Pod Insights My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark 466 - Parrots Of The Future About this episode This week, Georgia covers the Adelaide Oval abductions and Karen tells the story of the Schoolhouse Blizzard of 1888.
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Transcript 15,473 words · 7 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Speaker 00 This is exactly right.
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1:27 Georgia Hardstark? Hello.
1:28 Karen Kilgariff? And welcome.
1:29 Georgia Hardstark? To My Favorite Murder.
1:30 Karen Kilgariff? That's a Georgia hardspore.
1:32 Georgia Hardstark? And that's a Karen Kilgariff.
1:33 Karen Kilgariff? And this is how you make them.
1:37 Georgia Hardstark? Have you seen, I don't know how we haven't talked about this yet, the fucking husky who has an Italian accent?
1:44 Karen Kilgariff? He has.
1:45 Georgia Hardstark? Oh my God, nothing has brought me more joy in my life than that guy.
1:49 Karen Kilgariff? The best, right?
1:49 Georgia Hardstark? The best.
1:50 Karen Kilgariff? I feel like if there's any animal that's about to break over into human speaking, huskies will be first.
1:56 Georgia Hardstark? They're so close.
1:57 Karen Kilgariff? They're borderline.
1:59 Georgia Hardstark? They're like, it's parrots, which I watched so many videos of them talking too.
2:02 Karen Kilgariff? They literally are talking.
2:04 Georgia Hardstark? And huskies. If you haven't seen it, just Google Italian husky.
2:07 Karen Kilgariff? Huskies are the parrots of the future. That's clear to all of us who care about TikTok.
2:11 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. Don't you believe in evolution, everyone?
2:15 Karen Kilgariff? Sorry, breaking news. Do you know that I am off of TikTok?
2:18 Georgia Hardstark? Why? What happened?
2:19 Karen Kilgariff? Because I accidentally, the day that they said they were quote unquote banning it, I went and deleted the app because I was like, I don't want to stare at that anymore. I don't want to, I don't want to just look at it and not be able to access it.
2:29 Georgia Hardstark? Did you cancel your account? You just can't sign back in?
2:31 Karen Kilgariff? I deleted it off my phone.
2:33 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, okay.
2:34 Karen Kilgariff? 12 hours later, I'm eating dinner with Bridger and he goes, I'm on the reinstated TikTok. And I was like, wait, what? And so then I go to put it back on my phone, cannot.
2:42 Georgia Hardstark? You can't?
2:43 Karen Kilgariff? Can't.
2:43 Georgia Hardstark? Cause they're like, fuck you and fuck you, fuck you. If you, if you like ditch them?
2:48 Karen Kilgariff? It's basically the general practice of fuck you if you're American at this point.
2:51 Georgia Hardstark? Well, yeah. I mean, that's great. Come to Instagram. We're a happy family here. It's less chaotic.
2:58 Karen Kilgariff? Here's the thing. It's just like I have to transfer high school's senior year.
3:03 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
3:03 Karen Kilgariff? Last quarter.
3:04 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes sense.
3:05 Karen Kilgariff? So it's like, hey, guys, are we gonna be friends? No, no, no, no, no.
3:08 Georgia Hardstark? No, but everyone wants someone new and exciting. We're all bored of each other over there.
3:12 Karen Kilgariff? Okay. So I immediately have to post bikini pics? Cause I don't know.
3:16 Georgia Hardstark? Okay. Can I tell you the last thing I posted?
3:18 Karen Kilgariff? What?
3:19 Georgia Hardstark? A slow motion reel of Vince taking a chicken pot pie that he made me on Friday night and upending it on a plate and handing it to me.
3:27 Karen Kilgariff? Oh.
3:28 Georgia Hardstark? With some dirty song playing in the background. Like, that's all it is there. We're having fun.
3:33 Karen Kilgariff? With a kind of let's get it on feel to it?
3:35 Georgia Hardstark? Kind of like, pop that, you know, uh, everybody pop that, you know, that one? Like this? Which I, I wanted to sing so bad. And I, as I was walking into the office, I was like wanting to sing that song. And I was like, that's actionable. Don't sing that to your coworker.
3:48 Karen Kilgariff? Even in the parking lot, it's questionable.
3:50 Georgia Hardstark? Totally.
3:50 Karen Kilgariff? Definitely not past the doorway.
3:52 Georgia Hardstark? Look that song up too, if you need a, if you need a fucking jam to jog to.
3:55 Karen Kilgariff? Can you give me the musician that performs it?
3:58 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, it's fucking, it's two live crew.
4:00 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
4:01 Georgia Hardstark? Like, nothing is better. And the song is called Pop That Pussy. That's the fucking name of it. So I'm not.
4:06 Karen Kilgariff? No, no, you didn't write it. You're just rapping it.
4:08 Georgia Hardstark? I wish I had. Yeah. Hey, speaking of rap, have you watched the Martha Stewart documentary?
4:15 Karen Kilgariff? Not yet.
4:16 Georgia Hardstark? I, I kind of was meh about it and then I watched it.
4:19 Karen Kilgariff? And then you were not.
4:20 Georgia Hardstark? And then it was like, very interesting.
4:23 Karen Kilgariff? Yes. That's what all I've heard is very interesting, amazing, like, almost like the story behind.
4:30 Karen Kilgariff? Talk about Instagram. It's kind of like,
4:32 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
4:32 Karen Kilgariff? She's all about pictures and presentation.
4:34 Georgia Hardstark? The first influencer they're saying, and I, it's so true.
4:37 Karen Kilgariff? She is. I remember being in high school and there used to be an American Express commercial where it was Martha Stewart lining a pool, the bottom of a pool with American Express cards, like it was a craft project.
4:49 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
4:50 Karen Kilgariff? And I was like, who's that? And my mother was like, oh God, she's some woman from the East Coast. Like eye roll, eye roll.
4:56 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
4:57 Karen Kilgariff? And it was like, she was, uh, but, but it was almost like how to be perfect, how to have a perfect life, how to be perfect.
5:04 Georgia Hardstark? The whole thing is about, and it's also like a little disturbing because she's clearly like a little bit of an automaton. What is the word?
5:11 Karen Kilgariff? Robot?
5:12 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. A little robotic.
5:14 Karen Kilgariff? Sure.
5:14 Georgia Hardstark? A little like, I guess, sociopathic, kind of like because you have to be in that business or to be, to get where she is in this world.
5:24 Karen Kilgariff? Yes.
5:24 Georgia Hardstark? But it's also super impressive because she's a badass and has like taken some hits and just got back up, you know?
5:31 Karen Kilgariff? She's still growing those tulips seasonally.
5:34 Georgia Hardstark? It's interesting. You should watch it. As a CEO yourself, an entrepreneur, I think there's some parts.
5:40 Karen Kilgariff? And someone heading to jail, for sure.
5:41 Georgia Hardstark? For insider trading.
5:42 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
5:43 Georgia Hardstark? I do think you'll, you'll identify with some parts of it.
5:45 Karen Kilgariff? Multiple people have told me, many women who work very hard in business and who have kind of seen some shit have told me the same thing. We're just like, you just gotta see her version of it, which is cool.
5:56 Georgia Hardstark? Uh, there's definitely parts you'll identify with, for sure.
5:58 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
5:59 Georgia Hardstark? What have you got going on?
6:00 Karen Kilgariff? Mostly the muffin parts. Uh, I already told you I've been kicked off TikTok.
6:05 Georgia Hardstark? Right. That's it.
6:06 Karen Kilgariff? So like, I feel like I'm forced into like, now I'm spiritual or something because I literally sit on them at the patio table in my back patio in the morning and kind of like stare off like, well, I guess this is a better way to spend time.
6:21 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
6:22 Karen Kilgariff? My sister and I were talking about it. You can tell it's not good for your brain to watch things for 10 to 60 to seconds to maybe three minutes.
6:31 Georgia Hardstark? That are this, yeah, over and over and over.
6:33 Karen Kilgariff? And just flipping, flipping, flipping. That it does something to your dopamine, kind of like your set rate of satisfaction.
6:40 Georgia Hardstark? Absolutely.
6:41 Karen Kilgariff? So I think that's good. But I am so scared about the just absolute loss of information, shared information between Twitter being gone and which it is completely gone and the Twitter we all knew. And the thing that was important about Twitter was it was started by journalists.
7:00 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
7:00 Karen Kilgariff? Shorthanding news and like, so everyone else that was there, you know, later stages were all just kind of like hangers on, but it was news based and sourced. We need that.
7:11 Georgia Hardstark? Access to information on all platforms and from all places so that we can then make a decision for ourselves.
7:18 Karen Kilgariff? Yes.
7:18 Georgia Hardstark? And you're worried about that not being available to everyone.
7:21 Karen Kilgariff? And the fact that it is not, it absolutely cuts into people being able to organize, people being able to have real time reactions to things like it just as holistically as I kind of skip around on my phone going, well, Blue Sky, I mean, let's all make the best of Blue Sky for sure, but God.
7:40 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
7:40 Karen Kilgariff? Dark.
7:41 Georgia Hardstark? Well, we're here waiting for you on Instagram with open arms and a chicken pot pie. A slow motion chicken pot pie.
7:50 Karen Kilgariff? I mean, that alone is a huge, that was one of the most perfect invitations you could offer me.
7:56 Georgia Hardstark? What else is there?
7:57 Karen Kilgariff? I just, I guess I was always picturing of people like, here's us at the bikini party.
8:01 Georgia Hardstark? Oh.
8:01 Karen Kilgariff? Here's, here's me in my bikini again, bikini from the back. Like that's, it always felt like that to me.
8:07 Georgia Hardstark? I don't get a lot of bikini content. That's not what I follow and that's not what's offered to me.
8:12 Karen Kilgariff? And you don't feel pressed to post bikini.
8:14 Georgia Hardstark? Are you fucking kidding me?
8:17 Karen Kilgariff? It's what it's been in my head the whole time.
8:18 Georgia Hardstark? No, everything I post is like chicken pot pie adjacent. It's not, it's not, or like dog and cat stuff.
8:26 Karen Kilgariff? Okay.
8:26 Georgia Hardstark? It's not like that.
8:27 Karen Kilgariff? Okay.
8:28 Georgia Hardstark? It's like, you know, when you're in fifth grade and you think the sixth graders are super cool and then like you become an adult and meet one of those sixth graders, you're like, that person was, I don't know where this is going. But we're the fifth.
8:38 Karen Kilgariff? Do you want to just talk about fifth grade?
8:39 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
8:40 Karen Kilgariff? I'm in.
8:41 Georgia Hardstark? I don't know.
8:42 Karen Kilgariff? Entirely.
8:42 Georgia Hardstark? You know what I mean? Like you, you're like, wow, that's person's so much cooler than me. And then like with TikTok and then you meet them later in life and you're like, why did I put that person on a pedestal? Everything was great here in fifth grade.
8:52 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
8:52 Georgia Hardstark? I don't.
8:53 Karen Kilgariff? It's all normal. Well, because that's all, it's basically the social media. Trap, which is wanna be a part of things, think we'd be doing a good job being part of things, maybe stick your toe in and test that out.
9:08 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, I did that with TikTok.
9:09 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, and not for you.
9:11 Georgia Hardstark? No.
