543 - Live at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall (Portland Early Show)

Live at Portland’s Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, Georgia covers the Martin Family disappearance and Karen tells the story of the Grant High School bandits. For our sources, please visit https://www.myfavoritemurder.com/episodes. Support this podcast by shopping our latest sponsor deals and promotions at this link: https://bit.ly/3UFCn1g. Head to social media to share your favorite moments from this episode. Instagram: instagram.com/myfavoritemurder http://instagram.com/myfavoritemurder Facebook: facebook.com/myfavoritemurder http://facebook.com/myfavoritemurder TikTok: tiktok.com/@my_favorite_murder http://tiktok.com/@my_favorite_murder Send your hometown stories to [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Join the Fan Cult to access ad-free episodes of My Favorite Murder. Members also receive merch store discounts, exclusive audio and video content and more! Visit www.fancult.supercast.com http://www.fancult.supercast.com/ to join. Shop for My Favorite Murder and other Exactly Right merchandise here: www.exactlyrightstore.com http://www.exactlyrightstore.com/. Rate, review and follow My Favorite Murder on the iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you like to listen. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

  This is exactly right.

• 0:07Speaker 00

  911, what's your emergency?

• 0:09Speaker 01

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• 0:17Speaker 02

  It's a homicide detective down here.

• 0:19Speaker 03

  Three bodies on the ground.

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• 0:23Speaker 03

  Hell, sin swarms upon you and upon your people.

• 0:26Speaker 02

  That's one of the plagues of the Bible.

• 0:27Speaker 03

  And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  Brian Phillippe, 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

• 0:37Speaker 00

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• 2:03Karen Kilgariff?

  What's up, Portland?

• 2:10Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh my god.

• 2:11Karen Kilgariff?

  Of course, of course you did. Of course you won the noise contest.

• 2:16Georgia Hardstark?

  You blew back my things, they're so loud.

• 2:22Karen Kilgariff?

  Blowing behind you, purely from noise, yes.

• 2:25Georgia Hardstark?

  Holy shit.

• 2:26Karen Kilgariff?

  So good to see you again, Portland. It's been a while. How are you?

• 2:33Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, we knew we had to add you guys on this little trip that we're taking of touring because you're always so supportive of us and we appreciate that so much.

• 2:41Karen Kilgariff?

  Since day one.

• 2:41Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 2:42Karen Kilgariff?

  You know that.

• 2:44Georgia Hardstark?

  Because they're the cool kids, too.

• 2:46Karen Kilgariff?

  They're the ones who know.

• 2:47Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 2:48Karen Kilgariff?

  They're the ones who drink the drink special and get all fucked up and then like fight in the aisle and shit. Like...

• 2:55Georgia Hardstark?

  They're the ones riding their bikes naked down the street in protest.

• 3:02Karen Kilgariff?

  You gotta rise up naked and get on that bike.

• 3:07Karen Kilgariff?

  Was anyone that's here today at the naked bike ride today?

• 3:12Georgia Hardstark?

  Are you still naked?

• 3:13Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh my god.

• 3:16Karen Kilgariff?

  It'd be so amazing if four people were just sitting there kind of weirdly naked.

• 3:22Karen Kilgariff?

  In a grand theater like this.

• 3:25Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh my god. I just took a...

• 3:29Karen Kilgariff?

  Uh oh.

• 3:32Georgia Hardstark?

  What's it gonna be?

• 3:34Karen Kilgariff?

  There's like a pill Wheel of Fortune where you find out onstage what you took?

• 3:39Georgia Hardstark?

  Two of my best friends in the world, Kate Maddox and Carrie Sullenbetter are here and they were backstage. We were being very loud, I'm sure everyone noticed. And Kate whips out a thing of nicotine pouches.

• 3:53Georgia Hardstark?

  And she was like, "Put one on, you'll be up all night." Because we have to do two shows tonight, it's like a lot. And I've already had like a Red Bull.

• 3:59Karen Kilgariff?

  I'm so sorry to say this, but that's such a like 40-year-old way of partying. Where it's like, you guys...

• 4:06Georgia Hardstark?

  I'm high on nicotine patches. It's like either a 12-year-old way or a 40-year-old way.

• 4:11Karen Kilgariff?

  I mean, it works either way, I think. But it's so funny where it's like, "No, no, no, we're not doing lines of coke before the show." That's crazy.

• 4:20Georgia Hardstark?

  Doing...

• 4:20Karen Kilgariff?

  Nicorette.

• 4:24Georgia Hardstark?

  So if I'm obnoxious, it's her fault. It's not true, it's my mom's fault, really, but...

• 4:28Karen Kilgariff?

  I mean, ultimately, it's always the mother's fault.

• 4:30Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 4:31Karen Kilgariff?

  Ultimately.

• 4:31Georgia Hardstark?

  Janet.

• 4:32Karen Kilgariff?

  Janet.

• 4:33Georgia Hardstark?

  Should I tell them about... Should I tell them about Janet in Boston?

• 4:38Karen Kilgariff?

  Absolutely.

• 4:39Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh my god. So we went to Boston and I flew my mom in for live shows. My mom and stepdad, it was really exciting. And it's being filmed for something like really exciting that we can't talk about. So I meet her in the lobby. We'd all just flown in and her fucking front tooth is missing.

• 4:59Georgia Hardstark?

  It's like the nub, her cap fell off.

• 5:02Karen Kilgariff?

  And the way, just as a like outside, non-family member person, Janet, Janet is a pulled-together fancy lady with a blowout that goes on for days. Like this is not, this is not a whoops, I don't have a front tooth type of person. We know those people, those people rule.

• 5:22Georgia Hardstark?

  That's fine.

• 5:22Karen Kilgariff?

  That's a whole, almost better way to party, but...

• 5:26Georgia Hardstark?

  It's totally fine, but I got my vanity from my mom and she's got a lot to give. So I was like, "I know you're not gonna wanna be on this very important special filming thing without your front fucking tooth." So, you're not sightseeing tomorrow. Sorry, mom, you gotta find a dentist.

• 5:41Karen Kilgariff?

  She did. Do it now.

• 5:43Georgia Hardstark?

  And then I said, "Can I, like, can I talk about it onstage and like make fun of you?" And she was like, "Yeah, you can embellish, I don't care." She was so cool about it.

• 5:51Karen Kilgariff?

  And I was like, "If we'd only found out in time, we could have gotten some tooth black." And then both turned around and been like, "Us too."

• 6:00Karen Kilgariff?

  See, we didn't have time for the comedy.

• 6:02Georgia Hardstark?

  No.

• 6:02Karen Kilgariff?

  We've got to make time for the comedy.

• 6:04Georgia Hardstark?

  Speaking of making time, this is my favorite murder of the podcast.

• 6:09Georgia Hardstark?

  Thank you. That's Karen Kilgariff.

• 6:12Karen Kilgariff?

  That's Georgia Hardstark.

• 6:19Georgia Hardstark?

  Show them your outfit, your beautiful outfit.

• 6:20Karen Kilgariff?

  Listen, listen, before I do this, I'm gonna tell you one thing. This is a tour, each city two nights. It's a lot of dresses, it's a lot of dresses.

• 6:30Georgia Hardstark?

  No.

• 6:31Karen Kilgariff?

  Didn't have that many to begin with. Had to do a lot of speed shopping and kind of like care about a thing.

• 6:38Karen Kilgariff?

  This dress does not have pockets and I swear to god if you make a noise at me...

• 6:44Karen Kilgariff?

  No, you don't get to boo me. I taught you how important pockets fucking are.

• 6:53Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, pretend.

• 7:00Karen Kilgariff?

  Do you know that one time after, and I can't remember what city this was in, a woman at a meet and greet gave me, and you, I think there were two sets, but they were very vintage tie-on pockets so that if your dress didn't have pockets, you can, like one of those old-fashioned period band things? You could tie pockets under your dress and have them waiting there for you if need be.

• 7:24Georgia Hardstark?

  That's how bad it was for women. We were just like, "Can we please have rights?" "No, but you can have tie-on pockets."

• 7:29Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes.

• 7:30Georgia Hardstark?

  "Thanks." Patriarchy.

• 7:33Karen Kilgariff?

  They cost $25. And the men's tie-on pockets cost $7.99. Look, we're not gonna get it all done in one night, but we can address a lot of it.

• 7:41Georgia Hardstark?

  We can.

• 7:43Karen Kilgariff?

  Would you like to do your modeling? Look at this.

• 7:48Georgia Hardstark?

  Thank you. Look at these weird, what are these? Tail, what are they called? Flaps?

• 7:52Karen Kilgariff?

  Yep, they're called flaps, in fashion.

• 7:55Georgia Hardstark?

  I lost my mind over this dress when I saw it. It's definitely vintage. I was tailoring it backstage because it was ripping with a stapler, so...

• 8:04Karen Kilgariff?

  She was tailoring it backstage.

• 8:06Georgia Hardstark?

  That's what I do.

• 8:06Karen Kilgariff?

  I heard her down the hall go, "Um, do you have a stapler?" And I was like, "What in the wor-" It can't be paper, there's no way it's paper.

• 8:13Georgia Hardstark?

  It's not paper.

• 8:14Karen Kilgariff?

  What is she doing over there?

• 8:15Georgia Hardstark?

  I literally stapled my like crinoline up so it wasn't like hanging down. And then I forgot my jewelry in the town where my best friend Carrie like sells jewelry and I forgot to bring the jewelry that she gave me, the beautiful stuff. So she, she called her sweet husband Alan and was like, "Don't leave, go to my fucking jewelry box." FaceTime me. And like, I was like, "Carrie, you don't have to do this." But she was like, "Yes, I do."

• 8:40Karen Kilgariff?

  She's like, "Because you know what this podcast is all about? The gems."

• 8:45Georgia Hardstark?

  That's right.

• 8:46Karen Kilgariff?

  Gems, gemstones. Fancy.

• 8:49Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 8:51Karen Kilgariff?

  Here's the thing, I walked around today just trying to find a cup of coffee. Just trying to find a craft beer. The fuck is wrong with this?

• 9:02Georgia Hardstark?

  Nowhere to be found.

• 9:03Karen Kilgariff?

  Can't find...

• 9:04Georgia Hardstark?

  Can't find a hot dog.

• 9:06Karen Kilgariff?

  Can't find an antique to save your fucking life.

• 9:11Karen Kilgariff?

  It's literally coffee, coffee, coffee. Craft beer.

• 9:16Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 9:17Karen Kilgariff?

  Coffee, a different kind of craft beer. It's a different hop. It's a different type of bicycle that this one's named after. Okay.

• 9:28Georgia Hardstark?

  We sit down?

• 9:29Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, yeah, let's do it.

• 9:33Georgia Hardstark?

  Thank you.

• 9:34Karen Kilgariff?

  I thought the short table was a one-off.

• 9:37Georgia Hardstark?

  I thought, yeah. This is the exact same table we always have, except oops, it's short. But, I mean, it's a table. In this economy, we can't complain about a fucking low table.

• 9:50Karen Kilgariff?

  No, not in the least, but I do love that you said, "But oops, it's short." Like, oops, all berries, Captain Crunch, or just like, mhm, but oops.

• 9:58Georgia Hardstark?

  Do you want to tell the people who don't know why we were applauded for sitting down, what's going on now?

• 10:04Karen Kilgariff?

  Although, I cannot imagine that they're...

• 10:11Georgia Hardstark?

