactly. Yeah, exactly. At this point, the prison escape has been huge news. It's like, they're kind of like these, I don't know, people are kind of like cheering for them in a way until they kill a police officer.

• 1:11:44Karen Kilgariff?

  Right.

• 1:11:44Georgia Hardstark?

  And they're in Texas, by the way, so shit goes off. The group then becomes known as the Texas Seven, and a $100,000 reward is issued for information that leads to their capture. That amount winds up getting raised to $500,000, which in today's money is almost a million, $926,000. On New Year's Day in 2001, a group of seven men randomly, what's, oh, seven men? Who were they? They arrive at the Coach Light RV Park in Woodland Park, Colorado. By this point, the group has made efforts to grow beards. They changed their appearances. George has bleached his hair so that it's like really blonde. And they arrive in an RV and they also have a Jeep with them.

• 1:12:26Georgia Hardstark?

  And they tell the RV park manager that they're a group of Christian missionaries in town to spread Jesus's word. And the manager thinks they look like nice guys and like invites them to their Bible study because there's a lot of religious people in this RV park.

• 1:12:43Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:43Georgia Hardstark?

  Apparently.

• 1:12:44Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:44Georgia Hardstark?

  So it's actually kind of a good cover for like seven dudes together.

• 1:12:48Karen Kilgariff?

  Right.

• 1:12:48Georgia Hardstark?

  Which is very suspicious.

• 1:12:49Karen Kilgariff?

  It is very much so. I was going to say they should say that they're like a jam band.

• 1:12:53Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:54Karen Kilgariff?

  Or some, a cover band of some kind. And it's like roadies and band members.

• 1:12:58Georgia Hardstark?

  But what if they're like, hey, give us a show tonight?

• 1:13:00Karen Kilgariff?

  There's like, sorry, we're also very religious and we can't.

• 1:13:04Georgia Hardstark?

  Today, today's the Lord's Day. It's Monday.

• 1:13:07Karen Kilgariff?

  No, no, no, my Lord.

• 1:13:08Georgia Hardstark?

  My, yeah.

• 1:13:09Karen Kilgariff?

  Personal.

• 1:13:09Georgia Hardstark?

  In my religion.

• 1:13:10Karen Kilgariff?

  My sweet Lord.

• 1:13:11Georgia Hardstark?

  They join the local Bible study within the RV park. They hang out at local bars and they seem to get along well with the community. And it's, you know, a small community. But on January 20th, so like, that's a long time. Also, the same day, George W. Bush is inaugurated.

• 1:13:26Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh.

• 1:13:26Georgia Hardstark?

  Thank you to Ally for putting that in there. An episode of America's Most Wanted airs and features the story of the Texas Seven. The owner of the RV park sees this and he's interviewed in this mugshot show and he's just like, chill as fuck.

• 1:13:40Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:41Georgia Hardstark?

  With a flannel on. He's exactly who you think he is. And he's like, wait a second, these seven guys look kind of familiar. But they're also like, maybe they're not. And so they go online on the new internet to make sure that they like match the description. And so he's sure at that point, without a doubt, that these are the same guys. And he calls the local sheriff. So the sheriff happens to be an RV owner himself. And so he pretends to be a tourist. They like change the plates. So they're like out of town plates and they drive into the RV park with his own trailer full of deputies.

• 1:14:13Karen Kilgariff?

  So smart.

• 1:14:14Georgia Hardstark?

  Very smart. They spend the night there watching the group. And in the morning, George, Michael Rodriguez and Joseph Garcia drive the Jeep to a nearby gas station and the sheriff and his deputies follow them there. Once they pull into the gas pump, several police cars box them in on all sides and the officers pull their guns, of course. George, Michael and Joseph surrender immediately. George was like, he had a gun on him. He quickly considered it and then he was like, just surrender. So he surrenders. Then later that day, Randy Halprin surrenders to authorities at the trailer park. Larry Harper is there too, but he refuses to surrender and dies by suicide rather than coming out of the R B and going back to prison.

• 1:14:56Georgia Hardstark?

