550 - Short and Problem-Based

This week, Georgia covers the murder of Kalinka Bamberski and her father’s 30-year quest for justice and Karen tells the story of the Who Wants to be a Millionaire cheating scandal. 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?

• 0:10Speaker 01

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

• 0:17Speaker 02

  It's a homicide detective down here.

• 0:19Speaker 03

  Three bodies on the ground.

• 0:20Speaker 01

  With emergencies of biblical proportions.

• 0:23Speaker 03

  All sins 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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• 1:49Karen Kilgariff?

  Hello and welcome.

• 1:50Georgia Hardstark?

  To my favorite murder.

• 1:52Karen Kilgariff?

  That's Georgia Hardstark.

• 1:53Georgia Hardstark?

  That's Karen Kilcaras.

• 1:54Karen Kilgariff?

  And this is a true crime podcast.

• 1:56Georgia Hardstark?

  We bring it right to your door.

• 1:59Karen Kilgariff?

  For 10 years.

• 1:59Georgia Hardstark?

  Knock, knock.

• 2:00Karen Kilgariff?

  It's been a decade, bitches.

• 2:02Georgia Hardstark?

  Let us in. Do you have snacks?

• 2:04Karen Kilgariff?

  Do you have treats for us?

• 2:05Georgia Hardstark?

  Treats? Can we have a treat?

• 2:07Karen Kilgariff?

  It is spooky season coming right up around the corner. Only two months to go.

• 2:12Georgia Hardstark?

  Um, what's up? How are you?

• 2:13Karen Kilgariff?

  I'm good. How are you?

• 2:14Georgia Hardstark?

  Good.

• 2:16Karen Kilgariff?

  Is this natural?

• 2:17Georgia Hardstark?

  No, I don't remember how, I don't remember what we do next.

• 2:20Karen Kilgariff?

  We do different stuff every time.

• 2:21Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 2:22Karen Kilgariff?

  It's usually different.

• 2:23Georgia Hardstark?

  I've actually never listened to this podcast before.

• 2:24Karen Kilgariff?

  It's not good.

• 2:27Georgia Hardstark?

  So I don't know the format. Hey, want some kind of good news, I guess? On the, from the dark side?

• 2:33Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes.

• 2:33Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay, so I remember a couple of episodes ago, in episode 541, called House or Wife?

• 2:39Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes, I remember every moment.

• 2:41Georgia Hardstark?

  I covered the guy who was imprisoned for like 30 years for allegedly starting a flood in Mississippi. The Great Mississippi Flood of 1993. His name is James Scott. Well, he was up for parole, and he was granted parole. He was 25 years old when he went to prison. And he's been in so long, he's now 56 years old.

• 3:02Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 3:02Georgia Hardstark?

  And so he's gonna finally get out.

• 3:04Karen Kilgariff?

  Wow.

• 3:05Georgia Hardstark?

  I mean, I wish they would look more into that. The evidence was shit, but at least he's gonna get out.

• 3:11Karen Kilgariff?

  That's an incredible update. That's, that's the update we're looking for.

• 3:13Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, so that's good.

• 3:15Karen Kilgariff?

  It is good. Well, this is a little bit, an additional update, not as good as someone finally getting out of jail. But I went again to Sephora.

• 3:26Georgia Hardstark?

  Congratulations.

• 3:27Karen Kilgariff?

  Thank you. And I let someone help me.

• 3:30Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh.

• 3:31Karen Kilgariff?

  And it was such a delightful experience. We stood in the hair aisle laughing and talking about having bobs.

• 3:37Georgia Hardstark?

  Amazing.

• 3:38Karen Kilgariff?

  It was so funny. And as it was happening, I was like, you are the architect of your own fate.

• 3:44Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 3:44Karen Kilgariff?

  If you're not gonna talk to people, or you're, like, that's how you always complain.

• 3:48Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 3:49Karen Kilgariff?

  If you're not going to be in the game, then you're always gonna be like, I don't like this game.

• 3:53Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 3:53Karen Kilgariff?

  But you go and you're actually, if someone goes, do you need help? And it's like...

• 3:56Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, actually.

• 3:58Karen Kilgariff?

  Actually, I do. Can you help? Actually, it wasn't just the woman in the hair area, because I was looking at a new, very expensive skin tint, which I do not need.

• 4:07Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 4:08Karen Kilgariff?

  And I was looking at it, and I was like, have you tried this? Do you like it? And she goes, I'll give you a little tester. Basically, I realized people work at Sephora.

• 4:16Georgia Hardstark?

  And they actually want to help you.

• 4:18Karen Kilgariff?

  They really do want to help really bad.

• 4:20Georgia Hardstark?

  She didn't say at the end, I'm a listener?

• 4:22Karen Kilgariff?

  No.

• 4:23Georgia Hardstark?

  Because I had an experience, you reminded me, that a couple of weeks ago, I was in Portland for the weekend, just having a vacay. Decided to change my flight to earlier in the day. And I couldn't get the website to work on my phone. My Wi-Fi was shitty. So I had to call a fucking customer service line in this day and age.

• 4:40Karen Kilgariff?

  How?

• 4:41Georgia Hardstark?

  I know. And I give this woman, this, you know, nice, normal woman at Alaska Airlines, my name. And she goes, she fucking recognized me.

• 4:51Karen Kilgariff?

  On the phone?

• 4:51Georgia Hardstark?

  That has never happened before.

• 4:53Karen Kilgariff?

  On the phone?

• 4:53Georgia Hardstark?

  Yes, in the 10 years where I have like, made hair appointments, and made botox appointments, and made doctor... I was just like, assuming at one point, one of those young girls at those, at a med spa, was gonna be like, I listen.

• 5:05Karen Kilgariff?

  Sure.

• 5:05Georgia Hardstark?

  Never has that happened. So when she did that, and said, are you, you're from my favorite murder? I freaked out as much as she was freaking out. She still charged me the change fee. She was like, I'm sorry, I wish I could waive it, but I can't.

• 5:17Karen Kilgariff?

  She's like, listen.

• 5:19Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah. So Nancy at Alaska Airlines. Hi, that was really exciting.

• 5:23Karen Kilgariff?

  Nancy, thanks for listening. This is, Nancy, being on the phone with you is like a podcast, kind of, but short and problem-based.

• 5:32Georgia Hardstark?

  Right, she solved my problem, and she was lovely the whole time.

• 5:35Karen Kilgariff?

  That's great.

• 5:36Georgia Hardstark?

  I know, it's not funny.

• 5:36Karen Kilgariff?

  That's really nice.

• 5:37Georgia Hardstark?

  First time.

• 5:38Karen Kilgariff?

  That's also very fun.

• 5:39Georgia Hardstark?

  It was really fun.

• 5:40Karen Kilgariff?

  Because doing stuff like that is usually such a drag.

• 5:43Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 5:44Karen Kilgariff?

  And you're just like, Nancy!

• 5:46Georgia Hardstark?

  Nancy!

• 5:47Karen Kilgariff?

  We're already friends!

• 5:48Georgia Hardstark?

  I've been waiting for this for 10 years!

• 5:50Karen Kilgariff?

  Nancy, this is wonderful.

• 5:51Georgia Hardstark?

  I mean, I've been recognized at multiple estate sales, but never on the phone.

• 5:55Karen Kilgariff?

  That's right.

• 5:56Georgia Hardstark?

  So it was exciting for me.

• 5:57Karen Kilgariff?

  It's a harder, it's like you leveled up. It's a harder thing that you unlock.

• 6:00Georgia Hardstark?

  Totally.

• 6:01Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 6:01Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 6:02Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay, something that is true to my heart. TikTok.

• 6:07Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 6:07Karen Kilgariff?

  A delightful TikTok. I got sent it on TikTok personally 30 times. My sister showed me when I went home last weekend. I thought you'd like it, because it's right up our alley.

• 6:19Georgia Hardstark?

  Let me see, let me see.

• 6:19Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay.

• 6:20Speaker 07

  Here's what to do if you don't want to get murdered.

• 6:22Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, I love her.

• 6:23Speaker 07

  Been a while since we've done one of these, and I just think it's time. First of all, don't honeymoon on a boat.