  Thank you. I hate it so much, but I appreciate you applauding my allergies.

• 10:17Karen Kilgariff?

  There's no one in this room that doesn't get what's happening. I just can't imagine. But, just in case there is, just in case somebody tortured their partner, or their parent, or, we've met a couple people where it's like, "Oh, that's my mom, she has no idea what's going on," where it's like, "Not the mom."

• 10:34Georgia Hardstark?

  Hasn't she suffered enough?

• 10:36Karen Kilgariff?

  She already hates you so much.

• 10:40Karen Kilgariff?

  This is, uh, my favorite murder, it's a comedy true crime podcast, and that's because when Georgia and I first met each other, we realized that we were two people who had similar trauma, and we dealt with it with the same coping mechanisms, which was, uh, in justing true crime and humor. So, humor. So...

• 11:05Karen Kilgariff?

  That's why we started this podcast, that's why it started the way it did, it's developed over 10 years, which I'm...

• 11:13Karen Kilgariff?

  Let us just, thank you.

• 11:16Georgia Hardstark?

  Thank you.

• 11:17Karen Kilgariff?

  But also, let us just tell you right now, that's like triple too long for a podcast. It's so long for a podcast, for a homework podcast.

• 11:25Georgia Hardstark?

  Homework podcast. I just, I always think about, what if we were talking in the cafe before we started and we were planning it, and I said, "And every week, one of us will tell each other a story, instead of both of us."

• 11:39Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, sorry, I didn't listen to the whole thing. Wait, do it again.

• 11:41Georgia Hardstark?

  One of us will tell a story.

• 11:43Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, that's a great idea.

• 11:44Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, every other, not both of us will tell, like, it just could have been so simple.

• 11:48Karen Kilgariff?

  But we didn't even, like, I literally thought in the beginning that I was gonna be able to tell these fucking stories off the top of my head. What? I don't remember what day it is today. How would that be possible? Anyhow, this isn't in the speech, sorry, that was just like, personal, uh, realization. So anyhow, um, uh, we don't think murder is funny. We think we're funny. And so, we enjoy talking to each other about the thing that actually is very upsetting and difficult and bad, because that's what life is like. Horrible things happen, and you process them the way that works for you. Ultimately, what I'm saying is, if you don't like it, you can get the fuck out.

• 12:38Karen Kilgariff?

  Unless, of course, you work here, and then we're deeply, deeply sorry. Deeply sorry. Our apologies to you.

• 12:45Georgia Hardstark?

  Shit.

• 12:45Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, they can't get out.

• 12:47Georgia Hardstark?

  Don't even know what a podcast is, and now they're just fucking ladies.

• 12:50Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, it's just... So podcasts are women swearing at each other? Okay, I guess.

• 12:56Georgia Hardstark?

  I am glad, last, whatever show we just did, I don't know where the fuck we were, where were we?

• 12:59Karen Kilgariff?

  I don't know. San Diego?

• 13:02Georgia Hardstark?

  San Diego.

• 13:02Karen Kilgariff?

  San Diego.

• 13:03Georgia Hardstark?

  The fog machine broke. And not in an "it turned off" way, in a "it turned all the way on" way. And suddenly, we were like, in a fucking cemetery at night. It was kind of awesome.

• 13:15Karen Kilgariff?

  It would have been amazing if, when the fog machine broke, someone ran out two lanterns, and we could have just been like, "Ahoi!" Or something.

• 13:24Georgia Hardstark?

  It could be Steven. Steven's a lantern boy.

• 13:26Karen Kilgariff?

  Steven!

• 13:30Karen Kilgariff?

  R.I.P.

• 13:33Karen Kilgariff?

  No. They know he's alive, he's right there on social media, for everybody.

• 13:37Georgia Hardstark?

  He is.

• 13:37Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 13:39Georgia Hardstark?

  I'm first?

• 13:40Karen Kilgariff?

  I think so.

• 13:41Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 13:49Georgia Hardstark?

  I am so excited about this one, and maybe three other people will be too, because it's a story that was an enduring mystery. It was a cold case for over six decades. It's haunted reporters, investigators, and Oregonians that entire time, until recently.

• 14:11Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh.

• 14:11Georgia Hardstark?

  Uh-huh. Due to the perseverance and ingenuity of a civilian, we love civilians.

• 14:16Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, yes, that's right.

• 14:17Georgia Hardstark?

  Yep, that's right. It seems like this is no longer a cold case, so you're gonna get your wish. This is the story of the Martin family disappearance.

• 14:25Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, wow.

• 14:30Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, this one, I mean, late night scrolling for me, for sure. The main source of the story is reporting from the Oregonian, so, thank you.

• 14:39Karen Kilgariff?

  They know their stuff.

• 14:40Georgia Hardstark?

  They do.

• 14:41Karen Kilgariff?

  I'll never forget Faces of Meth. I'll never forget it, as long as I live. No joke. God, I wish I could throw to a clip right now.

• 14:50Georgia Hardstark?

  It's me.

• 14:51Karen Kilgariff?

  I'll just explain it.

• 14:56Karen Kilgariff?

  Little baby Georgia.

• 14:57Georgia Hardstark?

  Little baby Georgia.

• 14:58Karen Kilgariff?

  Little baby Georgia.

• 14:59Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 15:01Karen Kilgariff?

  Wait, did it, you know what it is?

• 15:03Georgia Hardstark?

  Well, I know Faces of Meth, what it is, but what does it have to do with the Oregonian? Tell me.

• 15:07Karen Kilgariff?

  Well, are you thinking of Faces of Death?

• 15:09Georgia Hardstark?

  No.

• 15:10Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh. Where it's the picture's side by side. The Oregonian did that.

• 15:14Georgia Hardstark?

  That was your guys?

• 15:15Karen Kilgariff?

  That was them.

• 15:16Georgia Hardstark?

  That was your work? How did you know? I didn't know that. It was great work.

• 15:22Karen Kilgariff?

  It was horrifying work. Don't do meth.

• 15:25Georgia Hardstark?

  No.

• 15:25Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, that, uh, for drag-alongs, that's another big theme of this show, and no joke.

• 15:29Georgia Hardstark?

  Don't do meth, yeah.

• 15:31Karen Kilgariff?

  Do not.

• 15:31Georgia Hardstark?

  Do everything else?

• 15:32Karen Kilgariff?

  Anything you want.

• 15:33Georgia Hardstark?

  Nicotine pouches, all the things.

• 15:35Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh my God, cover your body in nicotine pouches.

• 15:39Georgia Hardstark?

  Pouches, though. I'm talking about the one that goes in your gum, not a patch.

• 15:43Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh.

• 15:43Georgia Hardstark?

  I'm talking about, I had a fucking pouch in my gum, like a baseball player.

• 15:47Karen Kilgariff?

  Hold on, hold the phone. That is not a nicotine pouch or patch.

• 15:53Georgia Hardstark?

  What is it?

• 15:54Karen Kilgariff?

  Chaw.

• 15:57Karen Kilgariff?

  Chew.

• 15:59Georgia Hardstark?

  But it was in a little pouch.

• 16:00Karen Kilgariff?

  Scol. What do you mean?

• 16:03Georgia Hardstark?

  Mouth cancer.

• 16:05Karen Kilgariff?

  Can you really quickly tell me what you're talking about?

• 16:08Georgia Hardstark?

  There's these little pouches that look like little pouches of cocaine, I mean, let's be honest.

• 16:13Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay.

• 16:14Georgia Hardstark?

  And you take it and you put it under your lip, right here, and you just kind of hold it in your, in your, like, here, in your gums, for like, 20 minutes, spitting out the gross stuff. I'm serious, it's like chaw, it is like, but it's in a pouch, so it's like, orderly, it's like OCD people.

• 16:32Karen Kilgariff?

  Holy shit.

• 16:33Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 16:35Karen Kilgariff?

  That's incredible.

• 16:36Georgia Hardstark?

  You want one?

• 16:37Karen Kilgariff?

  I mean, yes, absolutely.

• 16:38Georgia Hardstark?

  Kate, will you bring one backstage? That would be so funny. What's Karen like on nicotine pouch? Stop it, we're, stop it, this is important.

• 16:45Karen Kilgariff?

  Stop it, this, we're trying to start the show.

• 16:49Karen Kilgariff?

  I could just, can I say this?

• 16:50Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, go ahead, always.

• 16:53Karen Kilgariff?

  Some of my best memories of live shows took place in Portland, Oregon.

• 17:01Karen Kilgariff?

  Not trying to pressure you guys, you've already done a great job, but I'm just saying, we've done so many fucking unbelievable live shows here, and the one that was at the schoolhouse...

• 17:12Georgia Hardstark?

  That's right.

• 17:12Karen Kilgariff?

  I mean, Jesus Christ.

• 17:15Georgia Hardstark?

  So if you guys don't want to laugh, you don't have to, but it's gonna be a shitty show in that case, and it's all your fault.

• 17:22Karen Kilgariff?

  And if you don't want to get so drunk that you and your sister come on stage, that's your choice. We're just saying we have standards.

• 17:30Georgia Hardstark?

  And we're back.

• 17:31Karen Kilgariff?

  And we're pouched. And ready to perform.

• 17:35Georgia Hardstark?

  It's December 7th, 1958, and the Martin family piles into the family car. It's, uh, the family is Ken and Barbara, yes, Ken and Barbie, so cute, and their three daughters, Barbara, who does go by Barbie, Virginia, and Sue. Barbie is 14, Virginia's 13, and Sue is 11. The Martins also have a son in the Navy stationed in New York at the time, away from the family. Um, let's look at a picture of the family, shall we?

• 18:06Georgia Hardstark?

  I know. Kate, those, I'm older than those parents.

• 18:09Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes, you are.

• 18:10Georgia Hardstark?

  Isn't that insane?

• 18:11Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes, you are.

• 18:14Karen Kilgariff?

  Well, what's funny is, like, that's real time.

• 18:18Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 18:18Karen Kilgariff?

  We're the future.

• 18:19Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, yeah.

• 18:20Karen Kilgariff?

  We're the future. Where it's like, hey, what's up? I'm 55.

• 18:23Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 18:24Karen Kilgariff?

  And they're just like, what the fuck? Sorry, I've had a lot of work done. This is not natural.

• 18:29Georgia Hardstark?

  It's a lot of shit.

• 18:30Karen Kilgariff?

  Anyway, these teeth are gigantic. But the point is, they didn't have that kind of science back then.

• 18:37Georgia Hardstark?

  They didn't.

• 18:37Karen Kilgariff?

  No.

• 18:38Georgia Hardstark?

  So sad. Yeah, like, I'm older than him. I promise. He's 38, probably.

• 18:43Karen Kilgariff?

  For sure. But also, that black dress with the polka dots is what I'm looking for at every vintage store that I look in.

• 18:51Georgia Hardstark?

  Gorgeous. Okay, so the Martins are really, really into Christmas. Every year, Ken makes four-foot wooden candy canes to give out to the neighbors so they can all put it on their houses and decorate, which is so nice. You can't just, like, order stuff online back then.

• 19:06Karen Kilgariff?

  No.

• 19:06Georgia Hardstark?

  No, it's like, you have to make it. The Martins and their neighbors go all out decorating, and their street is nicknamed Candy Lane because of all of Ken's candy canes and everyone going all out. It's like, sweet, yeah. Ken dresses up as Santa Claus every year, and it's a beloved holiday tradition in the neighborhood. He says hello to store-bought Santa costumes. He's, like, so into it that he convinces a friend, oh, sorry, his sister, to sew him this, like, perfect, exquisite Santa costume. Like, they take it seriously.