  Donald Newberry and Patrick Murphy actually make a run for it, but they're arrested two days later at a Holiday Inn in Colorado Springs. So all six remaining members of the Texas seven wind up being extradited back to Texas. They're charged with the murder of Officer Aubrey Hawkins and they're all convicted because it's that law of like, if you were part of a group and someone got murdered, you're all responsible for the murder. As of today, four of the six have been executed and the last surviving members of the Texas seven are Randy Halprin, the youngest of the group, who's now in his mid 40s. And the other current surviving member of the Texas seven is Patrick Murphy and he is still currently awaiting execution. Neither Randy nor Patrick was actually present when Aubrey Hawkins was shot.

• 1:15:41Georgia Hardstark?

  So they weren't the robbers at the Oshman store that day. Also indicted for conspiracy to help the Texas seven are Patsy Gomez and Paul Rodriguez, the parents of Michael Rodriguez.

• 1:15:54Karen Kilgariff?

  Who hooked up the Walmart.

• 1:15:55Georgia Hardstark?

  You can't give him a getaway car.

• 1:15:58Karen Kilgariff?

  Can't do it.

• 1:15:58Georgia Hardstark?

  You can't, I don't know. I mean, you love your son. I understand.

• 1:16:02Karen Kilgariff?

  And then the idea they're pulling in like someone's old parents who are just trying to like.

• 1:16:06Georgia Hardstark?

  Who maybe like didn't get what they were actually doing and.

• 1:16:09Karen Kilgariff?

  Or just are like, we don't want you to live in hell. We want you to somehow get away.

• 1:16:14Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah. I mean, this, this story, especially for George Rebus, brings up the whole idea of rehabilitation and how like that's supposed to be the point of our justice system. And when you take that away from someone, there's no point to their life anymore.

• 1:16:27Karen Kilgariff?

  There's no hope.

• 1:16:28Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah. So you need, like rehabilitation should be what we're aiming for.

• 1:16:32Karen Kilgariff?

  Right.

• 1:16:33Georgia Hardstark?

  At the time of his recapture, George says on 60 Minutes that he feels very remorseful about the death of Officer Hawkins. George dies by lethal injection on February 29th, 2012. He's 41 years old. His final words are, I do apologize for everything that happened, not because I am here, but for closure in your hearts, I am ready to go. End quote.

• 1:16:56Karen Kilgariff?

  Wow.

• 1:16:57Georgia Hardstark?

  And that is the story of the prison break of the Texas seven.

• 1:17:00Karen Kilgariff?

  That's kind of shocking to hear somebody, a criminal, that's trying to say, I'm not just saying this because of this. I want, hopefully it's for you.

• 1:17:12Georgia Hardstark?

  He did seem to do that throughout his trial and throughout before and after his cap, you know, his sentencing. He was very remorseful and I think, you know, that doesn't count much for Officer Hawkins' family and friends. So, you know, take that with a grain of salt.

• 1:17:30Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, that's right. Wow. Good one.

• 1:17:34Georgia Hardstark?

  Thank you.

• 1:17:34Karen Kilgariff?

  Lot to think about in that one.

• 1:17:36Georgia Hardstark?

  Do it now, think about it.

• 1:17:40Karen Kilgariff?

  I'm done.

• 1:17:41Georgia Hardstark?

  Well, you know what we should do now?

• 1:17:42Karen Kilgariff?

  Fucking hoorays.

• 1:17:43Georgia Hardstark?

  Let's do fucking hoorays and end this on a high note.

• 1:17:45Karen Kilgariff?

  Let's do it.

• 1:17:46Georgia Hardstark?

  Guys, we started doing fucking hoorays again. So make sure you comment on this episode's Instagram with your fucking hooray, hashtag it fucking hooray, or email us at my favorite murder Gmail. And you can also leave a comment in the video episode. And yes, this is a ploy to get you to go to our YouTube channel.

• 1:18:02Karen Kilgariff?

  And watch and comment and like and smash that like button.

• 1:18:05Georgia Hardstark?

  Pretty please.

• 1:18:06Karen Kilgariff?

  And be a subscriber.

• 1:18:08Georgia Hardstark?

  Fucking hooray.

• 1:18:10Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay, here, let me start.

• 1:18:11Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 1:18:11Karen Kilgariff?

  Because the subject line of this is, if my fellow Kelsey's email, I guess I will too.

• 1:18:16Georgia Hardstark?

  No.