9:11 Karen Kilgariff? But you're more of a, I have to be doing it. I was such a lurker on TikTok.
9:16 Georgia Hardstark? Yes.
9:16 Karen Kilgariff? I didn't do, I barely interacted at all.
9:19 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, it made me feel inadequate. Whereas with Instagram, like, I can talk to the phone in front of my mirror and, and it's fine.
9:25 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
9:25 Georgia Hardstark? I don't need filters.
9:26 Karen Kilgariff? Right.
9:27 Georgia Hardstark? I mean, I need filters, but I don't use filters.
9:31 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, I thought you were gonna do a big take to camera just now, where you spun around. I was like, yes.
9:35 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, am I right?
9:36 Karen Kilgariff? She's doing a bit.
9:38 Georgia Hardstark? What if I just suddenly, year nine, I start doing fucking?
9:40 Karen Kilgariff? I don't need, I don't need filters and then turn around and blow your nose into camera.
9:45 Georgia Hardstark? Jesus Christ. What is this?
9:48 Karen Kilgariff? Um, who knows? You know what it is? It's a true crime podcast.
9:52 Georgia Hardstark? That's right.
9:53 Karen Kilgariff? Um, we have news, we have highlights from around the world. Is this where you should come?
9:58 Georgia Hardstark? Hey.
9:59 Karen Kilgariff? Nope, the answer's no.
10:00 Georgia Hardstark? Maybe. Uh, should we do some ceramics?
10:03 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, my God, yes.
10:04 Georgia Hardstark? Your face is lit up.
10:06 Karen Kilgariff? Yes.
10:06 Georgia Hardstark? So last week, because we asked you guys for ceramics.
10:10 Karen Kilgariff? For our ninth anniversary gift.
10:12 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, we, we showcased some on the podcast. It was a huge hit. We have so many more. We're gonna do a video hopefully soon, but in the meantime, we wanted to just like, do a couple more really quickly because apparently you guys freaking loved it.
10:24 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
10:25 Georgia Hardstark? Everyone's just thrilled, so.
10:26 Karen Kilgariff? Everyone loves it and it's, it's fun to be like, hey, would anyone do this? And then.
10:31 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
10:31 Karen Kilgariff? With this listenership, the responses we get are like.
10:35 Georgia Hardstark? For the best.
10:35 Karen Kilgariff? Hell, yeah, and then some.
10:36 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
10:37 Karen Kilgariff? Watch this.
10:37 Georgia Hardstark? Watch this. And like, we bought a fucking electric lazy Susan. We can't, this can't go to waste.
10:42 Karen Kilgariff? This is show business investment.
10:44 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
10:45 Karen Kilgariff? Ladies and gentlemen, and also if you wanna see what we mean by an electric lazy Susan, you better get over to that YouTube page.
10:52 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, go to the Exactly Right YouTube and, um, check it out. Okay, I'll read it to you while you do it.
10:58 Karen Kilgariff? Yep.
10:58 Georgia Hardstark? This is from an artist named Cassandra. Her IG handle, her Instagram handle is Westerwald Pottery, W E S T E R W A L D. She and her husband run.
11:09 Karen Kilgariff? That's the handle I was gonna use. Forget it.
11:12 Georgia Hardstark? She and her husband run West Royal Pottery, which her dad started in 1975.
11:16 Karen Kilgariff? Whoa, second generation pottery.
11:19 Georgia Hardstark? I know, her dad was a ceramics professor and pottery expert. This is gonna be fucking good. And he passed away in 2022 after a battle with COVID. And she says, quote, "I hope you enjoy the anniversary crock and the mugs." "I know my dad would be getting an absolute kick out of my favorite murder being stamped onto one of his pots." They have our names.
11:40 Karen Kilgariff? This is real.
11:41 Georgia Hardstark? That is fucking ridiculous.
11:43 Karen Kilgariff? The real deal.
11:45 Georgia Hardstark? "This stoneware is hand-thrown, decorated and glazed at 2,250 degrees Fahrenheit. Glaze is lead-free, microwave and dishwasher safe."
11:55 Georgia Hardstark? So it's a beautiful, like, crock, like a jug, kind of a thing, with this gorgeous, like, what would you call that? It's very vintage.
12:04 Karen Kilgariff? This floral design?
12:05 Georgia Hardstark? Yes, beautiful blue floral design. It's very vintage looking.
12:08 Karen Kilgariff? If you've ever seen Pottery Cell on Antiques Roadshow, it's one of these, but a big one usually, where they're like, "This has been in the corner of my kitchen forever."
12:18 Georgia Hardstark? Oh my god, and then the mugs have our names stamped into them with SSDGM.
12:22 Karen Kilgariff? I'm sorry, because you're supposed to put this on the shelf behind you. I'm taking this for sure.
12:25 Georgia Hardstark? This is the most, this is my new mug.
12:28 Karen Kilgariff? This is absolutely beautiful.
12:30 Georgia Hardstark? Okay, let's put it up.
12:31 Karen Kilgariff? Kind of like breathtakingly beautiful. Cassandra, thank you so much.
12:35 Georgia Hardstark? Great job, Westerwald Pottery.
12:37 Karen Kilgariff? Westerwald Pottery?
12:39 Georgia Hardstark? It's like, so touching. It's like a family thing.
12:41 Karen Kilgariff? I know. That's amazing.
12:43 Georgia Hardstark? Gorgeous.
12:44 Karen Kilgariff? Yay.
12:44 Georgia Hardstark? Okay, this one's small.
12:46 Karen Kilgariff? Okay, I'll start reading this one and you get ready to do the poll.
12:49 Georgia Hardstark? Okay, it's covered up with a cloth, with a silk cloth, and we're gonna rip it off. It's a little phallic shaped under that cloth.
12:57 Karen Kilgariff? Guess what part of the body this has been shaped after?
13:01 Georgia Hardstark? It's a little phallic.
13:02 Karen Kilgariff? Thrown after. The artist's name is Tina Kane, AKA T-Pots Pottery, Instagram handle @T-Pots Pottery, and she teaches pottery classes at MCS Clay Studios in Clearwater, Florida. Why don't you rip it, as she says, "Hope you enjoy your ninth anniversary prize."
13:20 Georgia Hardstark? It's a microphone!
13:22 Karen Kilgariff? Beautiful.
13:23 Georgia Hardstark? Wait, is it a, oh my god, it's a microphone pot bong pipe?
13:31 Georgia Hardstark? Look. Do, do, do, do, do.
13:32 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, my god.
13:34 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, my god.
13:36 Karen Kilgariff? It says, "Hope you enjoy your ninth anniversary prize. It's one of my favorite pieces." Typed smiley face. "Yes, I make all the standard mugs, bowls, etc. too." "It's a pipe shaped like a microphone."
13:50 Georgia Hardstark? That's so, like, clever.
13:52 Karen Kilgariff? That is brilliant.
13:54 Georgia Hardstark? It's a microphone and it's a, and you can smoke pot out of it after you record the podcast.
13:58 Karen Kilgariff? Or, uh, legal tobacco in your state.
14:02 Georgia Hardstark? Sure, whatever.
14:02 Karen Kilgariff? Or family.
14:03 Georgia Hardstark? That's amazing.
14:04 Karen Kilgariff? That's hilarious. Amazing. Tina Kane, thank you so much. Wow.
14:10 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
14:11 Karen Kilgariff? Do you want to read this one?
14:11 Georgia Hardstark? Okay, I'll read this one.
14:12 Karen Kilgariff? Okay.
14:12 Georgia Hardstark? This is from an artist named Chris Shima, Instagram handle Shima, S-H-I-M-A, Shima Ceramics. Chris says, "My company consists of myself and my assistant, Jaredan, and we almost exclusively listen to MFM in the studio."
14:26 Karen Kilgariff? Ooh.
14:26 Georgia Hardstark? And then it's, then, let's do it. It says, "I make sculptural mugs by hand, meaning I sculpt an original by hand, make a plaster mold of it, and then cast slip mugs from it." Whoa. I haven't looked up yet. "As an homage to MFM, I made these Stay Out of the Forest Skull Mugs. Happy ninth anniversary." These gorgeous skulls.
14:47 Karen Kilgariff? And they're glazed on the inside.
14:49 Georgia Hardstark? And they have Stay Out of the Forest etched on the back.
14:52 Karen Kilgariff? It's like, outside is skull bone feeling, inside beautiful glazed mug.
14:59 Georgia Hardstark? Karen, I think all the big meetings you take from now and you need to be casually sipping.
15:03 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, is, and then I do a lot of, "Is that so?"
15:05 Georgia Hardstark? Is that so?
15:06 Karen Kilgariff? Drinking out of a skull.
15:07 Georgia Hardstark? Like, all the people that we fucking dealt with, that you need to talk to, out of a skull mug.
15:12 Karen Kilgariff? Or hold it in the eyes. "Is that so?"
15:14 Georgia Hardstark? That's beautiful.
15:15 Karen Kilgariff? Have you seen Martha Stewart's series?
15:18 Georgia Hardstark? You could. Chris Shima, Shima Ceramics.
15:21 Karen Kilgariff? Incredible work.
15:22 Georgia Hardstark? Just incredible. Gorgeous.
15:23 Karen Kilgariff? And signed.
15:24 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, wow. Beautiful.
15:25 Karen Kilgariff? Stay out of the forest. These are beautiful. I mean, I can't get over the talent.
15:29 Georgia Hardstark? I can't either.
15:30 Karen Kilgariff? It's real.
15:31 Georgia Hardstark? Professional. They're professionals.
15:33 Karen Kilgariff? It's, they are. And they're giving things to us because we demand it that they do.
15:37 Georgia Hardstark? Because we said, "Please."
15:39 Karen Kilgariff? Beautiful.
15:41 Georgia Hardstark? Amazing.
15:41 Karen Kilgariff? I love those.
15:42 Georgia Hardstark? I can't wait to do an actual, like a livestream that we were gonna do and show the rest of them.
15:47 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, yeah.
15:47 Georgia Hardstark? There's still time to send yours in, you guys. If you're like, shit, I didn't finish in time.
15:51 Karen Kilgariff? Or if you got really mad because you're like, oh, sure, the ceramics people get to do something.
15:55 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
15:56 Karen Kilgariff? But what about me over here with my hook rug abilities?
16:00 Georgia Hardstark? You want a hook rug?
16:01 Karen Kilgariff? I mean, I like lots of things.
16:02 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
16:03 Karen Kilgariff? I like when people put their creativity and brains towards something.
16:07 Georgia Hardstark? It's like a hometown. It's like, can be fucking anything you want at this point. Like, you decide. You choose.
16:13 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, okay. No rules.
16:15 Georgia Hardstark? Beautiful. Thank you, Alejandra.
16:17 Karen Kilgariff? Alejandra, amazing job.
16:19 Georgia Hardstark? All right. Well, before we get to the stories, should we do some highlights?
16:22 Karen Kilgariff? Let's talk about our vaunted network with all of our wonderful podcasts on it, especially the newest podcast that we have, our brand new film podcast, Your Movies, I Love You. They just debuted here on the Exactly Right Network. On that second episode is now out. And on this one, Millie and Casey take on the trope of the manic pixie dream girl and discuss the 2004 hit film, Garden State.