• 19:38Karen Kilgariff?

  I just like the idea that there were Santa costumes back then, and it was, like, the quality was a question, where it's like, sir, just you wait. Just you wait until 2025.

• 19:49Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, and they were so flammable, probably, too. Like, you stand near a candle. Okay. So, this holiday spirit has inspired the family to leave the house on December 7th. The Martins are driving east into the countryside from their home in northeast Portland to... It's beautiful this time of year. To collect evergreen boughs to make wreaths and garlands to decorate their house. So the Martins leave the home around noon.

• 20:21Karen Kilgariff?

  Just around the neighborhood, like, they're just going to cut other people's trees.

• 20:24Georgia Hardstark?

  No, no, no, no.

• 20:27Karen Kilgariff?

  There's a couple pine trees.

• 20:29Georgia Hardstark?

  Picture Christmas vacation, when they drive out to cut their tree down. Like, it's like that.

• 20:33Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, got it.

• 20:33Georgia Hardstark?

  Like, they're going out into wilderness to, like, get nice things to make it with. So they're not, like, you know, stealing.

• 20:41Karen Kilgariff?

  Right, okay. There's no craftsmen's that a young couple is just remodeled that are sitting there.

• 20:46Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 20:46Karen Kilgariff?

  It's dope.

• 20:47Georgia Hardstark?

  No. So they leave their home around noon. They stop to eat at a place called Paradise Snack Bar in Hood River. It's not there anymore, unfortunately. It's about 60 miles from Portland, and this is sometime between 2:00 and 4:00 p.m. And they also stop to get gas at Cascade Locks. You guys love... Okay, so, what?

• 21:09Karen Kilgariff?

  I just love, name any area, and people are like, I know it! Heard of it!

• 21:16Georgia Hardstark?

  Why didn't someone yell, maybe, oh, it was, you said the name Stephanie, and someone lost their mind at the end of it?

• 21:21Karen Kilgariff?

  Woo! Just like, shut the fuck up, Stephanie.

• 21:27Georgia Hardstark?

  Here's a picture of their car.

• 21:30Karen Kilgariff?

  Whoa.

• 21:31Georgia Hardstark?

  Well, not their car, but like, the car that they were kind of, you know what I mean?

• 21:36Karen Kilgariff?

  You have to put not actual, not actual photo.

• 21:39Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, I fucked that up. That's on me.

• 21:41Karen Kilgariff?

  No, no, it's cool, though. It's like a, what type of car is it? Do you know?

• 21:45Georgia Hardstark?

  It says right there, but I can't read it.

• 21:47Karen Kilgariff?

  I think it says Cordo Espresso. Get cert spirit. This is fucking AI. It doesn't say anything.

• 21:59Georgia Hardstark?

  So, as many as you probably know, Cascade Locks is named after a series of locks in the Columbia River, which were constructed to change the water level of the river in sections to help steamships navigate through the area.

• 22:14Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes.

• 22:15Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 22:16Karen Kilgariff?

  Love a lock.

• 22:16Georgia Hardstark?

  Love a lock. Vincent and I went to look at a lock in Michigan, and it wasn't running that day. So that was fun.

• 22:22Karen Kilgariff?

  It was kind of dry.

• 22:23Georgia Hardstark?

  It must have been. Um, here's a picture of a lock.

• 22:26Karen Kilgariff?

  The locks.

• 22:27Georgia Hardstark?

  This is the lock. This is the Cascade Locks.

• 22:29Karen Kilgariff?

  The real one.

• 22:30Georgia Hardstark?

  For real, yeah, back then. The real one, not AI.

• 22:34Karen Kilgariff?

  Great.

• 22:35Georgia Hardstark?

  So...

• 22:35Karen Kilgariff?

  Finally.

• 22:39Georgia Hardstark?

  Um, so the two sightings at the gas station and the snack bar are the last time anyone reports seeing the family. On Monday, December 9th, Ken fails to show up at work, and the girls are marked absent at school. And this is when people realize that something is wrong. Ken is officially declared missing by his boss that evening, and police searched the Martin family home. There's nothing abnormal, nothing out of place. There's laundry in the washing machine, dishes on, you know. They didn't take off, essentially.

• 23:07Karen Kilgariff?

  Normal life, yeah.

• 23:08Georgia Hardstark?

  Investigators start looking at everything that was going on in the area around Hood River and Cascade Locks around the time the Martin family was there. And on the day the Martins disappeared, a stolen white Chevrolet is found in Cascade Locks near the river. So it's a stolen car. In the bushes near that stolen car, a handgun is also found. The handle of the gun has a lot of dried blood on it, and it looks like it was used to bludgeon someone. It sounds like the blood wasn't saved and later tested, but didn't happen. And in fact, the man who found the gun in the bushes eventually just gets to keep it. He's like, finders keepers, you should wash this thing.

• 23:52Karen Kilgariff?

  So it's dumb question, but so it wasn't a policeman that found that gun?

• 23:55Georgia Hardstark?

  It doesn't sound like it.

• 23:56Karen Kilgariff?

  It was just a person that happened upon it.

• 23:58Georgia Hardstark?

  A gun, yeah.

• 23:58Karen Kilgariff?

  Well, that's yours, then.

• 24:00Georgia Hardstark?

  Too bad he didn't get the Chevrolet, too, I mean, found that.

• 24:03Karen Kilgariff?

  I mean, for real.

• 24:04Georgia Hardstark?

  Jesus. So this next detail is so fucking weird, and it would drive you crazy if this was still technically a cold case. But the serial number on the handgun matches with a gun that had been stolen from a department store in Portland years earlier. And the Martin's eldest son, who's away in the Navy, had actually been an employee of that store and had been accused of stealing that fucking gun. That gun.

• 24:33Karen Kilgariff?

  And you're telling us that's a coincidence?

• 24:35Georgia Hardstark?

  It's a fucking coincidence.

• 24:37Karen Kilgariff?

  No way.

• 24:37Georgia Hardstark?

  It's a fucking coincidence. It's unclear if he was actually ever charged for theft, but according to the records from the store, he admitted to the theft, including, which included other items, and was fired. But he was across the country at the time. It hasn't, like, nothing, unless, I don't know. But it's the same frickin' handgun, like, serial number and everything. And it's extremely weird, and people fixate on it, of course, when they're talking about this case. And it looks like, we're not sure what happened to the gun after he stole it, but it looks like he sold it to someone else. So it's just a fucking coincidence.

• 25:15Karen Kilgariff?

  That's so wild, and it reminds me of the cufflinks thing in the Golden State Killer case, where, like, people, and especially citizens sleuths, were, like, obsessed with these cufflinks and tracing them and the whole thing, where it was like, and it just feels so great to think you're about to figure it out.

• 25:30Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, and you're not. And that's what this podcast is about.

• 25:35Karen Kilgariff?

  And that's what it's all about.

• 25:37Georgia Hardstark?

  So, on December 8th, the day after the Martins were last seen, two ex-convicts are arrested in Cascade Locks in connection with that stolen vehicle. And witnesses who saw the Martins at the Paradise Snack Bar in Hood River say that those two men were there at the same time as the family. The witnesses say that the men also left the snack bar at the same time as the Martin family, but no evidence is ever found linking these two men to the Martin family. At the end of December, a woman's glove is found in the area where that stolen white Chevy had been, and friends say the glove looks like something Barbara would wear, but like, what if it's like, she would never wear it? Like, it's a white glove. I don't think it's that, like, you know.

• 26:17Karen Kilgariff?

  It's the 50s, and it's a white glove.

• 26:18Georgia Hardstark?

  Exactly.

• 26:18Karen Kilgariff?

  It's like Barbara, every other woman in the area, and Mickey Mouse. Every, we got it. It's not uncommon to wear a white glove.

• 26:27Georgia Hardstark?

  Exactly. And they had searched that area before and hadn't found it, so it doesn't seem like, you know, a clue now that we know it's not a clue. Over the next several months, searches are conducted in various locations, mostly along the Columbia River. In February of 1959, the Dallas, Dal's, Dal's? Dal's.

• 26:52Karen Kilgariff?

  They got a couple, they got a couple gotcha titles in this town, for sure.

• 26:55Georgia Hardstark?

  I would have said Dallas if Ally hadn't written, rhymes with pals. Which just trips me up so much more when I'm like, it's like saying in red, like, you're about to fuck this up, and they're gonna boo at you.

• 27:07Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes.

• 27:09Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, you know?

• 27:09Karen Kilgariff?

  It's a little warning of a red, a red light of get ready, you're gonna blow it.

• 27:13Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 27:14Karen Kilgariff?

  Instead of just reading what it says.

• 27:16Georgia Hardstark?

  Right, right, exactly. Um, so anyways, there, a man finds...

• 27:23Karen Kilgariff?

  Right there.

• 27:24Georgia Hardstark?

  Right in red. A man finds tire tracks leading off a cliff into the water, and the cliff is maybe about 30 feet high. And we have a photo of the tracks that they found. Kind of. That's just, yeah, the area. That's the area.

• 27:38Karen Kilgariff?

  It's Columbia River Pool near the Dal's.

• 27:40Georgia Hardstark?

  Right, Dal's, like pals.

• 27:42Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah. Never forget it.

• 27:45Georgia Hardstark?

  Until this evening, later, until I have to say it again. Investigators don't find any return tracks, and there is, so they're certain that the car went into the water, and it either drove in or was pushed in. And they also find the track tires match the Martin family car tires. And the paint sample on a rock along the tracks matches the paint that would have been on the car. So, this spot's about 20 miles farther than Hood River and 40 miles further east than Cascade Locks. But, you know, they, for some reason, still put them together, you know?

• 28:25Georgia Hardstark?

  And then months later, a barge will drop an anchor in the spot and hook onto something heavy. And when they try to pull up the object, a deckhand pokes down in the water and he's sure what he strikes is metal. But they can't lift it with the anchor and it sinks back down. But the people in the boat are sure that it was a car. So, May of 1959, we get our last solid development in this case for 60 years, and it's a tragic one. The bodies of Susan and Virginia Martin are found floating down the river. Susan had been 13 and Virginia was 11, and they were found in the water. Our fisherman and his wife see the bodies and they're identified through dental records. So, over the next 60

• 29:10Georgia Hardstark?

  years, there's basically a debate between two theories. Either the Martin family tragically accidentally drove into the river as conditions got darker in the evening in the area, or they were somehow pushed into the river off the cliff and the, you know, stolen car and those, you know, convicts and the gun have something to do with it. Those are the two camps. And this question haunts investigators, journalists, and civilians for decades. Dumb Martin gets married, the son has three kids, and passes away in 2004, never knowing what happened to his family.

• 29:46Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay.

• 29:47Georgia Hardstark?

  Now, cut to 2018. There's a diver from here named Archer Mayo.

• 29:53Karen Kilgariff?

  Is he here? Is he here tonight?

• 29:56Georgia Hardstark?

  This guy is fascinating. I'm like, talk about, I don't want to work a desk job, so I'm just gonna fucking do what I love. Like, this is the guy. He's like an artist and a sculptor, but he's also really into diving into, or like rivers, to find lost items. That's his hobby.

• 30:12Karen Kilgariff?

  I would do that.

• 30:13Georgia Hardstark?

  Hell, yeah.