• 6:31Speaker 07

  Don't honeymoon on a, on a cliff. I get that people like to hike, I get that. But if it's like some kind of like, really like risky cliff, hillside hike, I don't think you should go. I don't care if he's the greatest living human man. I don't think you should go. Don't go jogging late at night. Don't go jogging. Don't go jogging. Don't be like six to 15 weeks pregnant. Don't be full term. And meet someone on Facebook.

• 7:03Speaker 07

  If I was pregnant, I wouldn't even open Facebook. Absolutely no Craigslist, absolutely no.

• 7:11Georgia Hardstark?

  She basically like summarized this, the last 10 years of this podcast.

• 7:15Karen Kilgariff?

  I mean...

• 7:16Georgia Hardstark?

  In one TikTok.

• 7:17Karen Kilgariff?

  And then the last 2,000 years of women's lives. So that was Jen Curran, and hilarious. I've seen her on TikTok several times. But then Allison looked it up, and she actually follows us on Instagram.

• 7:29Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 7:30Karen Kilgariff?

  So there is a chance she is a listener.

• 7:32Georgia Hardstark?

  Love her.

• 7:32Karen Kilgariff?

  Or she's hate-following us.

• 7:34Georgia Hardstark?

  She might be hate-following.

• 7:35Karen Kilgariff?

  Either way, we support what she does.

• 7:37Georgia Hardstark?

  Might be rate, rate bait, paging? No. Bait, rage baiting. Wow, perimenopause just had a moment.

• 7:45Karen Kilgariff?

  Right? It's mosquito brain time.

• 7:47Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 7:48Karen Kilgariff?

  Perfect.

• 7:49Georgia Hardstark?

  I hate when that happens.

• 7:49Karen Kilgariff?

  For podcasting.

• 7:51Georgia Hardstark?

  Definitely.

• 7:51Karen Kilgariff?

  All you have to do is read now.

• 7:53Georgia Hardstark?

  You know what's fun is trying to find an outfit to wear on perimenopause.

• 7:56Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, God.

• 7:57Georgia Hardstark?

  Fuck everything.

• 7:59Karen Kilgariff?

  Truly the other day. I actually had to call Craig, and I was like, I don't know what happened, but every single item I put on, I had to take back off. And I was getting increasingly more upset.

• 8:08Georgia Hardstark?

  Yep.

• 8:09Karen Kilgariff?

  Because it's like, it's not gonna get better from here.

• 8:11Georgia Hardstark?

  No, I settled on this and had to pull it from under a cat, which I won't disturb a cat who's sleeping. That's how bad it was, you know what I mean? Like, the fact that I disturbed a cat, and there's probably still cat hair on it, tells you how bad a day I was having trying to find something to wear.

• 8:25Karen Kilgariff?

  This was one of the things I was talking to the woman at Sephora about.

• 8:28Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 8:29Karen Kilgariff?

  These things that happen pre-menopause or menopause, where suddenly your hair changes. You don't know what your hair's doing anymore.

• 8:35Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 8:36Karen Kilgariff?

  It's falling out, or it's getting weirdly curly or whit... Like, that whole thing.

• 8:40Georgia Hardstark?

  My shoulder hurts, can I blame?

• 8:42Karen Kilgariff?

  Now I have knife shoulder.

• 8:44Georgia Hardstark?

  Tinnitus is a fucking thing.

• 8:45Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, have you had any hot flashes?

• 8:47Georgia Hardstark?

  Yes, but the patch has been helping. The Estrodile patch has been helping with hot flashes.

• 8:51Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, okay, good.

• 8:52Georgia Hardstark?

  So those are fine. But my vision's fucked up, like...

• 8:55Karen Kilgariff?

  I mean, it's just... Or like, energy battery on the video game is just dwindling down.

• 9:01Georgia Hardstark?

  And I yeeted my uterus, so you'd think that it was like, not as crazy.

• 9:04Karen Kilgariff?

  No, they'll still get you.

• 9:05Georgia Hardstark?

  It's pretty fucked.

• 9:06Karen Kilgariff?

  They'll get you on a technicality, is what they'll do.

• 9:09Georgia Hardstark?

  They really will.

• 9:10Karen Kilgariff?

  Hey...

• 9:10Georgia Hardstark?

  Fuck them.

• 9:11Karen Kilgariff?

  Fuck them, and when we say them, we mean your ovaries. If you're in perimenopause or menopause, write to us at [email protected].

• 9:20Georgia Hardstark?

  Let's play a game of how many eggs do you have left? How many viable eggs do you have left?

• 9:24Karen Kilgariff?

  And how much are you sweating for no reason?

• 9:27Georgia Hardstark?

  All right, well, should we get into the podcast, the actual podcast?

• 9:32Karen Kilgariff?

  We might as well. No, I think we should sit here and watch TikToks.

• 9:35Georgia Hardstark?

  I know you do. We have a podcast network called Exactly Right Media. There's podcasts on it. Here are some highlights from them.

• 9:42Karen Kilgariff?

  This week on Bananas, Kurt and Scotty are joined by Mo Welch to discuss West Seattle's freelance beaver detective, that's right, a teacher who arranged her classroom by Zodiac signs, and a Spider-Man thief who learned his tricks working as a Power Ranger.

• 9:55Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow. And over on Wicked Words, Kate sits down with crime journalist Maria DeLorenzo to discuss her book, Confessions of the Green River Killer.

• 10:04Karen Kilgariff?

  And over on The Knife, Hannah tells Pasha about an online knitting community rocked by the sudden and suspicious death of one of its own. But as the community starts piecing together what happened, the story begins to unravel.

• 10:18Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 10:18Karen Kilgariff?

  That's a play on words because it's a knitting.

• 10:20Georgia Hardstark?

  I love it.

• 10:21Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay.

• 10:21Georgia Hardstark?

  And if you haven't listened to our limited series Royal Swindle yet, all the episodes are now available, so you can binge the whole wild story from beginning to end, and make sure to like and subscribe, please.

• 10:32Karen Kilgariff?

  And if you're like us and you love Michael Foot from our legal podcast, Brief Recession, then you will be very excited to hear this news. The TV show The Traitor's New Blood premieres today.

• 10:42Georgia Hardstark?

  I'm so fucking excited for this.

• 10:44Karen Kilgariff?

  September 17th on NBC, and it streams tomorrow on Peacock.

• 10:49Georgia Hardstark?

  We're going to be live posting along with the premiere on Threads, and Michael will be recapping all of the drama on Brief Recession.

• 10:56Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, you're immediately going to get a contestant's experience on a podcast.

• 11:01Georgia Hardstark?

  He's going to be so good. Like, I was thinking about going up against him on The Traitor's. I would quit.

• 11:06Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes.

• 11:07Georgia Hardstark?

  I'd be like, I can't. No one can outsmart him.

• 11:09Karen Kilgariff?

  No, and also, but he's so charming.

• 11:11Georgia Hardstark?

  Yes.

• 11:11Karen Kilgariff?

  Like, I'm sure he's just charming the hell out of everybody, and they don't ever see anything coming.

• 11:16Georgia Hardstark?

  Exactly. He's a worthy adversary.

• 11:19Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes, he is. Yes, he is.

• 11:20Georgia Hardstark?

  I'm excited.

• 11:21Karen Kilgariff?

  And finally, we would like to thank you, Murderino's, because the fuck politeness and the woo-whistles are officially sold out, and we are going to be donating the proceeds to the National Immigration Law Center.

• 11:32Georgia Hardstark?

  Yay, good job, everyone.

• 11:34Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes, thank you for that.

• 11:35Georgia Hardstark?

  That's so cool. Love doing that in your name.

• 11:41Georgia Hardstark?

  So, this is a story that I don't want to read the subject line for you, like the way we do on mini-sodes, because it'll give it away.

• 11:47Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay.

• 11:47Georgia Hardstark?

  So I'm just going to say, this is a story that would have been considered a cold case were it not for a father who refused to ever let it go. This is the story of the murder of Kalinka Bamberski.

• 12:01Karen Kilgariff?

  Wow.

• 12:02Georgia Hardstark?

  Ah, I want to tell you the tagline because it's just so gripping.

• 12:06Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay.

• 12:07Georgia Hardstark?

  But I'm going to tell you the story instead.

• 12:08Karen Kilgariff?

  You have to tell me the story before the tagline.