16:47 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
16:48 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
16:48 Georgia Hardstark? I want to know about that because like, when I was younger, I was like, I have a manic pixie dream girl. And now that I'm older, I'm like, take your medication.
16:55 Karen Kilgariff? I mean, what choice did anyone have in the 2000s, though?
16:58 Georgia Hardstark? It's a terrible, it's a terrible trope.
17:00 Karen Kilgariff? It was a hilarious, at the time, trope because I remember being like in my 20s at that time. You were watching a lot of stuff, yeah, justified that you, as a person who had at least been around the block like one and a half times, were just like, this is full bullshit. What are you talking about?
17:14 Georgia Hardstark? Or like these character, these female characters that are made to service the male's storyline.
17:20 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
17:20 Georgia Hardstark? You know, in a darling, adorable way that has no thought of its own whatsoever.
17:25 Karen Kilgariff? And like you were saying before, like oftentimes, those girls were not this wonderful force of nature.
17:31 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
17:31 Karen Kilgariff? They were people who needed medication and/or that were just trying to live their life. And some dude is like,
17:38 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
17:38 Karen Kilgariff? I'm going to project everything I need onto you, and now I'm mad at you for not being that person.
17:43 Georgia Hardstark? Fucking 500 Days of Summer, in a nutshell.
17:45 Karen Kilgariff? Anyways, um, this is not a movie podcast. This is not that movie podcast or any movie podcast.
17:51 Georgia Hardstark? And then this week on That's Messed Up, an SVU podcast, Cara and Lisa cover an episode from season five entitled Manic. Hey, dun dun.
18:00 Karen Kilgariff? Over on I Said No Gifts, comedian Rekha Shankar disobeys Bridger with yet another unwanted present. Will it ever end?
18:07 Georgia Hardstark? Poor guy. And Nick Terry has done it again with a brand new episode of MFM Animated. It's called Sleep German, which is inspired by Minisode 320. Head over to youtube.com/exactlyrightmedia. Please subscribe while you're there to check it out. And remember, the dream man won't get you if we stick together.
18:27 Karen Kilgariff? The dream man won't get you if we stick together. Head turned to the side.
18:32 Georgia Hardstark? So creepy.
18:33 Karen Kilgariff? Also, just a quick update. So you guys know, if you're a listener, short time, long time, we like to take our MFM logo pin, which is just the classic MFM logo pin, obviously that we sell in the merch store.
18:46 Georgia Hardstark? In black and white.
18:47 Karen Kilgariff? And we dedicate like a period of time to certain charities. The money from the sales of that pin will, will go to, so the last one was the National Abortion Fund. We sold 192 pins with that one. So you guys raised almost $2,000 to donate to the National Abortion Fund, which is amazing.
19:06 Georgia Hardstark? So this year, we are dedicating the money from the black and white MFM logo pin to World Central Kitchen, of course, founded in 2010 by Chef Jose Andres. World Central Kitchen is the first to the front lines, providing meals in response to humanitarian, climate, and community crises.
19:22 Karen Kilgariff? Their relief team has been here in Southern California, supporting the first responders and the firemen and the families affected by the fires, providing nourishing meals.
19:32 Georgia Hardstark? To donate or learn about other ways you can help World Central Kitchen, go to their website, wck.org. We're really excited to support them. It's like, you know, such an incredible cause.
19:42 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, and then if you were just thinking of shopping around, you wanted to get a little pin for your lapel, then the money that you spend goes to a really good and at this point, very, very worthy cause.
19:53 Georgia Hardstark? Right. When you're buying your, um, here's the thing, fuck everyone mug. Throw in a black and white pin.
19:58 Karen Kilgariff? Get a pin going.
19:58 Georgia Hardstark? Hey, put it on your leather jacket.
20:02 Georgia Hardstark? The holidays are coming, which means we'll all be spending more time away from home.
20:06 Karen Kilgariff? Whether you're visiting family or doing something actually fun, you want to know your home is protected while you're away.
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21:05 Georgia Hardstark? SimpliSafe, ahead of crime in real time. Goodbye.
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23:06 Georgia Hardstark? Okay, this is one I'm excited to do. It's a big one. And it's really interesting. You know how when we go on tour, we go to a city and onstage, before we tell a story, we would like, be like, Clearwater, Florida, what are you doing? Like admonish them because they have so many fucking murders to choose from?
23:25 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, yeah. Yeah.
23:26 Georgia Hardstark? Well, if we ever go to this place, we're going to admonish them. Because this takes place in Adelaide, Australia.
23:35 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, oh.
23:36 Georgia Hardstark? Isn't it in Adelaide, Texas?
23:38 Karen Kilgariff? I think so.
23:39 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, because Australia can go head to head with the US when it comes to terrifying murdered and disappeared children, unfortunately. There's the Mr. Cruel abductions and murder that I covered in episode 124. Of course, the Beaumont children, which I'll mention later. And then there's this one. This is a haunting 50-year-old unsolved case about two children in Australia who were abducted from a sports stadium. This is the story of the Adelaide Oval abductions, which I hadn't heard of, but I think everyone in Australia knows about.
24:10 Karen Kilgariff? I haven't heard of it either. Can I ask, is this a cold case?
24:14 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, but there's a lot of suspects.
24:17 Karen Kilgariff? Okay.
24:17 Georgia Hardstark? Okay. And like a lot of other cold cases that like. Link them.
24:22 Karen Kilgariff? Okay.
24:22 Georgia Hardstark? Okay. I originally found this on the Crime Stoppers South Australia website. The main source I used for the story is episode 163 of the Australian True Crime Podcast that we all know and love, Case File.
24:35 Karen Kilgariff? Case File. First of all, did the Case File host ever come forward and be like, it's me?
24:40 Georgia Hardstark? Nope, still anonymous as far as I know.
24:42 Karen Kilgariff? That's so Australian and cool.
24:44 Georgia Hardstark? So cool. Like, I don't want all the accolades. And meanwhile, we're like, put us in the magazine.
24:49 Karen Kilgariff? I've never said those words.
24:51 Georgia Hardstark? I've never said them either, but there we are. Times Square has seen us a few times. And it's like, not on us, you know?
24:57 Karen Kilgariff? That's true. Well, it's a different thing because Case File is essentially as close to basically newspaper reporting as you can possibly get.
25:06 Georgia Hardstark? It's very serious.
25:07 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
25:07 Georgia Hardstark? Definitely. And the rest of the sources can be found in the show notes. So Adelaide is South Australia's capital. It's known by some to be a beautiful coastal cosmopolitan town with a small town feel. And it's also known by other people, including a lot of murderinos who emailed us about this case, as the murder capital of Australia or the serial killer capital of Australia. Like, lots of dark shit has happened here.
25:32 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
25:33 Georgia Hardstark? So here we are. It's August 25th, 1973, and we're at a sports stadium called the Adelaide Oval for an Australian football match between the North Adelaide Roosters and the Norwood. Do you want to guess what they're called?
25:49 Karen Kilgariff? Appleberries?
25:50 Georgia Hardstark? No, that's not right, but the Norwood Red Legs would also have been hilarious, but true.
25:56 Karen Kilgariff? Oh.
25:56 Georgia Hardstark? The Red Legs.
25:57 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
25:58 Georgia Hardstark? So we're not going to get into it, but Australian football is also known as footy. It looks similar to rugby slash American football. There's just, who cares?
26:07 Karen Kilgariff? I care about rugby.
26:09 Georgia Hardstark? Okay, fine. Then the rules are different. It's played on an oval-shaped field, similar to a cricket field, which means nothing to me. It's a smallish stadium. It looks like a college football stadium. So like, you know, not massive.
26:21 Karen Kilgariff? Scale down.
26:22 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And it's the 1970s. So most of the space is standing room only. So spectators arrive early and they don't give up their spots like you would at a parade. Like, even if you go to the bathroom, you're going to lose your spot. So they get there early and they stick where they're at.
26:36 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
26:37 Georgia Hardstark? There's also grandstands on the west side of the stadium where people can sit. And that's where Les and Kathleen Ratcliffe are sitting with their two children, David, who's 13, and Joanne, who is 11, on that August day in 1973. Here we are.
26:52 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
26:53 Georgia Hardstark? The family are huge Red Legs fans and they come to nearly every game. There are a lot of regulars in the crowd and the Ratcliffs soon connect with a woman named Rita Huckel, one of their friends who they see often at the games. And that day Rita has brought her granddaughter along to this game. She's a four-year-old named Kirsty Gordon. And it's the first time she's ever brought her granddaughter to a game. So the game begins at 2:10 and even though there's an age gap between Joanne, who's 11, and Kirsty, who's four, they immediately take a liking to each other. Remember when you were like a pre-teen and a little kid thought you were the coolest?
27:31 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
27:31 Georgia Hardstark? And it just made you feel so good and like, you know, like babysitting.
27:36 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, then you got to be like the camp counselor and you're like, "Come over here and we'll have fun."
27:40 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, I mean, to this day, if a little kid likes me, I should feel like special.
27:44 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
27:44 Georgia Hardstark? You know?
27:44 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
27:45 Georgia Hardstark? So I think it was kind of that sort of thing. So they spend like most of the game playing together. Australian football games are played in four quarters and between the two halves, there's a longer break. And so Joanne, her parents totally trust her. She's a very mature 11-year-old and she's been to tons of games at the stadium before. So they let her go back and forth to the bathroom on her own, but only during the beginning of the quarters, not during the halftime when there's the big rush. Like they have a sense of, you know, they're 11-year-old in a crowd and they're careful.
28:17 Karen Kilgariff? Yes.
28:18 Georgia Hardstark? So during the first quarter Kirsty needs to go to the bathroom. And the Ratcliffs and Kirsty's grandma Rita agree to let Joanne take her. The bathroom's about 300 feet away from their seats in a concourse area under the grandstand. They go to the bathroom, they come back, it all goes well, no big deal. And they continue to play while their families watch the game. So then about 3:45 in the third quarter of the game, Kirsty needs to go to the bathroom again. And there's still plenty of time before the break to go between quarters. So the families, you know, let the two girls go. This time though, after 20 minutes, they're still not back yet. Joanne's father, Les, goes down to the concourse to look for the girls, thinking they're probably
29:03 Georgia Hardstark? playing somewhere between the seats in the bathroom, but he doesn't see them. He asks a woman to go in the ladies' room to call for the girls. They're not in there. And about 12,000 people have come to the game that day. But also, the stadium always opens the gates during the last quarter. So people from the general public who don't have tickets can enter for free and just watch the end of the game. And because it's a close match, a lot of people show up that day. And the beginning of the fourth quarter sees a huge, like chaotic influx of people in and around the stadium. Like, we went to that football game, soccer game in England. It's chaotic.
29:39 Karen Kilgariff? It was insane.
29:40 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. Like, being a little kid and there, just, yeah. So even though the girls haven't been missing for very long, they're both very responsible and trustworthy. So the adults are already alarmed and springing into action. And this is actually kind of rare for the 1970s, right?
29:56 Karen Kilgariff? Completely.
29:57 Georgia Hardstark? Like, they'd be like in trouble and angry at them, or just not even know that they were gone for that long. 20 minutes and they're worried.
30:03 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, that's great.