• 30:13Karen Kilgariff?

  Fun.

• 30:14Georgia Hardstark?

  I know. So, he gets super interested in the case and he starts working on tracking down the Martin family car. And he becomes obsessed with this case. And his obsession eventually leads him to the Oregon Historical Society. And this is where I would stop and be like, I guess I can't find it, you know?

• 30:32Karen Kilgariff?

  I see a lot of books in that building. I'm gonna go this way.

• 30:34Georgia Hardstark?

  Right. Right.

• 30:36Karen Kilgariff?

  To the Bicycle Brewery.

• 30:38Georgia Hardstark?

  Exactly. That's right. Do they have a blonde? They have a great blonde. He becomes obsessed with it. Goes to Oregon Historical Society, starts poring over images and plans from the construction of the Cascade Locks back in the late 1800s. He goes all the way back to the construction. He discovers that there's an area in the locks called the pit, and it's a 20-foot-deep depression. I have one of those, too.

• 31:05Georgia Hardstark?

  Thanks.

• 31:06Karen Kilgariff?

  Nice one.

• 31:08Georgia Hardstark?

  Off the top of his fucking head.

• 31:10Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, off the dome.

• 31:11Georgia Hardstark?

  You know what it is? Nicotine, baby.

• 31:15Karen Kilgariff?

  We're gonna be so pouched up for the second show, it's gonna be fucking insane.

• 31:19Georgia Hardstark?

  Firing on all cylinders tonight, baby.

• 31:23Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay. He, there's a deep depression that runs for 90 feet at the bottom of the Columbia River. He feels in his gut, Archer feels in his gut, that despite all the theories around foul play, that the Martin family died in a tragic accident from accidentally driving into the river near this spot, and that this is where the car will be found. I know I'm obsessed with these cases. I feel like half of missing person cases, that something similar happened, you know? And I love that there's like just independent divers, because the cities can't afford that, looking for them now.

• 31:56Karen Kilgariff?

  Can't afford it.

• 31:58Georgia Hardstark?

  Right. They're busy with their money right now.

• 32:00Karen Kilgariff?

  They're busy with their companies.

• 32:06Georgia Hardstark?

  Yes. So, he, then he goes on to construct a diorama of the locks and measures the effect of water displacement using rice. Like, he's in it.

• 32:19Karen Kilgariff?

  He loves science.

• 32:20Georgia Hardstark?

  Talk about homework.

• 32:21Karen Kilgariff?

  Hey.

• 32:21Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 32:22Karen Kilgariff?

  Relax.

• 32:24Georgia Hardstark?

  Somehow, he comes up with a theory that the car wound up in a very specific spot in the pit. And he says he's never bought the theory that the car was in the other area where the tire tracks were. And furthermore, the spot he's found is just a little bit downriver from a parking lot. And in the 1950s, there was no guardrails or barricades blocking off the drop into the river, because they were like, go ahead, at your own risk.

• 32:51Karen Kilgariff?

  It's not our problem. We don't care. So, this guy actually went and did research, like, the deepest of research, to be like, here's my theory and here's how I think. And then went and, like, actually looked up where blueprints of old parking lots or whatever.

• 33:07Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 33:08Karen Kilgariff?

  Damn.

• 33:08Georgia Hardstark?

  Crazy, right?

• 33:09Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 33:10Georgia Hardstark?

  But wait, there's more.

• 33:11Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh.

• 33:15Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay, so, armed with this new information about the pit, starting in March of 2024, so this past March, he starts searching the area. No, that's not right. It's 2025, isn't it?

• 33:28Karen Kilgariff?

  Listen.

• 33:29Georgia Hardstark?

  Look.

• 33:30Karen Kilgariff?

  Sometimes, sometimes the...

• 33:34Georgia Hardstark?

  Bingo.

• 33:36Karen Kilgariff?

  Sometimes the nicotine, it recoils on you, you know what I mean? It's like, you can go too far. You can overpouch.

• 33:44Georgia Hardstark?

  I'm gonna, what if I become an advocate for too much nicotine pouches? Like, 15 minutes is all you need.

• 33:51Karen Kilgariff?

  But you do forget how time works.

• 33:53Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 33:54Karen Kilgariff?

  So, party how you want.

• 33:55Georgia Hardstark?

  I mean, that'd be great. I would love to forget this time period right now, honestly.

• 34:02Georgia Hardstark?

  It's a real fucking mess.

• 34:04Karen Kilgariff?

  That's what we're doing right here, right now. We're just like, what a crazy show in a building where there's no outside. Beautiful.

• 34:13Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay. March of 2024, so like, a year ago. He starts searching the area. He dives three times a day for 20 days. Like, this guy, lots of nicotine, probably. He uses machinery to suck debris from the pit, and in, on one of his dives, he pulls up a hubcap. When he goes home and looks it up, he finds that it's a match for the type of hubcap that would have been on the Martin family car. Archer keeps diving to the spot, ultimately locating a car, and takes measurements proving that it is the correct make and model. Nobody knows what kind. Oh, no, wait, sorry, here it is. An early 1950s Ford County Squire.

• 34:55Karen Kilgariff?

  A County Squire, that's what it fucking said.

• 34:58Georgia Hardstark?

  I never, I don't, I don't, I've never heard of that before. So, armed with all this evidence, Archer is able to get the Hood River County Sheriff's Department to hire contractors to pull the car out of the water. Okay, here's the thing. This sucks. But the car is upside down, and they wind up just detaching the undercarriage and pulling that up. I, there's a picture of it. Oh, no. Is that a chassis? Is that what they call that? Is it?

• 35:24Karen Kilgariff?

  What is happening with you?

• 35:26Georgia Hardstark?

  I don't know.

• 35:27Karen Kilgariff?

  This is the drug.

• 35:29Georgia Hardstark?

  The math thing, it's all mathing.

• 35:30Karen Kilgariff?

  What's that, a chassis? What's that, about a V8? I don't know. V12? What's happening?

• 35:37Georgia Hardstark?

  They just fucking break it in half. It'll, it happens, you know?

• 35:44Karen Kilgariff?

  Still. I mean, still, they're doing something. Something's happening.

• 35:48Georgia Hardstark?

  Yes. That's great. It's good. So, he keeps diving, because he's just determined to find irrefutable proof that this is the Martin family car. And so, just this past August, I swear to God, it was 2025, I'm not fucking with...

• 36:03Karen Kilgariff?

  Pass the paper around.

• 36:04Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah. Archer dives one last time to the site where he had found the car. And on this final dive, he hopes to conclusively link the car to the Martins. So, he brings up various artifacts. And I'm like, we can't show you the pictures, because they don't let us. It's really annoying. He brings up...

• 36:25Karen Kilgariff?

  What'd they say?

• 36:27Georgia Hardstark?

  We won't tell.

• 36:29Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay. He brings up various artifacts that link the Martins, like the remnants of shoes Barbara Martin was wearing that day. It's just the sole, the canvas has disintegrated, but it's the shoe that she was wearing. And also, a camera and the camera case that has Ken Martin's name and their address on it.

• 36:50Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, shit.

• 36:50Georgia Hardstark?

  So, fucking, game's over.

• 36:53Karen Kilgariff?

  So, that was on that day or like, later, but same team?

• 36:57Georgia Hardstark?

  No, that was his last dive. That was his, like, I'm, like, that happened, and he was like, okay, I'm gonna go in one more fucking time. And he's also able to bring up human remains.

• 37:08Karen Kilgariff?

  He should have left those there.

• 37:09Georgia Hardstark?

  I know, yeah. Yeah. Disturbing a maybe crime scene, but, you know, we're not judging. We're judging. He hands the remains over to a Hood River Sheriff's Deputy, and they are now with the Oregon State Forensics Investigators. And there's hope they'll be able to find clues as to why and how they ended up in the, at the bottom of the Cascade Locks. For Archer and many Oregonians, it's clear that the family drove into the water in a tragic accident. The Martin family is still very much in Portlanders' heart. The story has stayed in the news pretty much consistently over the past almost 70 years, 60, it'll be 67 years, yeah, in

• 37:54Georgia Hardstark?

  December. There's been books written and documentaries made about the mystery. The daughter of one of the Oregonian reporters who had tirelessly covered the case has one of Ken's candy cane decorations and keeps it out on her porch in memory. Archer says he plans to hold a memorial service this December at the spot where the car was found in Cascade Locks. And that is the story of the Martin family disappearance.

• 38:22Karen Kilgariff?

  Wow.

• 38:33Georgia Hardstark?

  Thank you.

• 38:34Karen Kilgariff?

  I mean, thank God.

• 38:36Georgia Hardstark?

  I know. It's just so tragic.

• 38:39Karen Kilgariff?

  And it's tragic, but then it's such a beautiful thing that, like, one person, so many people, but like, this one guy that cares so much that he's just like, look, I'm gonna fucking take care of this. Like, I'm doing it.

• 38:51Georgia Hardstark?

  Like, one person can make such a huge difference.

• 38:53Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah. That's lovely.

• 38:54Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 38:55Karen Kilgariff?

  Nice.

• 38:56Georgia Hardstark?

  Thank you. I'm sweating.

• 39:00Karen Kilgariff?

  Am I having a hot flush? Take a break. Take the pouch out and just relax for a second. Just relax.

• 39:12Speaker 01

  Please help us. They're everywhere. We think they're murder warrants. 911 Nashville returns.

• 39:19Speaker 02

  There's a homicide detective down here.

• 39:21Speaker 03

  Three bodies on the ground.

• 39:22Speaker 01

  With emergencies of biblical proportions.

• 39:25Speaker 03

  Hell, since swarms upon you and upon your people.

• 39:28Speaker 02

  That's one of the plagues for Bible.

• 39:29Speaker 03

  And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville.

• 39:32Speaker 01

  Brian Philippi joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

• 39:39Speaker 00

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• 40:33Karen Kilgariff?

  My story also takes place in northeast Portland.

• 40:39Karen Kilgariff?

  And I feel like the second I start it, you guys are going to know exactly what I'm talking about. Let's see. This story starts in 1997.

• 40:48Karen Kilgariff?

  A string of armed robberies have rocked northeast Portland over the last year. Nearly 20 businesses in this part of the city, including mom and pop stores, have been hit and their employees terrorized by thieves robbing them at gunpoint. Thankfully, no one's been physically hurt in any of these heists, but the police have no idea who's responsible. Then, in November of 1997, they finally get a break when the Rustica Italian Cafe on northeast Broadway and northeast 17th Avenue is hit. It's now the Broadway Grill and Brewery.

• 41:21Georgia Hardstark?

  Of course it is.

• 41:24Karen Kilgariff?

  I just shove a brewery in there. So during this incident, shots are fired and for the first time, someone is wounded, but it's not an employee or a patron of the cafe. It's one of the thieves. He still gets away, but this time, he'll leave behind DNA evidence that will finally give police the big break they need in this year-long crime spree. And when those tests come back, they'll identify two very unlikely culprits. Because the thieves terrorizing the area are not hardened ex-cons or members of a crime syndicate. They're two of the most popular boys at Grant High School.

• 41:59Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, my God.

• 42:03Karen Kilgariff?

  And Grant's principal at the time will tell Time Magazine that, quote, "They were feisty, defiant, I don't want to say it, but okay, borderline assholes."

• 42:14Georgia Hardstark?

  Finally, someone fucking says what we're all thinking.

• 42:16Karen Kilgariff?