• 12:10Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay. The main sources for this story are a documentary on Netflix called My Daughter's Killer, and an article in The Atavist by Joshua Hammer, and the rest of the sources can be found in the show notes. So, let's start in July of 1982, and we are in Toulouse, France, Toulouse, France, a pretty big city in the south of the country, you know, there you go, France.

• 12:34Karen Kilgariff?

  France stuff.

• 12:36Georgia Hardstark?

  Andre Bamberski is a 42-year-old accountant, so, so, such a normal, organized dude. Everyone describes him as exceedingly organized and detail-oriented. He's a person who likes to see tasks through to the end.

• 12:50Karen Kilgariff?

  Not me. Couldn't be me.

• 12:52Georgia Hardstark?

  Can you imagine us as accountants? If we would crash the stock market.

• 12:56Karen Kilgariff?

  Bad news about your taxes this year.

• 12:58Georgia Hardstark?

  Did you want to pay in Skittles? Because I'd be, I think you should pay in Skittles.

• 13:02Karen Kilgariff?

  The good news is, you don't have to pay them. The bad news is, you're supposed to.

• 13:06Georgia Hardstark?

  I traded all your money for Skittles.

• 13:09Karen Kilgariff?

  And this cow.

• 13:10Georgia Hardstark?

  You're welcome. Yeah.

• 13:12Karen Kilgariff?

  Let's see what happens.

• 13:13Georgia Hardstark?

  And some seashells, but they're beautiful. Okay, so Andre is divorced and has two children, an 11-year-old son named Nicolas, and a 14-year-old daughter named Kalinka. The children spend the majority of the year living with their mother in Lindau, Germany, which is a beautiful historic town on the shores of Lake Constance, not far from the Austrian border, and across the lake from Switzerland. I knew you were just going to say that.

• 13:38Karen Kilgariff?

  I mean, I wanted to, I wanted to say it.

• 13:40Georgia Hardstark?

  Thank you for not interrupting me. Their mother, Danielle, but in French.

• 13:44Karen Kilgariff?

  Danielle.

• 13:45Georgia Hardstark?

  Danielle, had remarried a German doctor named Dieter Crombach, who she had actually had an affair with her new husband when she was still married to Andre. They had a pretty messy divorce over it, and the kids went to live with her and the new husband in Germany. And so as it stands now, in 1982, things are pretty amicable. For the past few years, Andre has only gotten the kids for vacations. But Kalinka, you know, originally from France, is feeling isolated in her German school. And so by the end of the summer, she's planning to move back to Toulouse to live with her father. He's looking forward to that, but this all comes crashing down on the morning of July 10th,

• 14:30Georgia Hardstark?

  when Andre gets a phone call from his ex, Danielle, who is hysterical. She tells him that Kalinka has died in her sleep, 14-year-old Kalinka, and that her husband, Dieter, tried to revive her, but he couldn't. Andre asks what could have happened to his vibrant, healthy daughter, and Danielle says that Dieter's best guess is a heat stroke. That's what he suggests it could be, or possibly undiagnosed complications from a car accident she had years earlier. But they're not sure why this healthy, vibrant, 14-year-old girl would have died. So on July 9th, the day before, the last day of Kalinka's life, she had gone windsurfing on Lake Constance. It had been around 84 degrees that day.

• 15:14Georgia Hardstark?

  And according to her mother and stepfather, she had been complaining about feeling unwell that evening. She ate dinner at 7:30, went to bed, and then came out of her room at around 10 o'clock for a glass of water and read in bed until midnight, when Dieter says that he told her to turn off the light. That's his story, basically. The next morning, Dieter and Kalinka were supposed to go horseback riding together in the mountains, and he says when he tried to wake her up, he found her unresponsive. He had tried to administer several stimulant injections to revive her, but they hadn't worked. And he's a doctor.

• 15:50Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, I was just going to say, okay.

• 15:51Georgia Hardstark?

  So, you know, him diagnosing her and him giving her injections, not totally suspicious.

• 15:57Karen Kilgariff?

  Right.

• 15:57Georgia Hardstark?

  Right? Immediately upon learning of his daughter's death, Andre flies to Lindau. And early the next morning, he goes to view his daughter's body, and then brings his son, 11-year-old Nicolas, home to Toulouse to prepare for Kalinka's funeral. And here's a photo of Andre holding a photo of Kalinka, so you can see them. She's just, it was this bright, beautiful, blonde, lovely girl. They said she was always smiling. And he's such a dad.

• 16:25Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 16:26Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay. All of Andre's friends and neighbors rally around him to support the family during this horrible time and a seemingly random and unavoidable tragedy. After Kalinka's funeral, Andre, still trying to piece together what on earth happened, requests the autopsy report from the German medical examiner. It takes a while to get a copy, and then Andre has to get it translated from German. And so he actually doesn't read the document until October of 1982, so three months after Kalinka's death, and it generates far more questions than answers. The first unusual thing Andre notices about the autopsy report is that in addition to the medical examiner and two police officers being present,

• 17:10Georgia Hardstark?

  Dieter, the stepfather, had also been present during the autopsy. In the report, Andre also finds out that by the time Kalinka's body had been found, a little after 10:00 AM, rigor mortis had already set in. And this raises the question of why Dieter had tried to administer any lifesaving injections at all. As a doctor, he would have known they would be ineffective.

• 17:32Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 17:32Georgia Hardstark?

  But Kalinka had actually been brought to the medical examiner with a needle still in her upper arm. Like, that's how frantic he was trying to revive her, supposedly.

• 17:42Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay.

• 17:43Georgia Hardstark?

  Andre reads that one injection had been administered to Kalinka by Dieter the evening before. It had been iron cobalt, which is not really a standard injection for anything aside from severe anemia. And Dieter had said that he gave it to her intending to help her tan. It was just super fucking, what are you talking about, Russ?

• 18:05Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes.

• 18:05Georgia Hardstark?

  Immediately.

• 18:06Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 18:07Georgia Hardstark?

  Later.

• 18:07Karen Kilgariff?

  You'd stop me cold that he was in the autopsy.

• 18:10Georgia Hardstark?

  Totally. I mean, he's a cardiologist, so it's not like, he's a pretty high-up doctor.

• 18:14Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes.

• 18:15Georgia Hardstark?

  But.

• 18:16Karen Kilgariff?

  Right, but it's his stepdaughter, right?

• 18:19Georgia Hardstark?

  No, and it's totally inappropriate. And it doesn't help people tan. Like, I looked it up on Google. It's just not a thing. So him saying that that's why he did it doesn't make any sense. No toxicology tests were performed, though. Although some tissue samples had been taken. Like, he's just injecting her with shit and you don't do a toxicology report?

• 18:36Karen Kilgariff?

  Well, and is it because he's in the room?

• 18:38Georgia Hardstark?

  Right, exactly. There had been some physical evidence that would generally lead to further investigation as to whether a sexual assault had taken place. This evidence included some blood and there was also a small vaginal injury, as well as an unidentified substance found in her vagina, which never gets identified. It's just...

• 18:59Karen Kilgariff?

  What's happening?

• 18:59Georgia Hardstark?

  Totally.

• 19:00Karen Kilgariff?

  Like, what is this?

• 19:01Georgia Hardstark?

  And most confusing of all is the fact that the autopsy mentions that food particles had been found in Kalinka's lungs, a clear sign that she had vomited and asphyxiated, which would have caused her death. Like, that caused her death, clearly. That's what did it. But the autopsy does not draw this conclusion and leaves her cause of death as unknown. So Andre calls his ex-wife, brimming with questions. And while she is genuinely devastated, she doesn't seem to have answers. She lets Dieter handle everything because she doesn't speak German. And she's 100% behind her current husband, that he would never do something like this, and is upset that Andre's even looking into it.

• 19:44Karen Kilgariff?

  Right.

• 19:45Georgia Hardstark?

  So Andre petitions the German government to test the tissue samples and have a Munich medical examiner analyze the findings, along with the autopsy results. And in early 1983, that report is released. And this medical examiner says that the iron cobalt injection could have caused vomiting and cardiac arrest, especially after eating. So because of a lack of immune response in any of Kalinka's surrounding tissues, the medical examiner believes that Kalinka asphyxiated and died very shortly after being administered this injection. So, meaning, when he tried to revive her that morning with multiple injections, I guess, the sight of them, they can tell that she wasn't, hadn't been alive for quite a while, just based on the marking.