30:04 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
30:04 Karen Kilgariff? For 70s numbers, yeah, usually it's like, oh, they must have gone to a neighbor's house. Like, weird. It just was not in the consciousness at all.
30:12 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
30:12 Karen Kilgariff? So that's great.
30:13 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. So frantic Kathleen, who is 11-year-old Joanne's mom, she goes to an office in the stadium and immediately is like, can you make an announcement for the girls to come back to their seat? And the administrator overseeing the match refuses, saying the stadium has a policy against making mid-game announcements because it could disrupt the game.
30:33 Karen Kilgariff? Mm-hmm.
30:34 Georgia Hardstark? He recommends she talk to the police and sends her off, although right back in his office, hanging out with him, is a police officer. He doesn't even bother.
30:44 Karen Kilgariff? So he sends her out to some other police instead of coming here?
30:48 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. Like, that's how flippant he was. Go back to your seat. I'm sure, I'm sure they'll show up.
30:52 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
30:52 Georgia Hardstark? Right there. The Radcliffs and Grandma Rita spend the rest of the game looking for the girls. When the game ends at about 4:45, they return to the office and ask again that an announcement be made. This time, the administrator makes the announcement. He says over the P A. system, quote, "Joanne Radcliffe in Adelaide Oval, come back to your mother and father," end quote. Like, no details. Not only is this wording of the announcement super unhelpful, at this point, everyone is leaving the stadium en masse, and so all the noise from that completely drowns out the announcement. There's no emergency to it either, you know what I mean?
31:28 Karen Kilgariff? Right, right.
31:29 Georgia Hardstark? Did you ever get an announcement called at the grocery store on you by your mom?
31:32 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, no, because my mom never let go of my neck at the grocery store. Literally as we-
31:37 Georgia Hardstark? It could have been your hand.
31:38 Karen Kilgariff? As we entered, as we entered, she would go, "What are we gonna get today?" And her hand would just very lightly go to my neck. Now, was, was that because I was such a wonderful, responsive, and listening child? No. She had to hold me by my neck everywhere I went, like, "Where are we gonna go?" And then she would kind of very lightly direct me if we were gonna turn and go down this way or that way.
32:00 Georgia Hardstark? Brilliant, brilliant.
32:01 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
32:01 Georgia Hardstark? You weren't her first rodeo. She was like, "I know how this goes."
32:04 Karen Kilgariff? I was. Well, I was, you know, I was a real reflection of the times.
32:10 Georgia Hardstark? Sure.
32:10 Karen Kilgariff? Seventy-five.
32:11 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, that's right. The family searches the whole stadium, and then they call the police. They, the police are about ten minutes after the game ends, but at that point, almost all the spectators and potential witnesses have left.
32:24 Karen Kilgariff? So frustrating, and so kind of like, it's just how all of these are. We're knowing what we know today. That it's just like gigantic mistakes at the, at the earliest time.
32:35 Georgia Hardstark? Just all the missed opportunities to actually get ahead of this, yeah. But the police do thankfully take it seriously. Immediately, they set up roadblocks in the areas surrounding the stadium, you know, but everyone's pretty much left, and they begin an extensive search for the girls. Meanwhile, Rita, the grandmother of Kirstie, now has to call Kirstie's parents, who are out of town, along with their two-year-old daughter Catherine, and say, like, "Your daughter, your four-year-old daughter's missing from me taking her to the game." Like, how-
33:07 Karen Kilgariff? Horrible.
33:07 Georgia Hardstark? Horrible. So Kirsty's parents, Greg and Christine Gordon, immediately head back to Adelaide, which is about a three hour drive. All night, searchers comb Adelaide and boats pass on the nearby River Torrance with searchlights and they turn up absolutely nothing. The next morning, the search continues. Police search the riverbank, divers search the river and the river is even partially drained. Meanwhile, as he aids in the search for his daughter, Joanne's father, Les, breaks down and passes out from grief. And no trace of the girls is found. The story becomes national news and Les, Joanne's father, he's really big and the whole family is like really big about getting the word out.
33:53 Georgia Hardstark? Public statements, they're just like devastated, obviously, and like, don't ever give up. Yeah. And the story becomes national news. Descriptions of the girls are widely circulated throughout Australia. Police put out a call for information and that's when a horrible narrative begins to emerge. So a 13 year old boy named Anthony Kilmartin had been working at the stadium on the day the girls were there. He was selling concessions in the crowd. At the beginning of the third quarter, he saw what he sure was the girls come down the grandstand steps toward the ground level. Anthony then went into the concourse under the grandstands and saw the girls again on their way to the bathroom. This time, he thinks he saw them being followed by a man.
34:38 Georgia Hardstark? Now, why would he remember this, you know, ordinary moment? It's because of what happens next. He sees the man bend down and pick up four year old Kirsty. And then Joanne, 11 year old Joanne, immediately reacts badly to this. He says Joanne starts chasing the man, grabbing at his coat and kicking him in the shins, just fighting him. The man calls Joanne a bitch and tells her to go away. And they scuffle and while he's still holding Kirsty, the man's glasses get knocked off. And when he bends down to pick them up, he also grabs Joanne by the arm and pulls her along as well.
35:16 Georgia Hardstark? They all exit through the stadiums, southern gate with Joanne still trying to fight this man off. And Anthony, it's 1973, Anthony's 13 years old. He thinks he just saw a father trying to get his daughters to leave when they don't want to.
35:30 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
35:30 Georgia Hardstark? And this is one of the things we talk about all the time is like, don't mind your own business. Now we know, don't mind your business. Go figure out what's going on. If you're wrong, then you apologize and walk away. If you're not, great.
35:42 Karen Kilgariff? But as we just talked about in the, in like the last episode, talking about domestic violence and how that is this kind of, for so long, especially back then, and it's really hard to understand now, but it was so dark ages back then, growing up.
35:58 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
35:58 Karen Kilgariff? That was back when other people's parents could hit you. Other people's parents could slap you in the face if you were, if you were at their house and you did something they didn't like.
36:07 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
36:07 Karen Kilgariff? It was so different.
36:09 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
36:10 Karen Kilgariff? And so to see a dad, you know, do kind of whatever as meanly or violently or crazily as they want, it wasn't this kind of like, it wasn't as shocking as it should have been.
36:23 Georgia Hardstark? No.
36:23 Karen Kilgariff? For kids at that time. You saw, saw a lot more.
36:26 Georgia Hardstark? Well, the problem is adults saw them too later.
36:29 Karen Kilgariff? I mean, that's what immediately infuriated me. It's like a 13 year old boy wouldn't know what to do.
36:34 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
36:35 Karen Kilgariff? What the fuck were those people around thinking for one second?
36:38 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. I know you feel so awkward, like butting into people's business, especially when there's an angry person in the mix, you know, not you.
36:46 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
36:46 Georgia Hardstark? People in general, but like, you'll never regret doing something. You'll only regret not doing something, right?
36:54 Karen Kilgariff? It's, it's, yes, totally. I just, as a person who was raised by the ultimate but in lady, I don't, I have empathy for people who were raised by people who were like, no, no, no, no, no. Cause it's a very, very scary thing. Some people are scared to just be like, hey, I'd like another Diet Coke.
37:12 Georgia Hardstark? Totally.
37:13 Karen Kilgariff? Much less.
37:13 Georgia Hardstark? Or this isn't what I order.
37:14 Karen Kilgariff? Sir, are you, do you know this girl?
37:16 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
37:17 Karen Kilgariff? Like it takes so much, especially for women to do it.
37:19 Georgia Hardstark? Yes.
37:19 Karen Kilgariff? Where you're just like, oh, you're gonna take on a violent man or even question one? It's just like the things, it's. Almost like get a buddy, get a confrontation buddy.
37:29 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
37:30 Karen Kilgariff? Go or an employee that's there.
37:32 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
37:32 Karen Kilgariff? Go ask a question.
37:34 Georgia Hardstark? That's so funny. I'm a butt in person as well. Shot, you're not going to be surprised, but Janet, my mom is a butt in person.
37:40 Karen Kilgariff? Yes, she is.
37:41 Georgia Hardstark? But I definitely have made Vince uncomfortable before by being a butt in person and like.
37:46 Karen Kilgariff? Sure.
37:46 Georgia Hardstark? He, you know, that's not how you act. That's not what you do.
37:49 Karen Kilgariff? Right, right.
37:50 Georgia Hardstark? But you never know. You never fucking know.
37:53 Karen Kilgariff? Well, and also I think it's the people who do it, they do it for a reason. They've seen stuff.
37:58 Georgia Hardstark? Right. That's true.
38:00 Karen Kilgariff? There are people who maybe aren't as inclined because it's easier for them to imagine everything's fine. And I think I was raised by two people who know for a fact, nothing is fine a lot of the time.
38:11 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. When you get told, don't get involved. It's like you're already involved.
38:15 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
38:16 Georgia Hardstark? So see it out to the end.
38:18 Karen Kilgariff? I mean.
38:18 Georgia Hardstark? Carry pepper spray everywhere you go.
38:20 Karen Kilgariff? Just grab a confrontation friend. I really feel like I just made that up, but it actually could work.
38:25 Georgia Hardstark? Can we have best friends necklaces that say confrontation friend on it? You're my best confrontation friend?
38:31 Karen Kilgariff? You don't have to say anything. Just stand behind me.
38:33 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
38:33 Karen Kilgariff? It's a lot of that kind of stuff. We need bodies here.
38:36 Georgia Hardstark? You need to be my wingman for the confrontation.
38:40 Georgia Hardstark? Right. So this kid for the rest of his life, you know, has to live with knowing this.
38:44 Karen Kilgariff? He witnessed.
38:45 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
38:45 Karen Kilgariff? He was traumatized by what he witnessed.
38:47 Georgia Hardstark? But he didn't know.
38:48 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
38:48 Georgia Hardstark? So he, yeah, so he believes he had just seen a father whom he describes as a lanky man wearing glasses and a wide brimmed hat. Arguing with his two daughters who like maybe just didn't want to leave the game early. And he just goes about his day. He forgets about the whole thing until he hears about the girl's disappearance. And once this kid Anthony reports this to the police, Joanne's family confirms that this is exactly how their 11 year old daughter would react. She is known to be protective of other kids. She once hit another kid with a wooden plank because he was bullying her brother. And they're adamant that she wouldn't have left Kirsty behind if something bad was happening to her, you know?
39:26 Karen Kilgariff? No way.
39:26 Georgia Hardstark? It's just, uh, your heart goes out.
39:29 Karen Kilgariff? It's horrible and heartbreaking.
39:30 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. In addition, Kirsty's parents say that their little girl is exceptionally shy and would never willingly go off with some stranger. You know, so it all adds up that this is an abduction. So there's all this story, another witness, a man named Ken Wooling is at the stadium, is the stadium's assistant curator. He says at the end of the third quarter at about 4:00 PM, he saw two girls, he believed to have been Joanne and Kirsty, outside the stadium. There's this whole thing about like, there were these stray kittens and some kids were trying to coax out the kittens and there's this weird guy around them. The timelines don't totally add up. Like, we think Anthony's story is 100% true. This one, like, if you
40:10 Georgia Hardstark? piece it in time-wise, it makes sense, but only if it happened before what Anthony saw.
40:17 Karen Kilgariff? Okay.