  Someone says it in Time Magazine. And then the final line of that quote is, "Together, they were bad for each other." This is the story of star students turned armed robbers, Tom Curtis and Ethan Thrower.

• 42:29Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow. I don't know this one at all.

• 42:33Karen Kilgariff?

  I was so panicked to get through that without everybody knowing that I picked it up and didn't even take the paper clip off. I was just like, I will shove this into your ear. Okay, the sources for this are a 1999 article entitled "Most Likely to Succeed" by writer John Cloud for Time Magazine, a 1998 article entitled "The Boys Next Door" by Maureen O'Hagan, which ran in the Willamette Week newspaper, and a 2020... I always want to say Willamette.

• 43:05Georgia Hardstark?

  Willamette, yeah.

• 43:06Karen Kilgariff?

  I've been stressing about Willamette all goddamn day.

• 43:08Georgia Hardstark?

  I would have said Willamette.

• 43:10Karen Kilgariff?

  I've been kind of whispering it to myself, where it's like, it's logical, blam, blam, blam.

• 43:18Karen Kilgariff?

  And a 2023 article entitled "Runners High" by Julianne Balzey, and that ran in Grant Magazine, which makes me go, does Grant High School have their own magazine? I would love that more than anything.

• 43:31Georgia Hardstark?

  Yes, they do.

• 43:32Karen Kilgariff?

  They do. It's a nice glossy, kind of like people, but with local gossip.

• 43:37Georgia Hardstark?

  Is there a word jumble? I love a word jumble.

• 43:39Karen Kilgariff?

  Who wore it better? This armed robber turned senior?

• 43:46Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay. So when our story begins, Tom Curtis and Ethan Thrower are both in high school, good friends, with similar upbringings, with loving families, middle-class homes. They're both in the same class at Grant High. And that's also the high school where Mr. Holland's Opus was filmed. Have you ever? Have you ever?

• 44:07Georgia Hardstark?

  It's picturesque. It's beautiful, you guys.

• 44:09Karen Kilgariff?

  Absolutely gorgeous.

• 44:12Georgia Hardstark?

  Truly. My high school did not look like that.

• 44:14Karen Kilgariff?

  And yet, robbers, armed robbers, coming out of it day and night.

• 44:18Georgia Hardstark?

  True.

• 44:19Karen Kilgariff?

  Overrun with robbers. Both Tom and Ethan are at the top of their class, and they have a long list of impressive extracurriculars. What did you do for extracurriculars in high school?

• 44:30Georgia Hardstark?

  Are you serious?

• 44:31Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes, I am.

• 44:33Georgia Hardstark?

  I went to raves. Took ecstasy.

• 44:38Georgia Hardstark?

  And then I'd go straight from the rave to my 6:00 AM bakery job, still kind of high. Like, I don't know what to tell you.

• 44:44Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes.

• 44:45Georgia Hardstark?

  Soccer. I did soccer. I was a track runner and a soccer player.

• 44:50Karen Kilgariff?

  Soccer and track, yeah. Very athletic.

• 44:52Georgia Hardstark?

  What did you do?

• 44:54Karen Kilgariff?

  In high school, I did speech and debate.

• 44:56Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh.

• 44:59Karen Kilgariff?

  And then I realized, I don't like school and I don't care about extracurriculars. I'm not staying here for very much longer.

• 45:06Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 45:06Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 45:07Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 45:07Karen Kilgariff?

  I realized everyone was on this, like, a track of like, I have to do this, this, and this so I can get to college. And I was like, wait, wait a second. I don't want to go to college.

• 45:17Georgia Hardstark?

  No. I was like, I just want to dance.

• 45:21Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah. And look where it got me.

• 45:23Karen Kilgariff?

  Look, it worked.

• 45:24Georgia Hardstark?

  Look, it fucking worked. Dropouts.

• 45:26Karen Kilgariff?

  It works. Dropout, it works. Molly, please edit this part out. It's wrong to tell the children. Okay. They're... Okay, so both boys are track stars. Ethan sings in Grant High's elite choir, the Royal Blues. Anyone sing for the Royal Blues?

• 45:45Georgia Hardstark?

  Nope. Liar.

• 45:48Karen Kilgariff?

  That's stolen valor. If you're wooing as if you sang in the Royal Blues, I will call the FBI on you.

• 45:57Karen Kilgariff?

  Tom is an Eagle Scout, and he is also crowned the Homecoming King.

• 46:01Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 46:02Karen Kilgariff?

  Which has never happened in history.

• 46:04Georgia Hardstark?

  What?

• 46:05Karen Kilgariff?

  Just kidding.

• 46:06Georgia Hardstark?

  Which part?

• 46:07Karen Kilgariff?

  Sorry, that was an Eagle Scouts or nerds joke. And I guess you're all nerds. So Eagle Scout, Homecoming King. Well, Ethan is on the Homecoming Court, so he was nominated, but he didn't win.

• 46:20Georgia Hardstark?

  Bummer.

• 46:22Karen Kilgariff?

  They've been described as the most popular kids at Grant High, and both win senior superlatives. Tom's is funniest, and Ethan gets best dressed.

• 46:31Georgia Hardstark?

  Which one would you want? I mean, like, which superlative would you rather have?

• 46:35Karen Kilgariff?

  I won funniest, girl.

• 46:37Georgia Hardstark?

  Hey!

• 46:41Karen Kilgariff?

  But I was working day and night for that superlative. I mean, I never shut my goddamn mouth. I couldn't. I literally couldn't.

• 46:48Georgia Hardstark?

  The teacher was hated.

• 46:50Karen Kilgariff?

  They were just like, please, we beg you. Nuns begged me. I didn't... It's like, I'll be quiet when I feel like it, Sister Muriel.

• 47:01Karen Kilgariff?

  But Tom and Ethan also have their differences. Ethan's more laid back. He's like a chill guy personality, whereas Tom is the class clown. Bit of a shit stir. In old reports, people often describe him as having issues with knowing where to draw the line. Hmm, which seems very generous. So Tom, when I was reading this, and it isn't true, but I was like, this guy sounds short.

• 47:28Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, my God.

• 47:30Karen Kilgariff?

  Sorry.

• 47:31Georgia Hardstark?

  I don't think you can say that.

• 47:32Karen Kilgariff?

  You know those short guys where you're like, what are you fucking doing? Hold on. Let me tell you the rest, and then you can argue with me. I'm saying this as a girl who spent all of high school fat. And so, like, plenty of people said that to me. Let's all name it as we see it. What am I talking about? I'm 55. Okay.

• 47:56Karen Kilgariff?

  For example, Tom runs for student body president, and he gives a speech that is juvenile and mean-spirited. Now, it is 1997, and that's all anything was, ever.

• 48:07Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 48:08Karen Kilgariff?

  Very much the pre-internet, where everyone became best friends, but like, literally eight years before, it was like, as toxic as it could be.

• 48:17Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 48:18Karen Kilgariff?

  So he basically gives a campaign speech where he just makes fun of what every faculty member looks like at the school.

• 48:25Georgia Hardstark?

  Bro.

• 48:26Karen Kilgariff?

  Super mean, right? And the teachers are humiliated. I mean, he like, takes them down, but of course...

• 48:33Georgia Hardstark?

  To be a teacher, and you're like, I'm just trying to help, and then this fucking kid comes along.

• 48:37Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 48:38Georgia Hardstark?

  Little shit.

• 48:39Karen Kilgariff?

  You and your teeth, or whatever, where you're like, I didn't realize.

• 48:44Karen Kilgariff?

  But of course, his classmates eat it up, and he wins the election. And this is the definition of life in the 90s. Around the same time, August of 1997, Tom and Ethan and some of their friends are at a 7-Eleven when they see the line gets really long. They don't want to wait in the line, so they just walk out with the shit in their hands. The cashier goes out and confronts them, and she's like, hey, what are you doing? And things escalate. The way it's written is, things escalate. Tom ends up punching her in the face. And after acting belligerently to the responding officer, resisting arrest, and getting bitten by a police dog while trying to run away.

• 49:25Georgia Hardstark?

  Holy shit.

• 49:27Karen Kilgariff?

  Short, right?

• 49:31Karen Kilgariff?

  Tom is arrested and multiple charges are filed against him. So we don't have any details about how this case progressed through the courts because of court, juvenile court, and so it's all sealed. What we do know is that Tom eventually does apologize to the clerk. My guess is that he was compelled to by the judge, essentially, to be like, we can get these charges dropped. All that is to say, Tom is the more confrontational of the two buddies. And as that vice principal said, Tom and Ethan bring out the absolute worst in each other. So little does that vice principal or anyone else know that the year before, these boys

• 50:12Karen Kilgariff?

  win their yearbook superlatives, before the incident at 7/11, Tom and Ethan have been knee-deep in very serious escalating criminal activity. And that begins in November of 1996, when they are both juniors. The two of them start stealing cars and taking them for joy rides around Portland, and they never get caught. So they just keep doing it, and they just keep loving it, and they're just like, this is it. This is the life for us. So of course, they're emboldened by that, and a few months into stealing cars, they decide they're gonna take it up a notch and see if they can pull off a robbery.

• 50:52Georgia Hardstark?

  Fuck.

• 50:53Karen Kilgariff?

  So, right? So they target a Howard Johnson's that's close to their high school, smart, and using a handgun that Ethan took from his dad.

• 51:04Georgia Hardstark?

  A real gun.

• 51:05Karen Kilgariff?

  A real handgun. They put on ski masks, and they run into the Howard Johnson's, and they rob the manager, and then they run away.

• 51:14Georgia Hardstark?

  Holy shit.

• 51:15Karen Kilgariff?

  Fifteen days later, the two of them hit a Baskin Robbins. A few weeks after that, they hit the Burger King where Ethan works.

• 51:23Georgia Hardstark?

  They're not going for like, hi, where he works?

• 51:27Karen Kilgariff?

  He works there, and they're like, you know what we're gonna do? Come back later. You'll take that shirt off and the hat for sure. And ski mask for sure.

• 51:36Georgia Hardstark?

  But you smell like Burger King french fries. They're like, we can tell it's you.

• 51:42Karen Kilgariff?

  Most robbers don't smell like oil. So they rob that, and then they go back to the same Baskin Robbins and hold that same cashier up for a second time.

• 51:53Georgia Hardstark?

  Come on, leave her alone.

• 51:54Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes, for real, and it is a woman, of course. So now it's a spree, and they continue on. They rob a small natural food store. We're not sure which one. A new-agey shop could be fucking anywhere. A Barnes & Noble, closed now. Not really.

• 52:16Georgia Hardstark?

  What'd she say?

• 52:18Karen Kilgariff?

  She goes, "No."

• 52:20Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh my god, spoiler.

• 52:26Karen Kilgariff?

  We have bad news about the Barnes & Noble franchise, my friend. They won't even get into Bed Bath & Beyond, my god. It's totally not even on this page. Okay, there it is. An ice cream parlor, so a non-Baskin Robbins, I guess, a Wendy's and a Taco Bell. They even pull in fellow students on some of these robberies. So a couple of them, they're not alone. That's how, like, they get so emboldened by not being caught, that they're like, guys, come hang with us and rob people. So according to the Willamette Week newspaper, they net between 50 to 60, sorry, $60 to

• 53:10Karen Kilgariff?

  $500 in each robbery. Do you want to guess?

• 53:14Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, in today's money, 1997, 60 to, 60 to what? 500?