• 20:30Karen Kilgariff?

  And yet, he's a cardiologist, giving those...

• 20:32Georgia Hardstark?

  Totally. And his timeline now doesn't add up. Because with this information, then him seeing her around midnight, telling her to go to bed, doesn't make any sense. Him waking up, you know, it just completely blows it out. But, German authorities still decline to prosecute Dieter, which leaves Andre dumbfounded.

• 20:53Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 20:53Georgia Hardstark?

  And there's definitely, in the documentary, this, like, you know, mention of this, you know, permanent, kind of adversarial relationship with Germany and France, and them, Germany not wanting to listen to this guy, and from France, tell them what to do. You know, tell them to go after one of their own citizens. It's political. It sucks. And Andre kind of knows that.

• 21:18Karen Kilgariff?

  That's insane, though. That that would even come into the discussion.

• 21:22Georgia Hardstark?

  Totally.

• 21:23Karen Kilgariff?

  Just like, someone, a young girl is dead.

• 21:26Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 21:27Karen Kilgariff?

  It's not about that.

• 21:28Georgia Hardstark?

  So, a few months pass, and Andre regroups. He's come to the conclusion that Dieter murdered his daughter. And in July of 1983, a year after his daughter's death, he returns to Lindau and starts to distribute flyers around town.

• 21:43Karen Kilgariff?

  Uh-oh.

• 21:44Georgia Hardstark?

  The flyers say, quote, "People of Lindau, you should know that a murderer, Dieter Kronbach, is living in your city. He raped and murdered my daughter on July 10, 1982, and his crime has been covered up by doctors, the police commissioner, and the prosecutors. Please help me obtain justice," end quote.

• 22:03Karen Kilgariff?

  Wow.

• 22:04Georgia Hardstark?

  So he goes full-on...

• 22:06Karen Kilgariff?

  Ballistic.

• 22:07Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 22:07Karen Kilgariff?

  Wow.

• 22:08Georgia Hardstark?

  I mean, he's desperate. He's just a desperate person.

• 22:11Karen Kilgariff?

  He's desperate, and the first thing it made me think of is, you know, in the, some cults, the way that they, like, get revenge, or they keep people in, is they flyer neighborhoods.

• 22:23Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 22:24Karen Kilgariff?

  Because when people get, like, out of the blue, a piece of paper, then it's like, this is the story.

• 22:28Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 22:29Karen Kilgariff?

  And that kind of almost, like, sets the context of the story.

• 22:31Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 22:32Karen Kilgariff?

  So doing, I bet that was, I mean, you're gonna tell me, but it just, like, what a shocking thing to people...

• 22:38Georgia Hardstark?

  In his town, where he lives, and is a doctor.

• 22:41Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes. So even if that, if the father, we know, probably, he's not crazy, but if he was and did that, there would be that result.

• 22:49Georgia Hardstark?

  Well, guess what?

• 22:50Karen Kilgariff?

  What?

• 22:50Georgia Hardstark?

  Andre is arrested. And winds up being charged with defaming Dieter.

• 22:56Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh.

• 22:56Georgia Hardstark?

  Disturbing the public order and injuring the reputation of the prosecutor. So, yeah, that's...

• 23:03Karen Kilgariff?

  So everyone says...

• 23:04Georgia Hardstark?

  So, 100% the opposite.

• 23:05Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah. Wow.

• 23:07Georgia Hardstark?

  He doesn't come back to Germany for his court date, and is sentenced in absentia to six months in prison. But Kalinka had been a French citizen. And so, once presented with the evidence by Andre, the French government opens their own investigation.

• 23:22Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, wow.

• 23:22Georgia Hardstark?

  That's his in. An investigation that Andre keeps pushing along with his constant requests for updates. I mean, if there's anyone you want on your side, detail-wise, it's an accountant.

• 23:33Karen Kilgariff?

  An angry, like, how dare you accountant.

• 23:36Georgia Hardstark?

  Father.

• 23:37Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes. But he's right in that way that, like, you didn't do the basic, give the basic respect to this death.

• 23:44Georgia Hardstark?

  Totally.

• 23:45Karen Kilgariff?

  Because it's, a young girl's dead, figure out what happened.

• 23:50Georgia Hardstark?

  And I'm sure he feels, you know, as any parent would, like, somewhat responsible, that he let his young daughter go off with, I mean, this is what's so crazy to me about, you know, divorce, and then the parents getting with someone else. You have no idea who that person is that they're getting with, or what they're, like, what they're about. And you just have to trust that your kid's gonna be okay, and that they are not monsters?

• 24:14Karen Kilgariff?

  Right, right.

• 24:14Georgia Hardstark?

  That sounds so difficult.

• 24:16Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes, horrifying.

• 24:17Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah. So, I'm sure, in a way, he feels like he needs to atone to his daughter.

• 24:23Karen Kilgariff?

  I mean, it's just such a gigantic loss like that, that, yeah.

• 24:28Georgia Hardstark?

  And she, I feel like she was such their, like, their, his beam of light in this, like, fucked-up world, at least, he gets to see his, you know, beautiful daughter succeed in life, and it's just taken away from him.

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• 26:07Georgia Hardstark?

  Trigger warning, there's some upsetting details coming up. So, in 1985, French authorities exhume Kalinka's body. And at this point, it is discovered that Kalinka's genitals had been completely removed from her body before she had been buried. And German authorities say they have no idea why, or how this happened, or where this part of Kalinka's body had gone.

• 26:30Karen Kilgariff?

  I mean, like, what? What are we talking about?

• 26:33Georgia Hardstark?

  Exactly.

• 26:35Karen Kilgariff?

  And sorry, then, the autopsy doesn't reflect anything, like...

• 26:39Georgia Hardstark?

  It says stuff, that's the tear, the blood, some fluid, but there's no way to, you know, see if the tear was, like, when that happened, if it was from sexual assault, because it's not there. It's just gone.

• 26:54Karen Kilgariff?

  God.

• 26:55Georgia Hardstark?

  I mean...

• 26:56Karen Kilgariff?

  That's so extreme. That's so horrifying.

• 26:58Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah. The investigation takes years, with those same tissue samples being analyzed, and the findings being similar to those of the Munich medical examiner. And ultimately, in 1993, nine years after Kalinka's death, a French court charges Dieter with voluntary homicide.

• 27:16Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh.

• 27:17Georgia Hardstark?

  But Germany refuses to extradite Dieter. So he's tried in absentia.

• 27:23Karen Kilgariff?

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:24Georgia Hardstark?

  Right? He's tried in absentia, found guilty, and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

• 27:29Karen Kilgariff?

  Wow, in France.

• 27:30Georgia Hardstark?

  Uh-huh. So, of course, he never has to serve the sentence, as long as he never sets foot in France again, which he doesn't plan to.

• 27:39Karen Kilgariff?

  What is, what are the connections this guy has? Are you going to explain this to me? Because...

• 27:45Georgia Hardstark?

  You know how they treat doctors, like, fucking gods?

• 27:47Karen Kilgariff?

  For real. This is like Alec Baldwin in that movie, where he's like, "I don't play a god, I am god." Because he's a cardiologist?

• 27:54Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, and just that cocky, like, German attitude of...

• 27:57Karen Kilgariff?

  Easy, easy.

• 27:58Georgia Hardstark?

  Sorry!

• 27:59Karen Kilgariff?

  But also, it is the weird thing of, because you said it earlier, it's like hierarchy.

• 28:04Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 28:05Karen Kilgariff?

  Where it's like, it's the cardiologist in the room with the...

• 28:07Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 28:09Karen Kilgariff?

  With the...

• 28:09Georgia Hardstark?

  So I'm sure he outranks...

• 28:10Karen Kilgariff?

  Coroner.

• 28:11Georgia Hardstark?

  Everyone there.

• 28:11Karen Kilgariff?

  Totally. And is calling the shots and saying what needs to happen.

• 28:14Georgia Hardstark?

  Absolutely, which is why he shouldn't be in the autopsy room.

• 28:18Karen Kilgariff?

  Right.

• 28:19Georgia Hardstark?