40:17 Georgia Hardstark? So it's possible as well. Police put out a composite sketch of this man and, of course, asked that he come forward so he can be eliminated, but nobody does. Police put out a call for tips and more than 400 people come forward. And there's a lot more details in the case file episode about witnesses and possible sightings, but I'm not going to go into all of them. There are some credible tips, including a few people who saw a man with a similar description with two little girls. There's also a ransom called with the family that's believed to be a hoax and is never traced. A $5,000 reward is announced for information leading to the recovery of the girls. In today's dollars, that would be worth about Austral-
40:58 Karen Kilgariff? $5,000 Australian dollars in the 70s?
41:01 Georgia Hardstark? Uh huh.
41:02 Karen Kilgariff? Would it be like 50 grand?
41:05 Georgia Hardstark? 28 grand for two missing little girls who have been abducted from a stadium, potentially. The public is a little like, what the fuck?
41:14 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
41:14 Georgia Hardstark? That's really low over this.
41:15 Karen Kilgariff? Right.
41:16 Georgia Hardstark? So that's partly because of what I'm going to tell you next. So there's this brazen daytime kidnapping in a very public place. It's obviously terrifying for the public, right? Which is why it's partly such a big deal. It's like, it's not, it's just so brazen.
41:31 Karen Kilgariff? Right.
41:31 Georgia Hardstark? You know? But it's also alarming in the fact that it's not unfamiliar because there's a recent case in the area that still looms large in everyone's mind and people wonder if there's a connection.
41:44 Karen Kilgariff? Mm hmm.
41:45 Georgia Hardstark? About 10 years earlier, on January 26, 1966, three siblings had disappeared from a town celebration in a public park beach area in Glenelg, Australia, which is just outside of Adelaide, very close. This is the Beaumont children. We never put out an episode about this case, but I'm sure one of us covered it when we were Australia touring.
42:08 Karen Kilgariff? And we definitely probably both read about it in our choices of like, should we do this one?
42:13 Georgia Hardstark? Definitely.
42:14 Karen Kilgariff? As we like did research, but I
42:15 Georgia Hardstark? It's a big one.
42:16 Karen Kilgariff? I remember, not details, obviously, but like just remember the idea.
42:21 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. And it comes up a lot. It's come up recently because there's always new leads. Again, it's a cold case. So this happened about 10 years before the girls were kidnapped from the stadium. So the Beaumont children, it was Jane, who was nine, Arna, who was seven, and Grant Beaumont, who was four. They'd all gone to the beach on their own that day, the three of them, which is Australia Day. So there was a lot of people out celebrating. And witnesses recall seeing three children in the company of a tall man with like light hair and a thin face, suntan, medium build, aged in his mid 30s. And that's a very similar description to the man from the stadium.
43:00 Karen Kilgariff? Mm hmm.
43:01 Georgia Hardstark? The children were playing with him and appeared to be relaxed and enjoying themselves, like maybe they knew him and were seen walking away together from the beach, no big deal. But they were never seen again and their disappearance has never been solved and people have always believed that these two cases are linked. And Case File covers the Beaumont children in episode 100 of Case File. Over the years, multiple men, a disturbing amount of whom have been convicted of other crimes against children in the area and Australia in general, have emerged as possible suspects in this case. And a lot are tied to the Beaumont abductions as well. There's a group of men known by the media as The Family.
43:44 Georgia Hardstark? Who are thought to be involved in a pedophile ring during the 70s and 80s, who are responsible for the kidnapping and sexual abuse of a number of teenage boys and young men. This is a fucking disturbing case. Case file covers it in episode 166. There are so many gruesome details I'm clearly not going to get into. Only one of those men from the pedophile ring has ever been tried and convicted for these crimes, or even their name brought up in the media. This man named Bevan Spencer Von Einem was sentenced in 1984 for the murder of a 15-year-old boy named Richard Kelvin, who had been abducted near his home in Adelaide. This man is now considered a suspected serial killer, and
44:27 Georgia Hardstark? his name comes up in connection with the Adelaide Oval abductions, mostly because of the testimony against him by an anonymous informant. And this anonymous informant was like, part of this ring, and still gave this information. So it's not just like, I don't know, it seems more credible because of that? Well, right, yeah, yeah. And this anonymous informant says that Bevan Spencer Von Einem once boasted to him that he had taken the children and dumped the bodies in bushland south of Adelaide. These allegations have never been sustained, but this dude is pure fucking evil, and it's a very disturbing case. Yeah. In 1999, a man named Arthur Stanley Brown is charged in another awful cold case.
45:12 Georgia Hardstark? On the 26th of August, 1970, which is just three years before the abductions in the stadium, sisters Judith, who was seven, and Susan McKay, who was five, disappeared from a suburb of Townsville, Queensland, less than 10 minutes after leaving their home, and were later found murdered two days later. This man was not convicted because of a hung jury, and was not given a new trial, because he was in his 90s by the time he was charged. Remember, it happened in 1970, and he wasn't arrested until 1999. So they considered him too senile to stand trial, although some people think he was faking it. Now, this occurred in 1973, years before the abductions of Joanne and Kirsty.
45:55 Georgia Hardstark? These locations aren't close. However, he bears a resemblance to the descriptions of the man in the wide-brimmed hat. And he's also considered a prime suspect for the Beaumont Children's disappearance. A witness from that day, near the stadium, identified him much later as the man, which is, you know, not very reliable. But he's a potential suspect. And then Joanne's little sister, Susie Wilkinson, she believes that it was a different third suspect. This is a man named Stanley Arthur Hart, and he's known as a pedophile. He lives in the area. He's a devoted supporter of the North Adelaide Football Club, which is one of the two teams playing Adelaide Oval on the day of the abduction.
46:39 Georgia Hardstark? So it's very likely he was there. Seven years before they were taken, he had been charged with six sex offenses against an 11-year-old girl. In 2009, his own grandson gave a written confession saying that he and his grandfather were at Adelaide Oval on the days the girls disappeared. But he was three or four years old on the day of the game at the stadium. And when he wrote this confession in 2009, he was in prison for charges for crimes against children.
47:07 Karen Kilgariff? Oh.
47:09 Georgia Hardstark? And so authorities initially dismissed these claims, but private investigators for the Gordon and Ratcliffe families take them very seriously. This man, the grandfather, died in 1999. And in the late 2000s, private investigators searched a property in a rural area about two hours north of Adelaide that belonged to the grandfather, following a hand-drawn map that this grandson had provided to them. Like, he was adamant that this was his grandfather. This map leads the investigators to an underground tunnel, which contains two steel barrels. They called the police in. The police returned to the site. They determined that the barrels had traces of blood in them. Some reports also claim that the investigators found a scrapbook with newspaper clippings
47:53 Georgia Hardstark? about the abduction, as well as children's clothing on the front. Like, it's just all this shit that you're like, "Test it, test it, test it." It hasn't been tested fully.
48:01 Karen Kilgariff? Right.
48:02 Georgia Hardstark? It just, it doesn't make any sense.
48:03 Karen Kilgariff? Well, it's always those things where it goes into like investigation and then
48:07 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
48:07 Karen Kilgariff? you don't hear about it unless they solve it.
48:10 Georgia Hardstark? That's exactly what it is. And then the other thing is that Anthony Kilmartin, the 13 year old concession worker, he sees a photo of this man, the grandfather, and the hat he used to wear, which they also find at his house, and he believes it's an exact match of the man he saw at the game that day, which seems a little more credible to me since it seems like it burned into his memory.
48:29 Karen Kilgariff? Absolutely.
48:31 Georgia Hardstark? You know what I mean?
48:31 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
48:32 Georgia Hardstark? Back in 1974, after the disappearance of the girls, both the Ratcliffs and the Gordons welcomed baby girls into their families. So Joanne, her little sister Suzie, who they never got to meet, she goes on to be one of the biggest champions for solving this case, and she still is. She continues to push for answers today. She's about 50 now, and she is the last living member of Joanne's immediate family. She is determined to see the case solved. The family moved out of Adelaide in the 80s, and Suzie says, quote, "To the very day we left, Mum would leave the front light on in the hope one day Jo would come home. My niece now leaves her front light on. It's just something that's carried on through generations," end quote.
49:15 Georgia Hardstark? And Suzie actually runs an organization called Leave a Light On, and they advocate for missing persons and their loved ones. I know. In a recent Women's Weekly article, Suzie said that she thinks about her sister's bravery often. And she says, quote, "People forget that she was only 11. She was given the responsibility of looking after Kirsty, and she stuck by that, even if it meant sacrificing herself."
49:39 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, God.
49:41 Georgia Hardstark? I know. Little Kirsty, four year old Kirsty's parents, they've been generally less public over the years, but they do speak to the press occasionally. Kirsty's mom, Christine, said in 2017, quote, "What is closure? Do you need to have a body? Do you need to have a funeral? Do you need to bring her home? To us, she is home because she is here with us," end quote. And that is the heartbreaking story of the Adelaide Oval abductions.
50:10 Karen Kilgariff? My God.
50:11 Georgia Hardstark? I know. But it could, I, I think it could be solved.
50:15 Karen Kilgariff? It sounds like there's a lot of material there.
50:19 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
50:19 Karen Kilgariff? To be processed and tested and, and looked into.
50:23 Georgia Hardstark? Definitely. There's actually a GoFundMe being run by an investigative journalist to have those barrels tested more thoroughly.
50:31 Karen Kilgariff? Wow.
50:31 Georgia Hardstark? That you can go check out. And yeah, police haven't, haven't thoroughly tested those barrels. It's just wild.
50:38 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah. Wow.
50:40 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. Sorry for another cold case, but.
50:43 Karen Kilgariff? Well, hopefully they're just getting put on a pile of things to be taken care of.
50:47 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. Yeah.
50:48 Karen Kilgariff? I don't know. And also I think, I think you're right in the way that this, it is really important to talk about them because there is action that could possibly be taken that needs to still be taken.
50:59 Georgia Hardstark? Definitely. I mean, they're just, cold cases are just the stories we tell that haven't gotten their answer yet. It's not that, that's it. It's the end of the story. It's an unsolved mystery. Like, it's just still waiting for the last puzzle piece. And so maybe when we tell these stories, people will pay more attention and it can happen.
51:15 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah. I'm purely speaking for my own frustration and difficulty of, of, uh, but you're right. That's, that's the important piece.
51:24 Georgia Hardstark? I mean, I wonder why we have such differing opinions about them. Like, I won't, I won't even start a puzzle because I don't care about finishing it.
51:31 Karen Kilgariff? Ah.
51:31 Georgia Hardstark? You have to finish it.
51:33 Karen Kilgariff? What is wrong?
51:34 Georgia Hardstark? I'd rather think about the puzzle, puzzle over the puzzle, and then watch TV. I don't care.
51:39 Karen Kilgariff? It's because, but I think I've explained the piece of the puzzling that works, that is what I'm in it for, which is you stare at something long enough and after a while, it's like your brain goes, put your hand here and take this and put it here. And suddenly you don't know why you knew that this was the piece that went there. And if you do that, I find that if I do that long enough, it's this weird, like, suddenly the, the momentum of, of it's just building suddenly starts to go and then it's putting itself together.