• 53:18Karen Kilgariff?

  Between 60 and 500.

• 53:19Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay, it's gonna be between 1,200 and 1,450.

• 53:23Karen Kilgariff?

  Not even close.

• 53:24Georgia Hardstark?

  It's so disappointing.

• 53:27Karen Kilgariff?

  I know, it's just difficult. It's just random numbers guessing. That's what we call this part of the show. You say numbers to me, and I'll say numbers to you.

• 53:35Georgia Hardstark?

  And I'll tell you you're wrong about the numbers you've said to me.

• 53:37Karen Kilgariff?

  Every time. It always hurts, and yet it's meaningless.

• 53:41Georgia Hardstark?

  But also, like, fast food was like 59 cents back then. It was so cheap. I don't, why would you?

• 53:46Karen Kilgariff?

  If you get me started about the price of groceries and how nobody can fucking survive these days, and what the fuck is actually going on? How do people buy groceries? How do people buy anything?

• 53:58Georgia Hardstark?

  No.

• 54:00Karen Kilgariff?

  It was, thank you, it was between, someone yelled "numbers." It was between $120 and $1,000 in today's money. Such huge risk for, you could barely buy any nicotine pouches for that. Okay, so all the while, these boys are telling themselves what they're doing isn't that bad because they're not hurting anybody, and they get to feel like badass gangsters. The police noticed the uptick in robberies directly around Grant High School pretty early on. But the robbery unit, which would have been the unit that tracked all of these robberies and kind of went, hey, I see a pattern here, it had recently been cut.

• 54:44Karen Kilgariff?

  So they're all investigated kind of in a vacuum as individual robberies, and no one looks at the big picture. And if someone on the force had been looking at them collectively, they would have noticed the similarities in MO, not just the area, but the MO, the witness descriptions of the thieves themselves, and the fact that all the victims report the perps are both young men, one is white, one is black, and they're always wearing ski masks. So pretty consistent.

• 55:12Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 55:13Karen Kilgariff?

  But for months, police-

• 55:15Georgia Hardstark?

  I just said one short. I usually don't allow audience participation, but that was good.

• 55:24Karen Kilgariff?

  With Portland, I allow it because they don't fuck around. They're not just gonna be like-

• 55:29Georgia Hardstark?

  It's not like a woo-

• 55:30Karen Kilgariff?

  My sister says hi, or whatever. They don't do that.

• 55:32Georgia Hardstark?

  It's not a Stephanie woo-hoo, it's like a fucking actual-

• 55:35Karen Kilgariff?

  No, hard jokes. That's how you do it. Thank you. So for months, the police have no idea who is behind these robberies, until Tom and Ethan decide they're going to case a local blockbuster for a future cross.

• 55:50Georgia Hardstark?

  So vintage.

• 55:51Karen Kilgariff?

  Right?

• 55:52Georgia Hardstark?

  This is also, I'm the exact same age in like, school, whatever, as them, and so I'm just like, there.

• 55:58Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes, you're feeling it.

• 55:59Georgia Hardstark?

  Mine.

• 56:00Karen Kilgariff?

  They've got their hypercolor shirts on.

• 56:02Georgia Hardstark?

  Jinkos, jinkos.

• 56:05Karen Kilgariff?

  Jinko jeans, some puka necklaces here and there, even though it's the Pacific Northwest. You're not in Hawaii, take that off. Or were you just?

• 56:14Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 56:15Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay, so someone sees them casing the blockbuster, calls the police. When the police arrive, Tom and Ethan just outrun them because they're track stars.

• 56:25Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh my god. You never run away from a cop before, or a security guard?

• 56:30Karen Kilgariff?

  No.

• 56:31Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, me neither.

• 56:32Karen Kilgariff?

  Tell it, tell it.

• 56:36Georgia Hardstark?

  Nope, my juvenile record is sealed, and it's going to stay that way.

• 56:41Karen Kilgariff?

  I'm gonna have to have it reopened. I'm gonna say it's for the podcast, it's really important. Did you run from police?

• 56:48Georgia Hardstark?

  Yes, I've run from, oh, yes.

• 56:51Karen Kilgariff?

  No one's here.

• 56:52Georgia Hardstark?

  Yes.

• 56:53Karen Kilgariff?

  No one's here. What, what were your-

• 56:57Georgia Hardstark?

  I don't, I-

• 56:58Karen Kilgariff?

  What were your pockets filled with?

• 56:59Georgia Hardstark?

  Cigarettes and, yeah, no.

• 57:02Karen Kilgariff?

  Wait a second, can I just say, we went to an amazing, like, vintage antique store place today, and the owner, it wasn't, she wasn't there, it was her partner that worked there and told me, I bought five, you know, Lucy cigarettes, when they sell them loose? She knitted Lucy cigarettes, and some of them are full, and they have a pipe cleaner in them, so if you hold up, you're holding a knit cigarette that looks like a real cigarette. And I looked, and I was like, what? Like, my eyes, I was like, there's no way that this is what I'm seeing. And then I picked it up like this, and I was like, is this a knit Lucy cigarette? And he's like, yes, they, and some of them are knit to look like they're halfway burnt down, so they have ash at the end.

• 57:47Georgia Hardstark?

  That's a lot of effort to fucking smoke a little doob, you know?

• 57:52Karen Kilgariff?

  It's just a, like, it's just a prop.

• 57:54Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 57:55Karen Kilgariff?

  There's no reason to do it, except for to have a half-burnt-out cigarette and hold it and be like, what?

• 58:05Georgia Hardstark?

  And it just smells like weed and it's just like...

• 58:08Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes.

• 58:08Georgia Hardstark?

  That's amazing.

• 58:09Karen Kilgariff?

  I'm so excited about my knit cigarettes.

• 58:11Georgia Hardstark?

  You bought one?

• 58:12Karen Kilgariff?

  I bought all five.

• 58:15Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, that's art.

• 58:18Karen Kilgariff?

  That's fucking art.

• 58:19Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 58:21Karen Kilgariff?

  Actually,

• 58:23Karen Kilgariff?

  Marcus, will you ask Craig if he would grab some of those Lucy's? Maybe, ooh, maybe if the hometown is good enough, someone will get a Lucy.

• 58:34Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay, listen, I have a story to tell.

• 58:38Karen Kilgariff?

  So, okay, so now it's 1997, late 1997. Tom and Ethan are halfway through their senior year at Grant High. Tom's won a track scholarship to a college in New York State, and Ethan's been accepted to a school in West Virginia. So their futures, really, their futures are laid out and ahead of them. And it's been a year since their foray into armed robbery. They've robbed 18 businesses so far, all while leading double lives as star students. Now they're starting to feel like, I don't know, maybe this might catch up with us and it could affect our future.

• 59:14Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 59:16Karen Kilgariff?

  And ruin prom. So,

• 59:20Karen Kilgariff?

  so Tom and Ethan decide they're gonna do one last big crime together.

• 59:24Georgia Hardstark?

  Come on!

• 59:25Karen Kilgariff?

  We gotta do it. Gotta do it. It's like no one reads or watches TV. They're like, we're the ones that are gonna do the one last big crime and it'll be fine.

• 59:34Georgia Hardstark?

  This time.

• 59:35Karen Kilgariff?

  Yep. So, they start by stealing a Chevy Suburban and driving it to a local Italian restaurant called Rustica. When they get there, the boys put on their ski, the boys put on their ski masks and they take the gun and they storm in and shocking diners and staff. It's just a lovely little Italian restaurant in a neighborhood.

• 59:56Georgia Hardstark?

  And it's like full of people?

• 59:57Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 59:58Georgia Hardstark?

  Bananas, okay.

• 59:59Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah. They demand money from the register, they threaten the staff, they run out with about $500. Wanna do a fast one?

• 1:00:07Georgia Hardstark?

  Twelve hundred?

• 1:00:08Karen Kilgariff?

  Close a thousand.

• 1:00:09Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 1:00:09Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, so...

• 1:00:13Karen Kilgariff?

  So, they, Tom and Ethan then climb into the stolen Chevy Suburban and they speed away, looking for somewhere to ditch it and like, switch cars and be badasses.

• 1:00:25Karen Kilgariff?

  Thinking that they've just gotten away with their last big robbery. But, while Tom is driving, Ethan decides, and this breaks my heart because this is absolutely something I would do. Ethan decides that he is going to take his gun, his father's gun, and put it in the waistband of his pants.

• 1:00:43Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh!

• 1:00:43Karen Kilgariff?

  Like a badass gangster, right?

• 1:00:45Georgia Hardstark?

  That's something you would do? What are you talking about?

• 1:00:49Karen Kilgariff?

  You don't know me.

• 1:00:53Karen Kilgariff?

  I contain multitudes. No, I mean, I just mean in the way of, don't think the, I'm trying to look cool thing all the way through to what's the bad thing that could happen? Like, for example, Ethan shooting himself in the balls.

• 1:01:08Georgia Hardstark?

  No!

• 1:01:09Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes.

• 1:01:10Georgia Hardstark?

  No!

• 1:01:11Karen Kilgariff?

  It's horrible.

• 1:01:12Georgia Hardstark?

  It's like a bad joke.

• 1:01:13Karen Kilgariff?

  It's worst-case scenario for a lot of people.

• 1:01:20Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh my god.

• 1:01:21Karen Kilgariff?

  They just think they're like, kind of, you know, amped up, right? Of like, getting away.

• 1:01:25Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:26Karen Kilgariff?

  And suddenly, it's turned into, I mean, first of all, just the, it's the idea of a gun going off inside a car.

• 1:01:32Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:33Karen Kilgariff?

  I don't care, that alone.

• 1:01:34Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:35Karen Kilgariff?

  And then, secondly, it's your friend like, staring at each other. Because you know there's the seven seconds of, I can't feel anything, maybe nothing happened?

• 1:01:42Georgia Hardstark?

  I guess, I don't know, I've never been...

• 1:01:44Karen Kilgariff?

  I didn't tell you about when I got shot in the balls?

• 1:01:50Karen Kilgariff?

  Senior year was crazy.

• 1:01:56Karen Kilgariff?

  We can only assume it was insane.

• 1:01:58Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:58Karen Kilgariff?

  What we know is that it didn't involve a lot of linear thinking, what happened next. All we know is Tom immediately pulls the car over at northeast 27th Avenue and Halsey Street, right? It's just basically blocks away from the restaurant they just robbed.

• 1:02:14Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh no.

• 1:02:15Karen Kilgariff?

  So he immediately pulls over.

• 1:02:16Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 1:02:16Karen Kilgariff?

  They ditch the Suburban. Tom then calls 911. It's unclear how they get there, but they end up at the hospital. But it's not via ambu- ambu- ambulance.

• 1:02:31Karen Kilgariff?

  So when they get...

• 1:02:31Georgia Hardstark?

  He walks then, maybe?

• 1:02:33Karen Kilgariff?

  I mean,

• 1:02:35Karen Kilgariff?

  some nice person picked up two high school boys, one bleeding terribly?

• 1:02:39Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, I don't, that's, that's a story.

• 1:02:41Karen Kilgariff?

  I don't know. Yeah, I'll delve deeper into this and get back to every single person in this room.

• 1:02:49Karen Kilgariff?

  But, thank god, they end up at the hospital. That's when, you know, everybody sees what's happening, the boys are separated, the police are called, and they both start getting questioned. So Ethan says that,

• 1:03:03Karen Kilgariff?

  at first Ethan says that he was shot by gang members. And Tom, right, the old, the old it'll get you out of it.