  And this guy is so cocky, and so, like, such a creep. So then, in 1997, a 16-year-old goes to Dieter's practice for an endoscopic examination. Yep. When she gets there, his assistant is out to lunch, so he's alone in the office, and he tells this 16-year-old girl that the examination is uncomfortable, so he's gonna administer an anesthetic. We all know where this is going. When she wakes up, he is sexually assaulting her. Dieter seems to believe that this girl isn't gonna report him, but she does as soon as she gets home. And her parents press charges, and over the course of this trial, several other victims come forward, saying that the doctor had also given them injections that had knocked

• 29:04Georgia Hardstark?

  them out, and he had assaulted them, although he's not prosecuted for these additional cases. So, it's a pattern now.

• 29:11Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 29:12Georgia Hardstark?

  He is found guilty of the assault of the 16-year-old girl, and sentenced to two years in prison. However, even though multiple women have testified that he also drugged and raped them, the judge chooses to suspend his sentence, allowing him to go free without doing any time in prison. So clearly, we're, they're all in some fucking secret club.

• 29:30Karen Kilgariff?

  I mean, what is that, though? What is the, this, this is a person who has intentionally harmed multiple people?

• 29:38Georgia Hardstark?

  What is it? It's men covering each other's fucking tracks.

• 29:41Karen Kilgariff?

  I know, but I mean, yeah. Yeah. I'm not gonna argue with you on that one. I mean, Jesus Christ, but it's like, I honestly, it's like, but why? Like, what is the ultimately, so you can do it later? What is the value of that?

• 29:57Georgia Hardstark?

  Well, it's the same thing as when they say like, well, we don't want to ruin the rest of this young man's life.

• 30:01Karen Kilgariff?

  Right.

• 30:01Georgia Hardstark?

  Fuck you.

• 30:03Karen Kilgariff?

  Right.

• 30:03Georgia Hardstark?

  Without a second thought to the victim.

• 30:05Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 30:06Georgia Hardstark?

  But don't worry, he does lose his medical license.

• 30:09Karen Kilgariff?

  He does?

• 30:09Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 30:10Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay.

• 30:10Georgia Hardstark?

  But.

• 30:11Karen Kilgariff?

  That's something, I mean, I truly thought it was like, and he was supported in his practice and, you know, whatever.

• 30:18Georgia Hardstark?

  I mean, the good thing is that a lot of the German public in that town were very upset about him not getting any prison time. And I guess it was a big, big deal. So thankfully.

• 30:28Karen Kilgariff?

  And what was the year?

• 30:29Georgia Hardstark?

  At this point, it's 1997 or 8.

• 30:32Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 30:33Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah. So now knowing this is Dieter's pattern, Andre becomes even more obsessive. He's like, this proved my point. I'm not crazy for going after him, the way everyone has been saying, not everyone, but the way people have been saying, I am. And so, once again, he sees Dieter tried and convicted and not serving any prison time. And he's trying to keep an eye on Dieter's movements within Germany, but he seems to be moving around different towns a lot. So Andre has a network of people who have his back and they're willing to help him keep eyes on Dieter. And he learns that Dieter is living in the town of Scheidig in Germany, right by the Austrian border. And at this point, there's a ticking clock for Dieter to face justice in France.

• 31:16Georgia Hardstark?

  The statute of limitations on Dieter's French charges will run out in 2012, which we've talked about before. Why are there statute of limitations on any violent crime? In the fall of 2009, Andre hears from his network that Dieter might be preparing to move back to Morocco, where he had lived before. And also, he finds out that Dieter is still practicing medicine as like a traveling doctor, despite the fact that he lost his medical license. So knowing that Dieter is gonna leave, this is his last chance to like, keep track of him in Germany and seeing no other options, Andre starts going around to every cafe and bar in town and has a loud conversations with anyone who will talk to him, proposing

• 32:01Georgia Hardstark?

  a scenario in which someone might kidnap Dieter and bring him to France.

• 32:06Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, I didn't think, I didn't think we were gonna go there.

• 32:09Georgia Hardstark?

  We're going there. This is the subject line, I couldn't read you.

• 32:12Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay.

• 32:13Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay. We're bringing in Jason Statham if he were in a metal band at this, right now.

• 32:17Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay.

• 32:17Georgia Hardstark?

  A character.

• 32:18Karen Kilgariff?

  I'm 100%, I'm 2,000% in now.

• 32:21Georgia Hardstark?

  It's suddenly become a Jason Statham movie.

• 32:23Karen Kilgariff?

  It's great.

• 32:23Georgia Hardstark?

  This is the story of the dad who got his daughter's murderer kidnapped so he could face charges in France.

• 32:29Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 32:30Georgia Hardstark?

  Fucking amazing.

• 32:31Karen Kilgariff?

  He went into an old, an old bar where it just was old guys in fisherman's sweaters who had their back to him. And then he told his story and they all rose up behind him.

• 32:40Georgia Hardstark?

  I mean, this guy's a character. So in early October, Andre gets a call in his hotel room in Austria. The man on the phone introduces himself as Anton. And he says he will bring Dieter to France and he's going to do it for free, just for humanitarian reasons, he says.

• 32:58Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh.

• 32:59Georgia Hardstark?

  Yep. He doesn't want any money and he asks for money to cover his expenses. Basically, the expenses are he has to hire two, like Russian gang members to help him.

• 33:09Karen Kilgariff?

  Right.

• 33:10Georgia Hardstark?

  It's so, it's so bananas.

• 33:12Karen Kilgariff?

  But also, I love, and sorry, but in this, the idea that potentially, there's like a psychopath out there that's like a killer for hire, that's like, hold on a second, you've offended my sensibilities. Like, I don't have any of that moral compass and I'm still horrified by what you people have done.

• 33:32Georgia Hardstark?

  It's like, I'm gonna do, I'm gonna use my powers of evil.

• 33:36Karen Kilgariff?

  For good.

• 33:36Georgia Hardstark?

  For good.

• 33:36Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 33:37Georgia Hardstark?

  And he's.

• 33:38Karen Kilgariff?

  It's the show Barry. That's why you love the show Barry so much.

• 33:41Georgia Hardstark?

  This is basically a passion project for Anton. He will later say that he is deeply affected by Andre's story and his persistence over 30 years to bring his daughter's killer to justice. So Anton and Andre meet on a park bench and Andre asks like, what are you gonna do? And Anton's like, it's better that you don't know any details. Like, it's a fucking total.

• 33:59Karen Kilgariff?

  Plausible deniability.

• 34:00Georgia Hardstark?

  Spy movie.

• 34:01Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes.

• 34:03Georgia Hardstark?

  So Anton tells him to go back to France and await a phone call.

• 34:07Karen Kilgariff?

  Wow.

• 34:08Georgia Hardstark?

  So, the call comes on October 17th. That night, Andre picks up the phone and he's basically told to call the police in a town called Malus, France, which is right over the German border, and that Dieter is there tied up. And so he calls the police and tells them where to find him.

• 34:25Karen Kilgariff?

  Just in like a ditch or something?

• 34:26Georgia Hardstark?

  No, they basically, Dieter, who's now 74 years old, he's found bruised and bloody and dumped in the street. Like, in the street.

• 34:35Karen Kilgariff?

  Just put into France?

• 34:36Georgia Hardstark?

  Yep, just like, they, yeah.

• 34:38Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 34:38Georgia Hardstark?

  He tells police he had been kidnapped from his home, driven through the night, and was dumped on the street. And when he's found, he's in pretty bad shape. He's trussed and gagged and bleeding. And so the way Anton tells the story is that he had rung Dieter's doorbell, backed up a few paces. As soon as Dieter came out of the door, his two accomplices tackled him, dragged him into the car. He doesn't explicitly mention that in his altercation, they had injured Dieter's head to some, I mean, they've kind of roughed him up.

• 35:07Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 35:07Georgia Hardstark?

  You know?

• 35:08Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 35:09Georgia Hardstark?

  Neighbors found blood on the ground, Dieter's glasses and a slipper.

• 35:13Karen Kilgariff?

  Oof.

• 35:14Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah. That said, he's found alive in France and he recovers from his injuries in a prison hospital. And in 2011, he's actually brought to trial in France for Kalinka's murder.

• 35:25Karen Kilgariff?

  Wow.