52:10 Georgia Hardstark? That's why I want to tell the cold case stories. It's because like, I'm like, Karen, my friend, you're interested in this too? Like, let's.
52:17 Karen Kilgariff? Put these pieces together.
52:18 Georgia Hardstark? Let's like, you know, make our eyes all soft and see where the last piece goes. We could do this. Yeah. I don't know. Just to me, it's.
52:26 Karen Kilgariff? That's what you're saying to all the people listening right now. Put the pieces together.
52:29 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
52:32 Georgia Hardstark? The holidays are coming, which means we'll all be spending more time away from home.
52:36 Karen Kilgariff? Whether you're visiting family or doing something actually fun, you want to know your home is protected while you're away.
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53:36 Georgia Hardstark? SimpliSafe, ahead of crime in real time. Goodbye.
53:39 Karen Kilgariff? The most annoying thing about dinner is that you have to keep making it.
53:43 Georgia Hardstark? And every single time, you have to figure out what you're going to eat.
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54:50 Georgia Hardstark? You're sick, worried about someone you love, trying to understand what comes next, and suddenly you're spending hours on hold, filling out paperwork and trying to figure out who to call.
54:59 Karen Kilgariff? Research shows patients spend the equivalent of an eight-hour workday every month coordinating their own care.
55:05 Georgia Hardstark? Nobody hands you a roadmap when you're dealing with a diagnosis or ongoing health issues.
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55:49 Georgia Hardstark? It takes about two minutes and it's covered by insurance.
55:52 Karen Kilgariff? That's S.O.L.A.C.E. health.com/murder.
55:56 Georgia Hardstark? Goodbye.
55:59 Karen Kilgariff? I'll accept that.
56:00 Georgia Hardstark? Thank you.
56:00 Karen Kilgariff? And I will take that. And with that acceptance, I will turn this car around.
56:07 Georgia Hardstark? Please, God.
56:08 Karen Kilgariff? But it's not any less sad or difficult, but there's a little shiny light in it.
56:15 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
56:15 Karen Kilgariff? And it begins on the morning of January 12th, 1888.
56:19 Georgia Hardstark? What?
56:20 Karen Kilgariff? Here in America.
56:21 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
56:21 Karen Kilgariff? In a sparsely populated part of central Nebraska, near the small town of Ord.
56:29 Karen Kilgariff? Do you know what else happened in 1888?
56:31 Georgia Hardstark? Something I should know. Lincoln?
56:35 Georgia Hardstark? Civil War. Was it Civil War? What is it?
56:39 Karen Kilgariff? Just like, I, first of all, I will never test you on history. I'll never test you on history.
56:46 Georgia Hardstark? Should I know this?
56:47 Karen Kilgariff? Well, not, I mean, not particularly, but it's the year the Jack the Ripper killings happened.
56:51 Georgia Hardstark? That's what I, yep, there we go.
56:53 Karen Kilgariff? All eights.
56:54 Georgia Hardstark? When did Lincoln get shot?
56:56 Karen Kilgariff? That's none of our business. We were failed by the American school system and therefore we don't have to look back.
57:02 Georgia Hardstark? You're right. It's not my fucking problem.
57:04 Karen Kilgariff? Okay. So, on this winter morn, a nineteen year old teacher, nineteen year old teacher.
57:11 Georgia Hardstark? No.
57:12 Karen Kilgariff? Named Minnie Freeman is walking to her tiny schoolhouse where she teaches thirteen of the local homesteaders' children, ranging in ages from six to fifteen.
57:23 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
57:23 Karen Kilgariff? The schoolhouse is a one-room sod house. And a sod house was a thing they used to do out on the prairie because, you know, they didn't have any supplies. And they just kind of had to do their best. So, that means that a sod house, usually definitely the roof, and sometimes even the walls, are constructed from packed dirt and prairie grass.
57:44 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. Are you watching that show, that new show with Betty Gilpin?
57:47 Karen Kilgariff? I did watch it.
57:48 Georgia Hardstark? But, so the show is American Primeval.
57:51 Karen Kilgariff? And it's based on, I think, based on the Mountain Meadows massacre.
57:56 Georgia Hardstark? That you've covered.
57:57 Karen Kilgariff? Which I believe I covered.
57:58 Georgia Hardstark? You definitely covered. No, no, you covered that on an episode.
58:01 Karen Kilgariff? Right.
58:02 Georgia Hardstark? I remember it.
58:02 Karen Kilgariff? On a not-live episode?
58:04 Georgia Hardstark? Not live, yeah.
58:04 Karen Kilgariff? Okay.
58:05 Georgia Hardstark? Okay, so here we are.
58:06 Karen Kilgariff? So, here we are, but it basically is that, where it's people living on the open prairie, settlers, homesteaders, making what they can. So, like, there were some of the, I saw a picture, Alejandra and Marin found a picture of one of these sod houses. And the one I saw, it was like, the walls were made of, like, piled up rocks.
58:25 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
58:26 Karen Kilgariff? And then the windows were kind of built into the holes where they left. And then the roof was sod and flat. But then there's also the ones where they build them, this is very Laura Ingalls Wilder, where they build them kind of into the ground. So that they're like protected. There's all, there's all kinds of ways they were trying to do that stuff. But what we're saying is, there was no like, western.
58:48 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
58:48 Karen Kilgariff? Warren Hill or horse town or anything like that. It was like, there are no supplies here.
58:53 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
58:53 Karen Kilgariff? Uh, situation. So the sod house is a common structure found on the frontier that settlers can quickly build to live or work in without basically the luxury of their usual building supplies like, oh, I don't know, wood and nails. Mm-hmm. So Minnie's sod schoolhouse has a stove in it, not, we're not sure if it's wood burning or coal burning, but it was like, what, like a central stove. It has a couple of windows and it has one door and that's it. Okay. So it's not fancy, but of course it completely serves its purpose as a classroom. And while it's probably drafty, it's of course better than any alternative. Yeah. Which is learning outside.
59:33 Karen Kilgariff? And of course, the warmth is especially important in the winter of 1888 because this one is actually a brutal one. We are at the tail end of what's called, quote, "the little ice age," where one of several years-long periods where the entire earth is colder than average and then that leads to more intense winters across much of the US. Interesting. Yeah. So even though it did snow a few inches the night before, the weather on this day, January 12th, 1888, is very mild. So by the time Minnie's walking to school that day, it's gone from snowing the night before to climbed all the way up into the 40s. Hmm.
1:00:17 Karen Kilgariff? So that's much, much warmer than a typical mid-January day in the 1880s. Okay. For our friends everywhere besides the US, this is all Fahrenheit and I do apologize because the impact of the weather I'm going to be announcing right now is gonna, there's gonna be a math delay for you. Yeah. So, so it's this like kind of, kind of unseasonably warm weather, that's probably why no one realizes a cold front is about to hit and leave an unsuspecting population in the wake of one of the deadliest winter storms in recorded history. This is the story of the devastating schoolhouse blizzard of 1888, also known as the children's blizzard. Oh, shit. Yeah.
1:01:02 Georgia Hardstark? It's never good when they name it after children.
1:01:04 Karen Kilgariff? No, no. So the main sources used that Maren used in the research today are The Children's Blizzard, which is a book by author David Laskin, and that book is heavily cited. Also, an episode of the Radiotopia podcast, This Day in Esoteric Political History, and the episode is called The Children's Blizzard. And then, of course, multiple articles from the Omaha Evening B newspaper from 1888.
1:01:29 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
1:01:30 Karen Kilgariff? Maren goes all the way back, and the rest of the sources are in our show notes. So here's a little scene setting to start this off, talking about weather back then. Of course, as human beings, we've been tracking weather since, basically, we understood what was going on around us.
1:01:47 Georgia Hardstark? We love it. It's our hobby.
1:01:48 Karen Kilgariff? We love it and it's fun to talk about. By the end of the 19th century, when this story takes place, scientists are doing what's, of course, compared to today, pretty basic meteorology. The United States has an organized weather service that's been around since 1870. It falls under the purview of the US Army because of the Army's reputation for being meticulous and disciplined. So basically, weather forecasting works this way back then. Mondays through Saturdays, at military bases and outposts across the country, US Army Signal Corps officials collect weather data, temperatures, air pressure, wind speed, et cetera.
1:02:28 Karen Kilgariff? And then they send it via telegraph to forecasters at a central office in Washington DC. Those forecasters in DC analyze that data. They make predictions. They send the information back to the Signal Corps, and then those forecasts are printed in newspapers.
1:02:47 Georgia Hardstark? You lost me at here's how it works.
1:02:49 Karen Kilgariff? Here's how it works. The weather goes out. So obviously, the telegraph makes all of that, like, fast and possible at the time. But compared to today, this is like one of the slowest ways to get any kind of news or information.
1:03:04 Georgia Hardstark? I don't know, though. Dallas rains. It's gonna rain tomorrow. It fucking never does, or it does and doesn't.
1:03:09 Karen Kilgariff? A lot of this. It's fun to gesture.
1:03:11 Georgia Hardstark? Dallas, we're calling you out.
1:03:12 Karen Kilgariff? We all love a green screen. And yeah, full props to Dallas rains, always and forever. Still working, I believe.
1:03:19 Georgia Hardstark? Mm hmm.
1:03:19 Karen Kilgariff? Still doing it.
1:03:20 Georgia Hardstark? I think so.
1:03:21 Karen Kilgariff? Legendary. If you're from somewhere else and you have never heard of the legendary Los Angeles weatherman Dallas Rains.
1:03:27 Georgia Hardstark? Get with it.
1:03:29 Karen Kilgariff? Get on board. He's one of the greats. I used to, in my studio apartment, when things were very dark, I would get nice and high and watch the 11 o'clock news.
1:03:38 Georgia Hardstark? Hmm.
1:03:38 Karen Kilgariff? And I was always positive Dallas Rains was high along with me. Because the stuff he would say, I'd be like, this is hilarious.
1:03:45 Georgia Hardstark? You're like, I get you, Dallas.
1:03:46 Karen Kilgariff? Why is this weatherman, like, saying this weird shit and making me laugh so hard?
1:03:51 Georgia Hardstark? Probably.
1:03:52 Karen Kilgariff? Okay. So, all this in mind.
1:03:54 Georgia Hardstark? Mm hmm.
1:03:54 Karen Kilgariff? January 12th, 1888. In this same mild morning where Minnie Freeman is heading off to work, Army forecasters in DC are sending out reports via telegraph, warning of impending severe weather across several states, including Nebraska, of course, which is where Minnie is, Minnesota, Iowa, and what's then known as the Dakota Territory.
1:04:17 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
1:04:17 Karen Kilgariff? Because this is still before radio in America. The way important news is communicated when it can't wait for the next day's newspaper is frontier settlements hoist a flag to alert residents of emergency weather situations.
1:04:32 Georgia Hardstark? Uh oh.
1:04:33 Karen Kilgariff? Problem is that homesteaders out in a place like central Nebraska.
1:04:37 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:04:38 Karen Kilgariff? Live nowhere near each other or a central community.
1:04:42 Georgia Hardstark? Sure.
1:04:42 Karen Kilgariff? So, if people aren't nearby when those emergency flags are hoisted.
1:04:48 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
1:04:48 Karen Kilgariff? They just don't know, and it's all kind of word of mouth.