• 1:03:12Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:13Karen Kilgariff?

  Tom backs him up. Tom backs him up so much that he takes the police down to the spot where he claims the gang members shot Ethan.

• 1:03:24Karen Kilgariff?

  Meanwhile, while they're doing that, Ethan cracks and immediately tells the police, it wasn't gang members, it's my dad's gun, we did it, we did it. And totally, yeah, he, he basically is like, I lied, I, I can't have my parents find out, like, it's all falling apart.

• 1:03:41Georgia Hardstark?

  Too bad.

• 1:03:42Karen Kilgariff?

  Well...

• 1:03:44Karen Kilgariff?

  So they both leave out the part about robbing the restaurant, obviously, but the police can connect the dots pretty quickly because Tom's 911 call came minutes after the 911 call from Rustica.

• 1:03:58Karen Kilgariff?

  And a Chevy Suburban had been reported missing earlier the same day and it's then found right where the teens left it, not far from Rustica, with a bloody front seat and a discarded ski mask lying nearby.

• 1:04:14Georgia Hardstark?

  Guys, you gotta go to college before you become a criminal, you know?

• 1:04:18Karen Kilgariff?

  For real. That's one of those like, your mom isn't gonna come through here and pick up all your ski masks after every robbery.

• 1:04:28Karen Kilgariff?

  But, without an admission from Tom or Ethan or any other hard evidence connecting them to the Rustica robbery or the Chevy Suburban robbery, the investigators don't really have much of a case. All they can do is take a blood sample from the Suburban, send it off for testing against Ethan's DNA and hope a match will justify an arrest warrant. It takes several months, but in April of 1998, when Tom and Ethan are weeks away from graduation, those test results come back. The DNA in the Suburban matches Ethan's own and police also find witnesses who remember seeing a Suburban fleeing the scene after the Rustica robbery. It all gets tied together. At this point, police also have built out a crime map

• 1:05:13Karen Kilgariff?

  of the 19 businesses that have been targeted around Grant High School and they're finally connecting them to Tom and Ethan. We have that map.

• 1:05:22Georgia Hardstark?

  There it is.

• 1:05:25Georgia Hardstark?

  What synergy?

• 1:05:26Karen Kilgariff?

  It's almost like a clock. It's the numbers, the center of it right there, just like, boys.

• 1:05:34Georgia Hardstark?

  What synergy? Is that a yoga studio?

• 1:05:38Georgia Hardstark?

  They didn't have those then?

• 1:05:39Karen Kilgariff?

  Please don't tell me you robbed Synergy.

• 1:05:42Georgia Hardstark?

  Not Synergy!

• 1:05:43Karen Kilgariff?

  Wait, do you know what Synergy is?

• 1:05:46Georgia Hardstark?

  No.

• 1:05:46Karen Kilgariff?

  Like a store or anything? You've never heard of it? Is anyone who, you know what Synergy is?

• 1:05:51Georgia Hardstark?

  Nobody knows.

• 1:05:52Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, they're not, they're not even listening to me, those two women. I thought you were raising your hand, they're talking and pointing at the map and talking to each other.

• 1:06:00Georgia Hardstark?

  I live there!

• 1:06:01Karen Kilgariff?

  I'm talking into a microphone, it's the loudest thing. What, is there a key or something? That's where your house is? I live right there! I live behind Synergy!

• 1:06:18Karen Kilgariff?

  All right. Well, that didn't work.

• 1:06:26Karen Kilgariff?

  Showed you the map. They, they even find witnesses at one of the earlier crime scenes who saw a distinctive getaway vehicle, a red Volkswagen Bug. That's the kind of car Tom drives.

• 1:06:37Georgia Hardstark?

  Uh oh.

• 1:06:38Karen Kilgariff?

  So, very suspiciously, the robberies in this part of Portland stop right around the same time that Ethan shoots himself in the balls, so...

• 1:06:50Karen Kilgariff?

  So on April 16th, 1998, 19-year-old Ethan Thrower is arrested in connection with the Rustica armed robbery. This is what sucks. Ethan is arrested at school one day before senior prom.

• 1:07:01Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh!

• 1:07:03Karen Kilgariff?

  When I wrote "and ruin prom" at the beginning of the story, I, I was just writing a joke. I hadn't gotten to this part and then when I read this part, I was like, you gotta be fucking kidding me. It literally ruined prom.

• 1:07:14Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh man.

• 1:07:16Karen Kilgariff?

  I mean, and then I started picturing of like, what happens when the, one of the most popular boys in high school gets arrested at school and was like, do you get a reverse spirit tunnel out? Like, do the cheerleaders line up on either side and then cry you out? Or... I'm just, I like to work through possibilities. Since authorities are trying to secure an arrest warrant for Tom, he does end up going to prom.

• 1:07:42Georgia Hardstark?

  Shut up.

• 1:07:43Karen Kilgariff?

  I swear to god.

• 1:07:44Georgia Hardstark?

  All right, good for him. Beautiful, beautiful night of your life.

• 1:07:47Karen Kilgariff?

  Right. He still deserves a beautiful night of dancing.

• 1:07:53Karen Kilgariff?

  The theme of the prom that year was the psychological damage of gun violence on the victim. That's a weird coincidence. What were the decorations?

• 1:08:06Karen Kilgariff?

  But once prom is over, Tom vanishes.

• 1:08:11Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh.

• 1:08:11Karen Kilgariff?

  That's right. The fact that a high schooler is able to slip through the Portland PD's fingers is incredibly embarrassing for them.

• 1:08:19Georgia Hardstark?

  Sure.

• 1:08:20Karen Kilgariff?

  He's like, I just wanna party one more time, can't you guys leave me alone? They're like, you know what, yes, we will. And then he's gone. So, now it's graduation day at Grant High and two janky white plastic folding chairs sit empty on the football field.

• 1:08:37Karen Kilgariff?

  Why always the hardest folding chairs to sit in?

• 1:08:40Georgia Hardstark?

  Truly.

• 1:08:41Karen Kilgariff?

  Grass that's sinking, because it's always wet.

• 1:08:47Karen Kilgariff?

  God, I, look at, that's all me just writing jokes. We're not...

• 1:08:55Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, here it is. It's worth it.

• 1:08:59Karen Kilgariff?

  You know, that type A valedictorian girl was so pissed, she had to rewrite the top of their speech. Like, "Today, we're here to honor our hard work and dedication of these past four years, while some people want to upstage our day by committing a bunch of felonies that cannot upstage our determination."

• 1:09:18Georgia Hardstark?

  That was worth it. That was actually really fucking great.

• 1:09:20Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay, thank you.

• 1:09:23Karen Kilgariff?

  I just put myself in the mindset of a person who did do homework.

• 1:09:29Karen Kilgariff?

  Then, in June of 1998, the story comes out that Tom was not actually on the lam when he disappeared. He just went on the big Mexico trip his buddies planned for graduation.

• 1:09:42Georgia Hardstark?

  Like, walked right through with his passport and everything.

• 1:09:45Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah. Of course, now there's even more outrage in Portland, because already, when this story broke, the people of Portland were just like, "What the fuck's wrong with these kids? Like, what is happening?" And then it was just like, "Here's a further update on that story, and you're not gonna like it." It's like insane. So, also, his friends on this Mexico trip knew he was supposed to get arrested in Portland. Nobody snitched on him.

• 1:10:15Karen Kilgariff?

  Because, bro code, right? So, once the trip is over, Tom then does actually go on the lam. He gets himself to Mesa, Arizona. He gets a job at a local café. He starts renting a room there, and he basically just kind of starts life over in Mesa. Neither his landlord nor the couple who owns the café he works at have any idea that he's a fugitive and a criminal. The landlord will later describe him as, quote, "The best tenant I ever had."

• 1:10:44Karen Kilgariff?

  And the café owner will describe him as, quote, "Just wonderful."

• 1:10:50Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 1:10:50Karen Kilgariff?

  I mean, it all could have been so great in Mesa, Arizona, but that summer, the TV show "America's Most Wanted" runs a story on Tom.

• 1:11:02Georgia Hardstark?

  Snitches. "America's Most Wanted," such snitches.

• 1:11:06Karen Kilgariff?

  The ultimate snitches.

• 1:11:09Karen Kilgariff?

  And they never got any stitches. The owners of the diner see the episode.

• 1:11:15Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, no. I thought it was wonderful.

• 1:11:21Karen Kilgariff?

  And they are snitches. So, through uncontrollable sobs, they call in and report their beautiful tenant, I mean, employee, to the police. Tom somehow, though, gets wind of it, or is just smart enough to know, and he leaves before the police arrive.

• 1:11:43Karen Kilgariff?

  The next time anyone hears from him, it's him calling his father from the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas.

• 1:11:50Karen Kilgariff?

  And Tom tells his dad he wants to surrender, and basically, they talk, and then he ends up turning himself in to the FBI in Las Vegas. Tom is eventually extradited back to Oregon. He will ultimately plead guilty to 19 of the 100 counts filed against him.

• 1:12:09Karen Kilgariff?

  So nuts. And then there's a very long paragraph from Marin explaining why she didn't try to do the then-math of how much money they made from all their robberies, where I'm just like, "Girl, do not worry about it."

• 1:12:24Karen Kilgariff?

  She thinks it's around $10,000. So, here's where a woman named Donna Nelson, who owned one of the businesses that Tom Curtis and Ethan Thrower targeted, she will go on to say and tell a reporter, quote, "They were terrorists. They held a gun to the head of our clerk and counted and asked him if he wanted to die."

• 1:12:43Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, my god.

• 1:12:45Karen Kilgariff?

  End quote. And that cashier at Baskin Robbins, who they robbed twice, is one of the many victims who afterwards reported sustained psychological trauma because of that experience, including recurring nightmares. So, nothing can fully erase the harm that these boys did, but this is one of those stories where both men go to jail, and we do see some change, which is pretty amazing. Definitely, of course, a lot of growing up, horrible that they're tried as adults and they go to jails, the youngest adults that can go to jail. Tom has a rough time at first, which is a hilarious thing to say about going to fucking prison.

• 1:13:28Karen Kilgariff?

  But he eventually becomes a model prisoner. He's known for his big personality and his charm, just like in high school.

• 1:13:34Georgia Hardstark?

  Does he get, do they do some relatives in prison? In the prison yearbook? Is there a prison yearbook?

• 1:13:41Karen Kilgariff?

  There's, in a way.

• 1:13:48Karen Kilgariff?

  He ends up actually taking advantage of a program that helps inmates get their college degrees, and then he's released in 2009, when he's 29 years old. So, he serves his full sentence. He would be in his 40s now. He seems to prefer living a very quiet life. One of the few public comments he ever gave over the years was, in the year 2000, he's still in prison, and he declined an interview with the Oregonian, but he did tell the reporter that he, quote, "Would like to dissuade kids from acting as mindlessly as himself."

• 1:14:26Karen Kilgariff?

  Ethan, meanwhile, is released in 2006, a few years before Tom. Now in his mid-20s, he enrolls at Portland State University. He graduates in 2009.

• 1:14:38Karen Kilgariff?

  He's a family man now, and he works here in Portland as a youth social worker. And he has also, this I love, he's written a children's book called "A Kid's Book About Incarceration," where he talks about his time in prison. And in the book, he writes, quote, "Today, I reflect on the people I hurt and the choices I made. I know I can't take them back, but I can talk about it, listen, and be part of helping others. I am here to tell you, change and growth are possible in people. I am glad I never lost sight of this and that I got a second chance." And that is the story of the Grant High School star students turned criminals, Tom Curtis and Ethan Thrower.