• 35:26Georgia Hardstark?

  At the trial, Dieter's lawyers argue that vigilante justice cannot lead to legitimate, lawful justice. Like, if they try him, like, based on how he got here, it's vigilante justice, or it's like, okay, okay, vigilante justice. And we're like, fuck that.

• 35:42Karen Kilgariff?

  Well, it's just that they tried regular justice and it did not work.

• 35:46Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 35:46Karen Kilgariff?

  It worked only for the.

• 35:49Georgia Hardstark?

  Exactly.

• 35:50Karen Kilgariff?

  The bad guy.

• 35:50Georgia Hardstark?

  Right. The prosecution presents all of the evidence from Kalinka's death. At least five women testify for the prosecutor, saying that Dieter had raped them after giving them injections that had incapacitated them. It's really upsetting that the mother, up until this point, is still, they've divorced at this point, and she's still totally backing her, Dieter.

• 36:13Karen Kilgariff?

  She's in denial.

• 36:14Georgia Hardstark?

  She's in total denial, also because like, if it's true and it happened right under your nose, and then from this trial, she finds out that there's multiple young teenage girls who have been injected and sexually assaulted and raped by him. And that also, an old neighbor comes forward, saying that she had an affair with him while he was still married to the wife, and he would give her sleeping pills so they could have the affair in the house without her waking up.

• 36:44Karen Kilgariff?

  So the wife is also being drugged?

• 36:46Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 36:46Karen Kilgariff?

  Just so that he could do what he wanted?

• 36:48Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, so he's just an evil man, but like.

• 36:51Karen Kilgariff?

  He's a monster.

• 36:52Georgia Hardstark?

  During the preparations for this trial, Kalinka's tissue samples had been retested with modern techniques and they revealed the presence of benzodiazepine, which demonstrates that Dieter had injected Kalinka and likely his other victims, not only with iron cobalt, but with a substance specifically meant to incapacitate her, which is why you do a tox screening on a suspicious young girl's death.

• 37:14Karen Kilgariff?

  Yep.

• 37:14Georgia Hardstark?

  Like, they would have found that then.

• 37:17Karen Kilgariff?

  That's why you do the same thing every single time, for everybody, no matter who they are.

• 37:21Georgia Hardstark?

  Totally.

• 37:21Karen Kilgariff?

  And no matter what doctor is standing in the room.

• 37:23Georgia Hardstark?

  Exactly. So family members of both Dieter and Andre testify. With Dieter's, his children stand by him and defend him, adult children.

• 37:31Karen Kilgariff?

  Imagine, imagine if it was a truth. I mean, it's just.

• 37:35Georgia Hardstark?

  I just feel like, even though it's your parent, you have to look at the evidence. You can stand by him and say that he's done bad things and still stand by him.

• 37:46Karen Kilgariff?

  Right. But then they're on the inside with this, like, sociopath, psychopath, charming you and telling, and also, they've lived with this person.

• 37:55Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 37:55Karen Kilgariff?

  Like, they're in the cult already.

• 37:56Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, that's very true. Danielle, now divorced from Dieter, testifies. And while she doesn't say, she explicitly thinks Dieter killed her daughter, she's no longer defending him and she says he was attracted to teenagers. After the trial ends, the jury deliberates for four hours before finding Dieter guilty. He's sentenced to 15 years in prison. After the trial, Andre says, quote, "Obviously, my first thought is for Kalinka. Justice has been done in her honor and now I will be able to grieve for her." Dieter launches multiple appeals, all of which are rejected. He's released due to health problems in February of 2020 and dies a few months later in September

• 38:38Georgia Hardstark?

  at the age of 85, after finally serving time for murdering Kalinka. And then Andre and Anton are both charged for Dieter's kidnapping.

• 38:48Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh.

• 38:48Georgia Hardstark?

  Anton is sentenced to one year in prison, which he serves in Austria. And in the documentary, he's just like, he goes home and he's like, my parents are proud of me, everyone is proud of me. Like, he's a local hero.

• 39:00Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 39:01Georgia Hardstark?

  This point.

• 39:02Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes, he took care of business when.

• 39:04Georgia Hardstark?

  This needed to be done.

• 39:05Karen Kilgariff?

  The system wouldn't do it.

• 39:07Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, I fucking love that guy.

• 39:08Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 39:09Georgia Hardstark?

  At his own trial, Andre openly admits to his participation. He says, quote, "Something had to be done. You know the expression, I made the omelet, but it was also necessary to break the eggs", end quote. He's found guilty. The judge sentences him to one year in prison and immediately suspends the sentence.

• 39:26Karen Kilgariff?

  Thank God, I was gonna get so mad if he had to do it.

• 39:30Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah. And that is the story of the murder of Kalinka Van Berski and her father's 30-year quest to bring her killer to justice.

• 39:39Karen Kilgariff?

  That is, it's so sad and then it's so satisfying.

• 39:43Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 39:44Karen Kilgariff?

  It's like, there's these monsters in the world, then there's also these great people in the world that are like, you know what? Because also, a father having to do all that by himself.

• 39:53Georgia Hardstark?

  Totally.

• 39:54Karen Kilgariff?

  In grief.

• 39:55Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 39:56Karen Kilgariff?

  You know what I mean? Trying to figure out what to do. And it's like, to get a call in the middle of the night, it's like, don't worry, the bad guys are gonna take care of the worst guy.

• 40:03Georgia Hardstark?

  We're on your side?

• 40:04Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 40:05Georgia Hardstark?

  That's the bad guy.

• 40:06Karen Kilgariff?

  Yep. Nice one.

• 40:08Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 40:08Karen Kilgariff?

  That was really good.

• 40:15Speaker 01

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

• 40:22Speaker 02

  What's a homicide detective doing here?

• 40:24Speaker 01

  Three bodies on the ground. With emergencies of biblical proportions.

• 40:28Speaker 03

  I will send swarms upon you and upon your people.

• 40:30Speaker 02

  That's one of the plagues for Bible.

• 40:32Speaker 03

  And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville.

• 40:35Speaker 01

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

• 40:42Speaker 00

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• 41:35Karen Kilgariff?

  Let's turn so far left.

• 41:38Georgia Hardstark?

  Please.

• 41:39Karen Kilgariff?

  Let's go all the way around the block and then out of this neighborhood into a very different, a lighter neighborhood.

• 41:46Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 41:46Karen Kilgariff?

  Where different things happen.

• 41:48Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 41:49Karen Kilgariff?

  You're gonna like this.

• 41:50Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 41:50Karen Kilgariff?

  I think. This story starts just outside of London at Elstree Studios during a taping of the TV show Who Wants to be a Millionaire. You know, that's where it started.

• 42:02Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay. Oh, yeah.

• 42:04Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, originally.

• 42:05Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 42:06Karen Kilgariff?

  Over the years, there have been many international versions of the show, but it first aired in the UK in 1998. And by its peak in 1999, British Millionaire is a huge cultural phenomenon. About 19 million people watch every episode. That's about a third of the UK's population at the time.

• 42:27Georgia Hardstark?

  And that's when you couldn't record TV. You had to tune in.

• 42:30Karen Kilgariff?

  It was, yep. They called it appointment television. You all had to meet up at the right time.

• 42:35Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, it sucked.

• 42:37Karen Kilgariff?

  Pre-Tivo. It was a dark time.

• 42:39Georgia Hardstark?

  Pre-Tivo.

• 42:40Karen Kilgariff?

  So because everybody quote-unquote wants to be a millionaire, getting through the screening process of that game show to be a contestant is a feat in and of itself. If you are selected, you join nine other contestants at your taping, and then you have to beat them in a time trivia question known as the Faster Finger Round.

• 42:59Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, my God.

• 43:00Karen Kilgariff?

  Do you know Millionaire enough to know any of that?

• 43:02Georgia Hardstark?

  I'm probably not.

• 43:03Karen Kilgariff?

  It's basically like there's an opening question and the person that gets it the fastest and correct, it becomes the contestant of the main show.

• 43:12Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 43:13Karen Kilgariff?