• 1:18:17Karen Kilgariff?

  And it says, howdy, I just listened to the latest episode where you reintroduced fucking hoorays. And I thought to myself, maybe I'll write in about how I'm handling my upcoming 40th birthday. And what do you know? You read a hooray from a fellow Kelsey celebrating reaching 30.

• 1:18:31Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh.

• 1:18:32Karen Kilgariff?

  And then that Kelsey highlighted their best friend, Kelsey with an I E. What are the odds, man? I used to get Chelsea'd all the time, but I've met more and more Kelseys. So I guess we aren't too rare anymore. Anyway, I'll keep it short.

• 1:18:44Georgia Hardstark?

  No, you won't.

• 1:18:46Karen Kilgariff?

  I'm turning 40 on April 1st. And then it parentheses, it says, I am most certainly an April fool. And it says, and I'm having feelings about it for sure. But here I am, happily married, fully employed, awesome dog, awesome cat, cozy home, heaps of gratitude to have left an eating disorder, damaging religious beliefs, and so much else in the past. So whatever the hell is going on out in the world, I am deeply, deeply grateful for my small slice of it. Thank you for your podcast and fucking hooray for survival. One foot in front of the other, keep moving forward. Kelsey.

• 1:19:19Georgia Hardstark?

  Kelsey, what if every episode we have to read a Kelsey? Like, someone in Kelsey has to write in.

• 1:19:23Karen Kilgariff?

  We can do it.

• 1:19:24Georgia Hardstark?

  Kelsey, do you hear us? You have to tell us your fucking hooray.

• 1:19:27Karen Kilgariff?

  Kelsey, spill it. You thought it was something nobody wanted to hear? We do, you're a Kelsey.

• 1:19:32Georgia Hardstark?

  Even though I cried on my 40th birthday, and that was partly because it was the beginning of the pandemic, my 40s have been so fucking incredible. I'm so glad to get out of my 30s where you care so much more about everything than you do in your 40s. Yeah. Like, it's just the best decade.

• 1:19:46Karen Kilgariff?

  Get ready for your 50s where truly you cannot find a fuck to give.

• 1:19:51Georgia Hardstark?

  DGAF. Okay. This one's from Instagram, from the real Maddie B. 77. It says, "One of the best episodes ever." Oh, thanks. #FuckingHooray. "After years of you two being open and honest about therapy, I began going due to an unforeseen death of my best friend at age 44." It says sepsis, not murder. "Therapy has helped me cope with the loss of a friend who was more like a brother and opened my eyes to things about me I didn't even realize. Thank you for your openness and honesty. It's helped many of us. Love from Korea." The real Maddie B. 77.

• 1:20:24Karen Kilgariff?

  Wow, Maddie. That's a horrible loss and so difficult. And the idea that you're like, I'm going to do something instructive for myself in the midst of this?

• 1:20:35Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:35Karen Kilgariff?

  Is really brave.

• 1:20:36Georgia Hardstark?

  I'm gonna do this the right way.

• 1:20:38Karen Kilgariff?

  This just says, "So glad you're bringing back the fucking hooray. I have one from this past week. My 16-year-old niece and her high school girls' ice hockey team won the Division I Massachusetts State Championship on the heralded ice of Boston Garden." So they got to go to the state championships to Boston Garden, and they won.

• 1:20:58Georgia Hardstark?

  Damn.

• 1:20:58Karen Kilgariff?

  "Her high school, Hangum High School, is also my alma mater from 40 years ago. Love you all. Kim."

• 1:21:05Georgia Hardstark?

  Cute.

• 1:21:06Karen Kilgariff?

  So Auntie Kim is shouting out and celebrating. That's a huge accomplishment. And then they got to do it at Boston Garden. That's the coolest.

• 1:21:15Georgia Hardstark?

  It's so cool.

• 1:21:15Karen Kilgariff?

  Congratulations, everybody.

• 1:21:17Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay, my last one's from Instagram also. Hashtag fucking hooray. Last May, I underwent weeks of needles and an outpatient procedure, plus a month of no roller derby, boo, so that I could donate my eggs for free, since paying donors is illegal in Canada.

• 1:21:33Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:21:34Georgia Hardstark?