• 1:15:23Karen Kilgariff?

  Holy shit.

• 1:15:30Speaker 07

  911, what's your emergency?

• 1:15:33Speaker 07

  Please help us. They're everywhere. We think they're murder hornets.

• 1:15:37Speaker 01

  911 Nashville returns.

• 1:15:40Speaker 02

  What's a homicide detective doing here?

• 1:15:42Speaker 03

  Three bodies on the ground.

• 1:15:43Speaker 01

  With emergencies of biblical proportions.

• 1:15:46Speaker 03

  Nothing swarms upon you and upon your people. That's one of the plagues in the Bible. And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville.

• 1:15:53Speaker 01

  Brian Phillippe joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

• 1:16:00Speaker 00

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• 1:16:54Georgia Hardstark?

  That was great. Good job.

• 1:16:55Karen Kilgariff?

  Thank you.

• 1:16:59Georgia Hardstark?

  Time for a hometown?

• 1:17:04Karen Kilgariff?

  Vince.

• 1:17:06Speaker 03

  Yo, yo, yo, yo.

• 1:17:07Karen Kilgariff?

  Vince Avril, ladies and gentlemen.

• 1:17:11Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, there he is.

• 1:17:15Speaker 03

  Correct me if I'm wrong, I think this is the first time you've done a show in an active war zone.

• 1:17:26Speaker 03

  So, I'm gonna try to get you guys some empty bottles of Mountain Dew to spit your dip in.

• 1:17:33Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay. Vince is on this side. Guys, can you see?

• 1:17:36Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, my god, they're so cute.

• 1:17:45Georgia Hardstark?

  Tell them about the hometowns, the rules.

• 1:17:46Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay, it's hometown time. You know all these rules. Here's the first rule I'm gonna say to you guys. Holy shit. Don't fucking threaten us.

• 1:18:03Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh my god, was that so satisfying?

• 1:18:05Karen Kilgariff?

  It felt pretty great, it did. And the first thing I thought of when that was like, is this, there's beautiful like porcelain something inside that thing?

• 1:18:13Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh.

• 1:18:13Karen Kilgariff?

  As I picked it.

• 1:18:14Georgia Hardstark?

  There was a cat.

• 1:18:15Karen Kilgariff?

  There wasn't.

• 1:18:18Karen Kilgariff?

  Do that. Um, this is the part where you tell your hometown, it's gotta be local. Uh, if it can't be Portland, it should be Oregon. People get mad when it's not. Don't be so drunk, you can't tell your whole story. What are the rest of them?

• 1:18:34Georgia Hardstark?

  Um, beginning, middle, end?

• 1:18:36Karen Kilgariff?

  Beginning, middle, end, and, and you know.

• 1:18:39Georgia Hardstark?

  Just don't, don't shit, don't be shitty.

• 1:18:45Karen Kilgariff?

  And you're picking. I think you're gonna do it.

• 1:18:46Georgia Hardstark?

  No.

• 1:18:47Karen Kilgariff?

  I think this is your big time.

• 1:18:48Georgia Hardstark?

  I have to pick?

• 1:18:48Karen Kilgariff?

  Do it, you can do it.

• 1:18:49Georgia Hardstark?

  I hate this, I hate this. I'm so sorry, everyone. Please forgive me. Oh my god. Yes, right here, yes. Yeah, come over there, Vince.

• 1:19:01Georgia Hardstark?

  Sorry.

• 1:19:04Georgia Hardstark?

  As a people pleaser, Karen.

• 1:19:08Georgia Hardstark?

  As a people pleaser, that's really fucking hard, so.

• 1:19:11Karen Kilgariff?

  All of a sudden.

• 1:19:11Georgia Hardstark?

  It's just because I have good vision, that's literally the reason.

• 1:19:13Karen Kilgariff?

  Everything gets so intense at that part.

• 1:19:16Georgia Hardstark?

  I know.

• 1:19:16Karen Kilgariff?

  People who are like, like this, and suddenly they're like.

• 1:19:20Karen Kilgariff?

  It's like, okay, lamb of God.

• 1:19:25Karen Kilgariff?

  Hi.

• 1:19:26Georgia Hardstark?

  Hi.

• 1:19:31Karen Kilgariff?

  Guys, this is Honor.

• 1:19:35Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh.

• 1:19:36Karen Kilgariff?

  You can stand right in the middle there and pick up that microphone. Here we go.

• 1:19:41Speaker 07

  So the friend that I'm with is super embarrassed right now, she's like, oh. So, uh, my name's Honor and I-

• 1:19:49Karen Kilgariff?

  Where are you from?

• 1:19:50Speaker 07

  Uh, Southern Oregon, Roseburg.

• 1:19:55Speaker 07

  Those people are not from Roseburg. Like, no.

• 1:19:59Georgia Hardstark?

  You wouldn't share.

• 1:20:01Karen Kilgariff?

  Not allowed to share in for Roseburg, okay.

• 1:20:03Speaker 07

  So, I, um, obviously, I grew up there and in like grade school, we had someone transferred to our class and we'll call her Jennifer, because there were like 19 Jennifers in our class. Um, and it was super concerning because she lived with her aunt and everybody, oh, sorry, I'm old, so.

• 1:20:32Georgia Hardstark?

  Don't apologize.

• 1:20:33Speaker 07

  This was like the, like mid eighties. So, you know, we were watching the evening news as a family and, um, I'm not drunk, I'm just-

• 1:20:45Karen Kilgariff?

  No, you're fine, you're fine.

• 1:20:47Speaker 07

  No. Like, my family will tell you, she falls all the time. Um, anyway, so. Uh, so she transferred, she and her brother transferred to our school and they live with their aunt and we knew that her, uh, mom had passed away and her dad was in prison. And, yeah, exactly, shit. Uh, because we're children and you shouldn't tell us things like that.

• 1:21:18Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:18Speaker 07

  So, um, it just moved along, it was like, okay, like, that's your family, I have a stepdad, like, we're all just different, it's fine, like, we're moving along. And then, like, I think I was like somewhere in high school and the, um, front page of the news review, you're welcome, uh, said, like, Jennifer's dad is released. Uh, and I was like, oh, look at this, and my parents were like.

• 1:21:54Speaker 07

  I'm like, what, what's happening? And so the story was that her mom had passed away because she hadn't read the instructions on the hairspray. And, uh, she had lit a cigarette at the same time. Exactly. And so, and I was like, what? I don't understand. But in the eighties, you don't ask questions, you just are like, okay, that checks, let's go to Boy Scouts or whatever.

• 1:22:32Speaker 07

  Uh, so years later, I Googled it and, um, yeah, she definitely, there was a fire, but she had passed away after a gunshot wound.

• 1:22:43Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh.

• 1:22:44Speaker 07

  And I was like, um, so does anybody else see this? Like, is anybody talking about this? Are you in counseling? Like, let's unpack this. And so it was, yeah, it was very awkward, because it was like in college and, you know, Portland State. Who's mascot? You guys need to know the name. It's a Viking and his name is Victor E. Viking.

• 1:23:11Karen Kilgariff?

  Wait, the hometown's over now, right?

• 1:23:14Speaker 07

  Sorry.

• 1:23:15Karen Kilgariff?

  No, don't apologize. That was great.

• 1:23:18Speaker 07

  So I understood later that she was in foster care and if you have the opportunity, please become a resource parent because like, we need you.

• 1:23:25Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, yes, yes. Beautiful. Honor. That was great.

• 1:23:30Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:31Karen Kilgariff?

  Honor, everybody.

• 1:23:32Georgia Hardstark?

  Honor.

• 1:23:33Karen Kilgariff?

  Look, now, Honor, you get your choice. Which Lucy would you like?

• 1:23:41Speaker 07

  Um, definitely one that's been burnt.

• 1:23:44Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes, obviously, right?

• 1:23:46Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 1:23:48Karen Kilgariff?

  Honor, everybody.

• 1:23:49Georgia Hardstark?

  Honor.

• 1:23:51Karen Kilgariff?

  Let Roseburg know, let Roseburg know how you feel.

• 1:23:55Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh my god, Portland.

• 1:23:57Karen Kilgariff?

  What a joy to be back here with you again, live. There was a while there where it felt like it was never gonna happen and it's a really a dream come true that we're here and that we get to see your faces in person. It really means the world to us that you give a shit about this podcast after 10 years. It's incredible. Thank you so much.

• 1:24:15Georgia Hardstark?

  Thank you, and we love you, Portland, we support you, we love what you guys are fucking doing and, um, you know, kick ass.

• 1:24:25Karen Kilgariff?

  Kick ass.

• 1:24:25Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:27Karen Kilgariff?

  And also stay sexy.

• 1:24:28Georgia Hardstark?

  And.

• 1:24:31Karen Kilgariff?

  Thanks, you guys.

• 1:24:32Speaker 07

  Thank you.

• 1:24:34Karen Kilgariff?

  Elvis, do you want a cookie?

• 1:24:43Karen Kilgariff?

  This has been an Exactly Right production.

• 1:24:44Georgia Hardstark?

  Our senior producer is Molly Smith and our associate producer is Tessa Hughes.

• 1:24:48Karen Kilgariff?

  Our editor is Aristotle Lasevato.

• 1:24:50Georgia Hardstark?

  This episode was mixed by Leona Scolacci.

• 1:24:52Karen Kilgariff?

  Our researchers are Mary McGlashan and Ali Elkin.

• 1:24:55Georgia Hardstark?

  Email your hometowns to [email protected].

• 1:24:58Karen Kilgariff?

  And follow the show on Instagram at MyFavoriteMurder.

• 1:25:01Georgia Hardstark?

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

• 1:25:05Karen Kilgariff?

  And now you can watch My Favorite Murder on Netflix.

• 1:25:08Georgia Hardstark?

  And when you're there, hit the double thumbs up and the remind me buttons. That's the best way you can support our show.

• 1:25:14Karen Kilgariff?

  Goodbye.

• 1:25:18Karen Kilgariff?

  Calling all amateur detectives and podcast obsessives.

• 1:25:22Georgia Hardstark?

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

• 1:25:30Karen Kilgariff?

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

• 1:25:46Georgia Hardstark?

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

• 1:25:49Karen Kilgariff?

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

• 1:25:55Speaker 00

  Okay, laundry stinks, literally. I mean, you could just keep buying new underwear, not that I've ever done that. Or maybe sort your clothes into piles based on how re-wearable or filthy they are. Or just use Arm & Hammer Deep Clean. It's made for real-life stinks and stains. So even if you don't do laundry the quote "right way," Deep Clean will knock it out. I mean, it is from the number one liquid detergent brand that tackles more loads than any other. Come clean with Arm & Hammer Deep Clean. Number one claim based on total wash load sold. I'm Lacey Mosley, author, actor, stand-up comedian, creator, and host of Scam Goddess Podcast, the true crime comedy podcast all about robbery, fraud, and those who practice

• 1:26:40Speaker 00

  it. Each week I bring on an amazing guest. Ooh, I scammed them. What? I could talk to you for an hour. You're a generational yapper, like me. That's why I had to make yapping a job. And now you can catch full episodes of my show on YouTube. Start listening to Scam Goddess on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.