1:04:51 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:04:52 Karen Kilgariff? So Minnie and her students experienced this abrupt and shocking weather change around 3 o'clock, right basically when the school day is ending.
1:05:01 Georgia Hardstark? Mm hmm.
1:05:02 Karen Kilgariff? So, the temperature on what was a warm, like, morning and into the afternoon.
1:05:08 Georgia Hardstark? Mm hmm.
1:05:09 Karen Kilgariff? Suddenly plummets almost seventy degrees.
1:05:12 Georgia Hardstark? Holy shit.
1:05:13 Karen Kilgariff? And goes from the forties to minus twenty below zero.
1:05:18 Georgia Hardstark? No, that's not fair.
1:05:21 Karen Kilgariff? And then, of course, the sky opens up, ice and hail begin to pelt the sod schoolhouse, and hurricane-level winds kick up.
1:05:29 Georgia Hardstark? Dude.
1:05:30 Karen Kilgariff? So now, basically, it's a strong wind that just keeps on building, and then ice and hail and last night's snowfall all start getting blown around.
1:05:41 Georgia Hardstark? They're all in the pit, moshing.
1:05:43 Karen Kilgariff? That's right, all together, nasty trio. So suddenly, across a huge swath of the Midwest, countless people are caught in extreme weather. A schoolboy named H.G. Purcell, who lives in the Dakota Territory, now South Dakota, describes the situation like this: "We were all out playing in our shirt sleeves without hats or mittens. Suddenly, we looked up and saw something come rolling toward us with great fury from the northwest and making a loud noise. I never thought about that part of it." Yeah. The storm rolls in, is like, it rolls in loud.
1:06:19 Georgia Hardstark? Totally.
1:06:20 Karen Kilgariff? "It looked like a long string of big bales of cotton that looked to be about twenty-five feet high. The phenomenon was so unusual that it scared us children, and several of us ran into the schoolhouse and screamed to the teacher to come out quickly and see what was happening." End quote. So it's hard to overstate the shock people experience on this beautiful morning, that basically it lured people outside, many to go run errands on foot or tend to their land, or, in the case of children, walk to school without their warmest winter coats.
1:06:58 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
1:06:59 Karen Kilgariff? Some without shoes.
1:07:00 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, dear.
1:07:00 Karen Kilgariff? Or at least some in just, in basically off-season
1:07:05 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:07:06 Karen Kilgariff? shirts and sleeves, whatever.
1:07:09 Karen Kilgariff? So then, now they're out of nowhere caught in weather they're completely unprepared for. Author David Laskin reports, quote, "Even in a region known for abrupt and radical meteorological change, the blizzard of 1888 was unprecedented in its violence and suddenness. One moment it was mild, the sun was shining, the next moment frozen hell had broken loose." So, it's the end of the school day, as I said, when the weather suddenly turns, so young Minnie, who's the sole adult in charge-
1:07:39 Georgia Hardstark? Nineteen.
1:07:40 Karen Kilgariff? Nineteen years old. She does not think going outside is a sensible option. At this point, hurricane-force wind gusts are now pummeling the tiny schoolhouse, and they blast the door right off its hinges. As the younger students go and huddle around the wood-burning stove to keep warm, Minnie and a couple of the older students try to prop the door back up. It almost immediately blows back down, so Minnie goes, finds some nails, and she nails the door shut.
1:08:10 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
1:08:11 Karen Kilgariff? So, for the time being, that's held in place, but now Minnie has to plan her next steps. She and the students all live at least a quarter of a mile from this schoolhouse, so she's trying to figure out, is it less risky to dismiss the children and hope that they make it back home, or keep them inside to wait out the storm in a schoolhouse that isn't exactly structurally sound-
1:08:34 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:08:35 Karen Kilgariff? -has a dwindling amount of fuel for the fire, and basically doesn't have any food.
1:08:39 Georgia Hardstark? No, it feels like the place is just gonna melt around them.
1:08:42 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
1:08:43 Georgia Hardstark? You know?
1:08:44 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah. So, teachers across the Midwest go through the same horrible dilemma, because, like Minnie, they teach in shoddy buildings, or soddy buildings-
1:08:55 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:08:56 Karen Kilgariff? -that are of course not equipped to handle weather this extreme. And many teachers believed that the better option that day was to dismiss their students and send them home in the storm.
1:09:07 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:09:08 Karen Kilgariff? Minnie decides, no, she's gonna hunker down and ride the storm out with her kids in the schoolhouse, but she's just praying this, the schoolhouse can make it. And as she's doing that, a gust of wind picks up the roof of the schoolhouse and blows it away.
1:09:24 Georgia Hardstark? Shit.
1:09:25 Karen Kilgariff? So now, as the snow and hail and ice are pouring into the schoolhouse, Minnie has to make a new plan fast. With the front door, the only door nailed shut, she starts wrangling her students and throwing them out the window to get out.
1:09:41 Georgia Hardstark? What?
1:09:42 Karen Kilgariff? So there was a legend that Minnie tied all the kids together with twine.
1:09:46 Georgia Hardstark? Mm-hmm.
1:09:46 Karen Kilgariff? But that detail has actually been disputed by at least one of her actual students who went through it that day. Great visual for like the legend of the story.
1:09:55 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:09:56 Karen Kilgariff? And actually very needed, once, and I'm sure it probably came up later, once people heard the stories of what happened to the kids that did go home.
1:10:04 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
1:10:05 Karen Kilgariff? By themselves, or even in groups. So Minnie's plan now is to walk her students to her house, which is about a half a mile away. It doesn't sound that far, but in the middle of a blizzard, it would have been painfully long. And they're white-out conditions, so it's hard for them to see any more than like a foot or so in front of them. If any child takes even just a few steps away from the group, they could be blinded by the snow.
1:10:31 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:10:32 Karen Kilgariff? Turned around and then just lost.
1:10:34 Georgia Hardstark? Jesus.
1:10:34 Karen Kilgariff? On top of that, the snowflakes in this storm are extremely fine and icy, so as they land on the children's faces, they're just freezing their eyelids shut.
1:10:44 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, man.
1:10:45 Karen Kilgariff? And Minnie's, Minnie's as well. Also, the sheer amount of these flakes in the air causes the snow to get stuck in their throats. It makes it hard to breathe. Survivors liken it to breathing in large amounts of flour or sand. And David Laskin notes that experts have compared it to, quote, "the smoke and ash rolling through the canyons of Lower Manhattan after the towers of the World Trade Center collapsed on September 11th."
1:11:11 Georgia Hardstark? I never thought about that, like the snow, you couldn't inhale it.
1:11:16 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
1:11:16 Georgia Hardstark? I never thought about that.
1:11:17 Karen Kilgariff? Right. Like completely blinds you, but then also like seals your eyes shut with ice. Like you're just going against.
1:11:25 Georgia Hardstark? But you can't take a deep breath without the snow coming. Coming into your mouth.
1:11:28 Karen Kilgariff? Right.
1:11:29 Georgia Hardstark? And nose. Jesus.
1:11:30 Karen Kilgariff? They also make their way through shirt collars, pants, waistbands, even shoes. So the children are drenched, freezing.
1:11:37 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:11:37 Karen Kilgariff? Constantly slipping and falling as they walk. The wind is battering them. It's actually painful. And Minnie will later say, quote, "I've never felt such a wind. It blew the snow so hard that the flakes stung your face like arrows. All you could see ahead of you was a blinding, blowing sheet of snow."
1:11:55 Georgia Hardstark? Dude.
1:11:57 Karen Kilgariff? So there are several well-known and very tragic stories that came out of this storm. For example, across the state in Seward, Nebraska, an 11-year-old girl named Lena Vabekki is dismissed from school. And as she walks home in this storm, she becomes disoriented. She will wake up hours later, still outside, frozen to the ground. But Lena heroically musters the strength. She breaks herself free and she manages to crawl back to her own house, even though she can't feel her legs.
1:12:31 Georgia Hardstark? What the fuck?
1:12:32 Karen Kilgariff? And in the end, Lena survives. She just loses one of her feet to frostbite. But she saves herself.
1:12:40 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:12:42 Karen Kilgariff? She's frozen to the ground.
1:12:43 Georgia Hardstark? That's insane. And she like wakes up still alive.
1:12:45 Karen Kilgariff? Wakes up and it's like, yeah. We're doing this. We're getting home.
1:12:49 Georgia Hardstark? Damn, girl.
1:12:50 Karen Kilgariff? Up in Holt County, Nebraska, there's a 19-year-old teacher named Etta Shattuck. She gets caught in the storm while heading home after picking up her paycheck. As the temperature nose dives, she becomes snowblind. She seeks refuge in a haystack and she is forced to shelter there for 78 hours.
1:13:09 Georgia Hardstark? No.
1:13:09 Karen Kilgariff? Before finally being found.
1:13:12 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, my god.
1:13:13 Karen Kilgariff? No food, no water, just hoping, like hoping to live in a haystack.
1:13:18 Georgia Hardstark? That's too long.
1:13:19 Karen Kilgariff? So she lives then, but then once she's discovered, she has to go into surgery because she develops frostbite on her feet. And she actually dies due to complications from the surgery. But survives like that time. Up in the northeast corner of the state in Plainview, Nebraska, another young school teacher named Lois Royce gets stranded on the open prairie. She's just run out of fuel at her schoolhouse, so she attempts to make it to the nearest home, which is only 200 yards away with three students, all under the age of 10. But because of the whiteout conditions, Lois and the children can't see where they're going, so they end up walking past the house. And then they just keep walking.
1:14:04 Georgia Hardstark? No.
1:14:04 Karen Kilgariff? And the children, of course, are freezing. None of them can go any further, so they just stop in the open prairie mid-blizzard. And they're just kind of stranded, just in not knowing where they are. Speaking generally about the children who get stuck outside that day, David Laskin notes, quote, "It's hard to fathom how children who walk to and from school a half a mile or more every day became exhausted to the point of a collapse while walking 100 yards that afternoon."
1:14:34 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:14:35 Karen Kilgariff? Hard to fathom until you consider the state of their thin cotton clothing, their eyelashes webbed with ice and frozen shut, the ice plugs that formed inside their noses, the ice masks that hung on their faces. Lois does everything she can to keep her students warm, using just her body and her cloak, but the children die as they're pressed against her.
1:14:59 Georgia Hardstark? Oh.
1:14:59 Karen Kilgariff? And somehow she survives, but she has to have her feet amputated because of frostbite.
1:15:04 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, my god.
1:15:05 Karen Kilgariff? So, all of these tragic stories are from Nebraska, which is especially affected by this blizzard. But the storm touches much of the United States. According to the Minnesota Post Newspaper, quote, "The upper Midwesterners lost the most. The blizzard was truly a nationwide phenomenon. Ice skating was reported in San Francisco on January 14th." Which is, ladies and gentlemen, unheard of.
1:15:30 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:15:30 Karen Kilgariff? Along with frozen water mains in Los Angeles.
1:15:33 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
1:15:34 Karen Kilgariff? Fort Elliott, Texas, registered a seven below zero temperature on the 14th, and for the first time in anyone's memory, parts of the Colorado River in Texas froze over.
1:15:45 Georgia Hardstark? Damn.