  So even if you make it to the studio as a potential contestant, there's no guarantee you will end up in the hot seat. But someone always does. And on September 9, 2001, a British Army Major in his late 30s named Charles Ingram is the fastest finger. So he ends up going down to the stage and taking his seat opposite the Regis Philbin of England. But first, a man named Chris Tarrant. I'm sure that people get pissed off if I compare Chris Tarrant, who is the OG Who Wants to be a Millionaire host, to our secondary. And yet still, a big deal, Regis Philbin. Did I ever tell you that my dad, every time Regis Philbin was on TV, my dad would get mad and leave the room?

• 43:56Georgia Hardstark?

  Why? He hated Regis Philbin?

• 43:58Karen Kilgariff?

  He had some serious, there's some people he doesn't like.

• 44:00Georgia Hardstark?

  I love that.

• 44:01Karen Kilgariff?

  Regis was one of them.

• 44:02Georgia Hardstark?

  That's like when two cats don't like, from the neighborhood, don't like each other. You're like, why?

• 44:07Karen Kilgariff?

  Way far away. But this would be like, and one cat's just walking by having a great life, and the other one's just like, meow, meow. Okay, so Charles, the contestant, is wearing a colorful patchwork polo shirt and a goofy smile. We do have a picture of him.

• 44:22Georgia Hardstark?

  Amazing.

• 44:22Karen Kilgariff?

  So this is the person that this is all built, this whole story's about.

• 44:26Georgia Hardstark?

  That is such a 90s t-shirt, like 90s shirt.

• 44:29Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 44:29Georgia Hardstark?

  I can't even.

• 44:30Karen Kilgariff?

  Multicolor.

• 44:31Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, we love color block.

• 44:33Karen Kilgariff?

  Color blocking, it came right before hypercolor.

• 44:35Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 44:36Karen Kilgariff?

  Colors. Chris Tarrant asks Charles if he wants to play Millionaire, and he excitedly shouts back, quote, "Is the Pope Catholic?" Classic.

• 44:46Georgia Hardstark?

  Good one. Already off to a good start.

• 44:48Karen Kilgariff?

  Right? It's gonna be good TV. So now Charles will be asked 15 questions that increase in both value and difficulty, as the game goes. If he can make it to the last question, he wins £1 million. At this point in the show's roughly four-year history, only two people have ever gone that far on Who Wants to be a Millionaire, so the odds aren't great. But this is where the lifelines come in. So that's basically if Charles doesn't know an answer, he can either take his winnings and walk away, or he can risk it all and use a lifeline, either 50/50, where two of the answers go away, so it's like one of, you know, or phone a friend, which you call a smart person you know,

• 45:33Karen Kilgariff?

  and have them help you, or you can ask the audience.

• 45:35Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 45:36Karen Kilgariff?

  So that's how it normally goes.

• 45:38Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 45:38Karen Kilgariff?

  But Charles Ingram will prove to be no ordinary player, and he's about to go down, for better or worse, in Who Wants to be a Millionaire history.

• 45:46Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, shit.

• 45:47Karen Kilgariff?

  This is the story of what's been called the most British crime of all time, the 2001 Who Wants to be a Millionaire scandal.

• 45:55Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 45:56Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes.

• 45:57Georgia Hardstark?

  I don't know this.

• 45:58Karen Kilgariff?

  You don't at all?

• 45:58Georgia Hardstark?

  Not off the top of my head.

• 45:59Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, yay.

• 46:00Georgia Hardstark?

  Like, there's a vague, you know, memory of something like this.

• 46:03Karen Kilgariff?

  Right.

• 46:04Georgia Hardstark?

  But I couldn't tell you anything about it.

• 46:05Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay, that's so exciting.

• 46:07Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 46:07Karen Kilgariff?

  Because I kind of thought when I said Who Wants to be a Millionaire, you'd be like, yeah?

• 46:10Georgia Hardstark?

  No.

• 46:10Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay, great. So there's a book written by, oh, there's Bob Woffenden and James Plaskett, and it's called Bad Show.

• 46:18Georgia Hardstark?

  They wrote a whole book about this?

• 46:19Karen Kilgariff?

  They wrote a book. Apparently, in England, this is such a huge story, everybody knows it, like, everybody.

• 46:27Georgia Hardstark?

  It's because it's like rude.

• 46:28Karen Kilgariff?

  It's, first of all, rude. They love their trivia.

• 46:31Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 46:31Karen Kilgariff?

  Right? They're obsessed with that bar trivia and their trivia teams and all that.

• 46:35Georgia Hardstark?

  Like cheating on a trivia thing is like, you know, something bad.

• 46:39Karen Kilgariff?

  Right? Would 007 do it?

• 46:42Georgia Hardstark?

  No.

• 46:43Karen Kilgariff?

  Well, then, I shouldn't do it. There's also a documentary called Millionaire: A Major Fraud. So the rest of the sources are in our show notes. So we are back. We are in the studios. We are there. He's just won his seat. He's kind of been dorky. He begins to play the game now.

• 47:00Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 47:00Karen Kilgariff?

  So Charles does fine on the first few questions, but at question number five, which is worth £1,000, he starts to look shaky. He quickly burns through the Ask the Audience and the Phone a Friend lifelines.

• 47:14Georgia Hardstark?

  How many questions are there, again?

• 47:15Karen Kilgariff?

  15.

• 47:16Georgia Hardstark?

  So, okay, so that's pretty early to get through two of your lifelines.

• 47:19Karen Kilgariff?

  Way too early. Like, you wouldn't normally do that. But he just had no options.

• 47:24Georgia Hardstark?

  I want to know the questions. Would I get them? Probably not.

• 47:28Karen Kilgariff?

  Well, they increase in difficulty. So in the beginning, like, it's kind of like New York Times crossword. It's like, I can do, yay, Monday, hooray for Tuesday. By Friday, I'm nowhere to be found.

• 47:38Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 47:39Karen Kilgariff?

  I think it's like that.

• 47:39Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 47:40Karen Kilgariff?

  So it is a very bad sign that that early he's, because then, once those are gone, they're gone.

• 47:46Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 47:46Karen Kilgariff?

  So he's down to one remaining. So he, and he slows to a crawl, telling Chris Tarrant, quote, "One of my sub-strategies is to take a long time."

• 47:59Georgia Hardstark?

  Thanks for great TV.

• 48:00Karen Kilgariff?

  I mean, so from here on out, that's exactly what he does. He just goes super slow. Question after question, Charles slowly reads his multiple-choice answers out loud and mulls them over, adding commentary, and, to be blunt, not coming across as all that bright. That's Maron's editorial. I'm just reading Maron's work.

• 48:22Georgia Hardstark?

  Maron.

• 48:24Karen Kilgariff?

  But just basically that for a person who's in this game and needs to go all the way, it's like, uh-uh.

• 48:29Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 48:30Karen Kilgariff?

  But in the end, he always chooses the right answer. Eventually, Charles arrives at question 10, so he gets pretty far. For £32,000, it's, quote, "Who had a hit UK album with Born to Do It released in 2000?" And then the options are Coldplay, Toploader, Craig David, or A1.

• 48:53Georgia Hardstark?

  I don't know the last three of those. I've never heard the last three.

• 48:57Karen Kilgariff?

  I've never heard of that song.

• 48:58Georgia Hardstark?

  Toploader? Someone named their band Toploader?

• 49:00Karen Kilgariff?

  I love Toploader so much in 1997.

• 49:04Georgia Hardstark?

  And then someone named it after a steak sauce? Their band after a steak?

• 49:07Karen Kilgariff?

  There's A1, and it's just all sauce. Okay, so Charles immediately reveals he has no idea, and basically he burns his final lifeline, which is the 50/50. So his choices are now A1 Steak Sauce and Craig David.

• 49:22Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 49:23Karen Kilgariff?

  Craig David is a musical performer.

• 49:25Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 49:26Karen Kilgariff?

  I have not heard of him. Charles says that he thinks it must be A1 because he's never heard of Craig David. But then he says, quote, "80% of the time, I'm wrong when I guess. So you know what? I'll go with Craig David."

• 49:39Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow, he's just fucking winging it.

• 49:41Karen Kilgariff?

  It's his final answer, and he is correct. This is a very weird way to play Millionaire. Charles had banked $16,000 at this point. If he missed that question, he would have been eliminated and left the show with £1,000. If he admitted he didn't know it, he could have walked with $16,000.

• 50:00Georgia Hardstark?

  Right, and then they're always like, go with your first answer, and that, you know, he didn't.