  Last month, I got a meet and hold the gorgeous newborn baby that I was able to give this couple, who had thought they might never get to have. I've been walking on air ever since. Jen, they/them@beachtronic on Instagram.

• 1:21:48Karen Kilgariff?

  Wow.

• 1:21:48Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:49Karen Kilgariff?

  What a beautiful thing. That's like it's some roller derby superstar taking some time out.

• 1:21:54Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:55Karen Kilgariff?

  Just to help out fellow man.

• 1:21:57Georgia Hardstark?

  Help.

• 1:21:58Karen Kilgariff?

  And woman. Yeah. Amazing.

• 1:22:00Georgia Hardstark?

  Amazing. Send us your fucking hoorays.

• 1:22:02Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah. And look for what is something to fucking hooray about in your life, especially in these times.

• 1:22:08Georgia Hardstark?

  Right. If you think you don't have one, you just need to look a little harder, because you'll have one this week, we promise.

• 1:22:12Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah. Treat it as an assignment. Make a little list. Try to find three. Find your best. Send it to [email protected].

• 1:22:20Georgia Hardstark?

  And Auntie Georgia and Auntie Karen say to look for three.

• 1:22:22Karen Kilgariff?

  And we love you.

• 1:22:23Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:23Karen Kilgariff?

  Stay sexy.

• 1:22:24Georgia Hardstark?

  And don't get murdered.

• 1:22:25Karen Kilgariff?

  Goodbye.

• 1:22:27Speaker 05

  Elvis, do you want a cookie? Ah.

• 1:22:35Karen Kilgariff?

  This has been an Exactly Right production.

• 1:22:37Georgia Hardstark?

  Our senior producers are Alejandra Keck and Molly Smith.

• 1:22:40Karen Kilgariff?

  Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo.

• 1:22:42Georgia Hardstark?

  This episode was mixed by Leona Scolacci.

• 1:22:44Karen Kilgariff?

  Our researchers are Maren McGlashan and Ali Elkin.

• 1:22:47Georgia Hardstark?

  Email your hometowns to [email protected].

• 1:22:50Karen Kilgariff?

  Follow the show on Instagram at myfavoritemurder.

• 1:22:53Georgia Hardstark?

  Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:22:58Karen Kilgariff?

  And now you can watch us on Exactly Right's YouTube page. While you're there, please like and subscribe. Goodbye.

• 1:23:11Speaker 06

  She's been thinking about this sleepover all week, but I think about her food allergies all the time. Fortunately, her doctor prescribed Zolair, omalizumab. It's proven to significantly reduce allergic reactions if a food allergy accident happens.

• 1:23:24Speaker 07

  Zolair 150mg is a prescription medication used to treat food allergy in people one year of age and older to reduce allergic reactions due to accidental exposure to one or more foods. While taking Zolair, you should continue to avoid all foods to which you are allergic. Don't use if you are allergic to Zolair. Zolair may cause a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. Tell your doctor if you ever had anaphylaxis. Get help right away if you have trouble breathing or if you have swelling of your throat or tongue. Zolair should not be used for the emergency treatment of allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis. Zolair is for maintenance use to reduce allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, while avoiding food allergens. Serious side effects such as cancer, fever, muscle aches and rash, parasitic infection, or heart and circulation problems have been reported. Please see zolair.com for full prescribing information. Ask an allergist about Zolair. This is an advertisement for Zolair,

• 1:24:09Speaker 07

  paid for by Genentech and Novartis.

• 1:24:11Speaker 04

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• 1:24:41Karen Kilgariff?

  Calling all amateur detectives and podcast obsessives.

• 1:24:45Georgia Hardstark?

  Virgin Voyages' second True Crime Voyage sets sail March 20, 2027, for a five-night escape to Grand Turk and the Beach Club at Bimini.

• 1:24:53Karen Kilgariff?

  As part of the On Air at Sea collection, this immersive sailing brings together fan favorite podcasts, including Disgrace Land, Buried Bones, and Wisecrack for live recordings, behind-the-scenes access, exclusive meet-and-greets, and crime-themed programming that you won't find anywhere else.

• 1:25:10Georgia Hardstark?

  All aboard our award-winning, kid-free ships.

• 1:25:12Karen Kilgariff?

  Head over to virginvoyages.com/truecrime to secure your spot. Goodbye.