1:15:46 Karen Kilgariff? So it was extreme and insane. So back in central Nebraska, Minnie and her students are still out trying to find their way through this blizzard, trying to make it to any kind of shelter. And Minnie's doing everything she can to keep her students moving forward. Elements of her story are spotty, some are disputed. For example, we don't know exactly how long her trek lasted, or how long she and the students hunkered down before the children were reunited with their parents. Even their destination is a bit unclear. Some sources say the group successfully made it to Minnie's house, which was the initial plan. But according to an article that ran in the Omaha Evening
1:16:27 Karen Kilgariff? Bee just days later, they say that they instead ended up at one of Minnie's students' homes, which is a bit closer to the schoolhouse than Minnie's was. Either way, they made it.
1:16:37 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
1:16:38 Karen Kilgariff? It's the important thing. It's like, the idea that Minnie makes this plan where she's like, "Fine, we'll just go to my house." And then like, somewhere along the way, I bet you some kids like, "Hey, there's my house!"
1:16:47 Georgia Hardstark? Jesus.
1:16:48 Karen Kilgariff? That's how I like to, that's how I'll write it.
1:16:50 Georgia Hardstark? Totally.
1:16:51 Karen Kilgariff? After several hours, once the blizzard finally subsides, Minnie and the children see the full extent of what has happened around them. Not only has the storm destroyed buildings and created massive barn-sized snowbanks.
1:17:05 Georgia Hardstark? Oh my god.
1:17:06 Karen Kilgariff? But it's also claimed many lives. For the parents of Minnie's 13 children, learning that their kids made it would feel like nothing short of a miracle, one that Minnie herself is solely responsible for. The Omaha Evening Bee describes the scene as one of the students is reunited with their parents, reporting, quote, "If the eyes of a loving mother filled with tears as she pressed her little one to her heart, they were not dried when she gave the brave young teacher, Minnie Friedman, an embrace in which was embodied all the love and gratitude within a mother's heart. It is safe to say that the subsequent reception of Ms. Freeman in all the homes whose little ones she had rescued, perhaps from death, was equally as warm."
1:17:49 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
1:17:50 Karen Kilgariff? So the extent of chaos, death, and disruption associated with this blizzard is huge. Across the Midwest, trains are stopped in their tracks, farmers lose the entirety of their crops, and their livestock freezes to death. But then, of course, there's the loss of human life. Experts say we'll never know the true death count because the the population wasn't known as well. Right. David Laskin estimates that there were between 250 and 500 victims of this snowstorm. Wow. Many of them being children who were either at school, hunkering down, or trying to head home after being dismissed. Yeah. Because of this, the snowstorm is eventually nicknamed the Schoolhouse Blizzard or the Children's Blizzard.
1:18:35 Karen Kilgariff? More people will die in the days and weeks following the storm from things like pneumonia or frostbite or gangrene from frostbite. As the word of this terrible event spreads beyond the region, an overwhelming sense of grief is felt by the entire country. And that's when this feel-good story of the 19-year-old teacher in Nebraska who saved her entire class starts getting attention. The Omaha Evening Bee first reports on Minnie Freeman, saying, quote, "Those who have braved the terrors of of a Nebraska blizzard need not be told that it required courage to enable a young girl to breast those furies, having in her keeping the lives of 13 little ones and the happiness of 13 homes." Shit.
1:19:16 Georgia Hardstark? Damn.
1:19:17 Karen Kilgariff? "Those who felt and suffered from the effects of Thursday's storm need not be told that the act of that young girl was one from which strong men themselves might quail." Yeah. Ne, ne, ne.
1:19:29 Georgia Hardstark? Love you, Minnie.
1:19:31 Karen Kilgariff? Soon, more papers start to circulate Minnie's story. Virtually overnight, 19-year-old Minnie Freeman becomes a much-needed hero. She's lionized, she's celebrated, she's nicknamed Nebraska's fearless maid. Ooh. And then over in Chicago, a music publishing company debuts a song about Minnie called, quote, "13 Were Saved." Oh. And it goes a little something like this. A one and a two. Hell, no. 13 were saved, 13 were saved, 13. You always just do it. Hello, my baby. The New York Times reports that she, that Minnie receives letters and gifts and more. The Omaha Evening Bee actually describes her this way.
1:20:12 Karen Kilgariff? They say, quote, "Minnie Freeman is above medium height, dark hair, gray eyes, and a remarkably pretty girl. She is said to be an excellent musician and a possessor of a charming voice." It's believed that Minnie receives nearly 200 marriage proposals from strangers after this story goes on.
1:20:32 Georgia Hardstark? Get it, girl.
1:20:33 Karen Kilgariff? Right? They're like, "She's brave. She's pretty.
1:20:36 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:20:36 Karen Kilgariff? Come work on my farm."
1:20:38 Georgia Hardstark? Totally. Come have lots of children.
1:20:41 Karen Kilgariff? Yep. Bear my children and do all that for me.
1:20:44 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:20:44 Karen Kilgariff? Meanwhile, over in DC, government officials are trying to figure out how to make sure that no American is ever caught off guard by such a huge storm again. This only gets more urgent when just months later, in March of 1888, another historic blizzard hits the northeastern United States and Canada. It had strengthened after working hours on a Saturday, which at the time, Army forecasters didn't work on Sundays. So, no one knew this storm was coming. It became the Great Blizzard of 1888, with parts of the Northeast seeing nearly 60 inches of snowfall and 50-foot-tall snowdrifts.
1:21:24 Georgia Hardstark? Six, oh my.
1:21:25 Karen Kilgariff? Five-story-building snowdrifts.
1:21:27 Georgia Hardstark? Uh-uh.
1:21:28 Karen Kilgariff? This storm claims around 400 lives, including 200 deaths in New York City alone.
1:21:34 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
1:21:34 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
1:21:34 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:21:35 Karen Kilgariff? On the heels of these two blizzards, the federal government decides to restructure the Weather Bureau. In 1891, it's moved from the Army's purview over to the Department of Agriculture, which has the reputation of being much more science-minded.
1:21:48 Georgia Hardstark? Mm-hmm.
1:21:49 Karen Kilgariff? Smart. And they begin tracking weather across the country 24/7. Today, the agency overseeing weather is the National Weather Service, which lives under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They still track the weather around the clock and fortunately have the means to spread alerts and advisories to warn us about extreme weather events. What's the look on your face, Georgia?
1:22:13 Georgia Hardstark? They're gonna shut that one down, too?
1:22:14 Karen Kilgariff? They're gonna shut that one.
1:22:15 Georgia Hardstark? Who are they gonna put in charge of that one? You should think of this fucking Cruella de Vil. Like, let's... Can we please have a government? Could competency be the name of the game?
1:22:26 Karen Kilgariff? Why are we politicizing?
1:22:28 Georgia Hardstark? Weather.
1:22:29 Karen Kilgariff? These departments are important for this country.
1:22:33 Georgia Hardstark? Necessary even.
1:22:34 Karen Kilgariff? Uh, and the idea that people running them should have experience.
1:22:40 Georgia Hardstark? Knowledge?
1:22:41 Karen Kilgariff? A clear criminal record.
1:22:43 Georgia Hardstark? A background.
1:22:44 Karen Kilgariff? Basic step. Have run, have been chosen by the people.
1:22:47 Georgia Hardstark? You're asking too many. You're asking for too much, Karen.
1:22:50 Karen Kilgariff? You're right. Let me just conclude here. As for Minnie Freeman, she stays active in her community for the rest of her life. First in Nebraska, later, when she moves with her husband to Illinois, she becomes active there. The New York Times notes, quote, "She was a political and social activist in Nebraska and Chicago at a time when female public figures were few and far between."
1:23:12 Georgia Hardstark? Got it, girl.
1:23:13 Karen Kilgariff? Minnie Freeman becomes the first female member of the Republican National Committee to represent Nebraska. She's part of a group that creates its state seal. She's even appointed as a delegate to different political conferences by two Nebraska governors.
1:23:29 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
1:23:30 Karen Kilgariff? When asked about her heroic adventure during the Schoolhouse Blizzard in 1888, which earned her so much fame at the time, she matter-of-factly tells the Omaha Evening B that, quote, "I feel that too much has already been said of an act of simple duty. Notoriety, I do not desire," end quote.
1:23:48 Georgia Hardstark? Humble, too. It's like Case Files style.
1:23:52 Karen Kilgariff? Minnie Freeman passes away in 1943, when she's in her early 70s. And that is the story of Minnie Freeman and the Schoolhouse Blizzard of 1888, and the survival of her 13 students that day.
1:24:06 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
1:24:07 Karen Kilgariff? They made it.
1:24:09 Georgia Hardstark? Wow. Wow. Good job.
1:24:12 Karen Kilgariff? Thank you. Thanks to Minnie Freeman and all of the teachers of America.
1:24:17 Georgia Hardstark? Yes, thank you for your service.
1:24:20 Karen Kilgariff? Of your, what you believe to be a simple act of duty.
1:24:23 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
1:24:24 Karen Kilgariff? But oftentimes, and especially in 2025 America, is much, much more.
1:24:30 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:24:31 Karen Kilgariff? We all know that.
1:24:31 Georgia Hardstark? And so overlooked, but we appreciate you.
1:24:34 Karen Kilgariff? We do.
1:24:34 Georgia Hardstark? We do.
1:24:35 Karen Kilgariff? Over here?
1:24:36 Georgia Hardstark? Hi. Tell your sister-in-law and your fucking mom that we appreciate you here.
1:24:40 Karen Kilgariff? Call my sister and tell her, because she doesn't listen.
1:24:43 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, yeah.
1:24:43 Karen Kilgariff? That I appreciate her. Carol Craft, do you mind calling Laura and telling her she's getting a shout out?
1:24:48 Georgia Hardstark? Thank you for being a teacher, Laura.
1:24:49 Karen Kilgariff? Thank you.
1:24:50 Georgia Hardstark? All right, we did it.
1:24:51 Karen Kilgariff? I guess we did.
1:24:52 Georgia Hardstark? What do you think?
1:24:53 Karen Kilgariff? I love what we did.
1:24:54 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, we really did it.
1:24:56 Karen Kilgariff? And I love what all of our listeners did today.
1:25:00 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, thank you for the ceramics. We love it.
1:25:03 Karen Kilgariff? Forever.
1:25:04 Georgia Hardstark? Thank you for listening and being a part of this craziness.
1:25:09 Karen Kilgariff? Stay sexy.
1:25:10 Georgia Hardstark? And don't get murdered.
1:25:12 Karen Kilgariff? Goodbye.
1:25:13 Speaker 05 Elvis, do you want a cookie?
1:25:22 Karen Kilgariff? This has been an Exactly Right production.
1:25:24 Georgia Hardstark? Our senior producer is Alejandra Keck.
1:25:26 Karen Kilgariff? Our managing producer is Hannah Kyle Creighton.
1:25:29 Georgia Hardstark? Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo.
1:25:31 Karen Kilgariff? This episode was mixed by Liana Scolacci.
1:25:34 Georgia Hardstark? Our researchers are Maren McClashern and Ally Elkin.
1:25:37 Karen Kilgariff? Email your hometowns to [email protected] .
1:25:40 Georgia Hardstark? Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at MyFavoriteMurder.
1:25:43 Karen Kilgariff? Goodbye.
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