• 50:05Karen Kilgariff?

  So most contestants probably would have taken the money. This reckless approach that Charles has to basically playing this and gambling with it makes for great TV. Chris Tarrant will later say, quote, "He was extraordinary to be opposite. My read was that he was sort of a mad major, brave as a lion, but completely barmy." We should have got this translated.

• 50:28Georgia Hardstark?

  Sorry, what now? In today's money?

• 50:31Karen Kilgariff?

  Barmy in today's money is $30,000. But completely barmy, you know, probably a bit thick, dim but nice sort of thing, end quote.

• 50:42Georgia Hardstark?

  My God.

• 50:43Karen Kilgariff?

  Damn. The Millionaire production crew does not know what to make of what's happening. And over the next few questions, as the stakes get higher, Charles continues to answer in this meandering kind of cavalier way, never seeming to consider walking away with the increasingly large amount of money that he is accumulating.

• 51:01Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 51:02Karen Kilgariff?

  Instead, he's totally guessing his way through the highest-dollar questions with no lifelines yet. So.

• 51:08Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 51:09Karen Kilgariff?

  No one does it that way.

• 51:10Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 51:11Karen Kilgariff?

  Somehow, Charles stumbles his way to question 14. There are now just two correct answers separating him from the million-pound jackpot. He's asked, quote, "Baron Hussman is best known for his planning of which city?"

• 51:27Georgia Hardstark?

  No, I know this one.

• 51:28Karen Kilgariff?

  No.

• 51:28Georgia Hardstark?

  No. No.

• 51:29Karen Kilgariff?

  That would have been, suddenly, you're just like, this is the one thing I kept from high school.

• 51:33Georgia Hardstark?

  Can I guess?

• 51:34Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes, you can, but you have four options.

• 51:35Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay, give me four options.

• 51:36Karen Kilgariff?

  Rome, Paris, Berlin, or Athens?

• 51:40Georgia Hardstark?

  Berlin.

• 51:43Karen Kilgariff?

  Charles immediately says Berlin because he thinks the name Hausmann sounds German.

• 51:47Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, yeah.

• 51:47Karen Kilgariff?

  Still, he goes through the other options, chats them all through, eliminates some from contention before zeroing in on Berlin as his final answer. But before he confirms it, because that's what they always do at the end,

• 52:01Georgia Hardstark?

  Final answer, yeah.

• 52:02Karen Kilgariff?

  He suddenly changes his answer to Paris. Final answer, and he's right.

• 52:06Georgia Hardstark?

  Whoa, I was so close to being right.

• 52:08Karen Kilgariff?

  You were really close. You were, you came in second place.

• 52:10Georgia Hardstark?

  If he had said Berlin, I would have been right.

• 52:12Karen Kilgariff?

  That's right. Charles has made it now to question 15, the million pound question. The host reads the question. Are you ready?

• 52:20Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 52:20Karen Kilgariff?

  Quote, "A number one followed by 100 zeros is known by what name? A Google, a Megatron, a gigabit, or a nano mole?"

• 52:32Georgia Hardstark?

  Jesus. It's just me guessing, so let's not do it.

• 52:36Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay. Once again, Charles admits he's unsure. He thinks it's Megatron, maybe nano mole. He's never heard of Google. Just a reminder.

• 52:46Georgia Hardstark?

  It's not so funny.

• 52:47Karen Kilgariff?

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:47Georgia Hardstark?

  It's gonna be one of the biggest fucking things in the world in a minute.

• 52:49Karen Kilgariff?

  Right.

• 52:50Georgia Hardstark?

  I've never heard of Google.

• 52:51Karen Kilgariff?

  I've never heard of Google because it's the 90s and I have no idea what the very near future is about to bring.

• 52:56Georgia Hardstark?

  Totally.

• 52:58Karen Kilgariff?

  Just a reminder, Charles can still walk away with the money he's earned.

• 53:01Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 53:02Karen Kilgariff?

  It's half a million pounds up until this point. But then, in direct conflict with what he's just announced to everyone, Charles locks in on Google as his final answer. Who Wants to be a Millionaire showrunner Rod Taylor will later say, quote, "It became obvious that he wasn't under the pressure that he should have been.

• 53:22Georgia Hardstark?

  Hmm.

• 53:23Karen Kilgariff?

  It didn't make sense. He should have been very careful and very certain, and he wasn't."

• 53:27Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, the odds of just guessing all of those questions correctly is very... The number's low.

• 53:35Karen Kilgariff?

  Their number, it's less than a Google.

• 53:37Georgia Hardstark?

  Look, I don't know math, but it's low.

• 53:39Karen Kilgariff?

  It's very low.

• 53:40Georgia Hardstark?

  It's less than a Google.

• 53:41Karen Kilgariff?

  I don't do odds, I'm not a statistician. It seems unlikely.

• 53:44Georgia Hardstark?

  It's like more of a Yahoo than a...

• 53:45Karen Kilgariff?

  Well, and the other part is, he's talking through how he doesn't know this and he doesn't know that, and he's never heard of this.

• 53:53Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 53:55Karen Kilgariff?

  But it turns out Charles' answer is correct. And with that, confetti drops from the ceiling, and Charles Ingram has just become the third, only the third winner of British Who Wants to be a Millionaire. But the vibe in the studio is off.

• 54:08Georgia Hardstark?

  Is it, sorry, I didn't, is it live?

• 54:11Karen Kilgariff?

  Live to tape.

• 54:12Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 54:12Karen Kilgariff?

  It's live to the people in the room.

• 54:13Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 54:14Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 54:16Karen Kilgariff?

  Charles' wife Diana, who has been watching, yes, Charles and Diana, who has been watching from the audience, looks shaken as she steps onto the floor to hug her husband.

• 54:27Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, no.

• 54:28Karen Kilgariff?

  And around the studio, members of the millionaire crew are visibly seething, certain that Charles has just cheated right in front of their eyes.

• 54:36Georgia Hardstark?

  They know.

• 54:37Karen Kilgariff?

  They just don't know how he did it.

• 54:39Georgia Hardstark?

  Whoa.

• 54:40Karen Kilgariff?

  Charles has even searched on set to make sure he doesn't have any devices on him. He doesn't. So he and Diana are sent backstage with a bottle of champagne where they disappear into a dressing room. Staffers will allege that they can hear the couple arguing from the hallway, claiming Diana in particular sounds pissed, but they can't make out what either person is saying. A member of the millionaire production crew will later say, quote, "These two people had just won a million pounds. They should have been ecstatically happy. They should have wanted to speak to their children. They should have wanted to speak to the dog. They should have wanted to do something other than be as miserable as they seemed."

• 55:19Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, you're not fighting over after a million dollar win.

• 55:22Karen Kilgariff?

  No. On stage, the show goes on. The remaining contestants compete in yet another fastest finger. So that's actually part of it, too, is that they, if someone wins, that's over. And because someone could actually lose on like question four.

• 55:34Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 55:35Karen Kilgariff?

  And they need more contestants. That's why they do, they have all the contestants and they play fastest finger.

• 55:40Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 55:41Karen Kilgariff?

  It's a great idea.

• 55:41Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 55:43Karen Kilgariff?

  So they go on to yet another fastest finger first round to determine who will play the next game. And the winner of that round is 51-year-old college lecturer, Tekwin Whitick. But he only makes it to the 8,000 pound question before he is eliminated. As the taping wraps up on stage, behind the scenes, Millionaire's production team is mobilizing to investigate Charles. So they're like...

• 56:07Georgia Hardstark?

  I love that nobody's like happy for him.

• 56:10Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 56:10Georgia Hardstark?

  Good for you. It's just so impossible.

• 56:12Karen Kilgariff?

  But like, picture it, where it's like, what's the largest lake in America? And someone's like, well, it could be like, and he's like...

• 56:19Georgia Hardstark?

  That's what he did wrong. Instead of being like, I know I'm only whatever, but I'm super smart.

• 56:24Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 56:25Georgia Hardstark?

  I know the answer is...

• 56:26Karen Kilgariff?

  He faked it wrong.

• 56:27Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 56:28Karen Kilgariff?

  It's the same reason why the ads on TikTok, no one will ever believe those are real people talking to each other.

• 56:34Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 56:34Karen Kilgariff?

  Because it's just like, we've all seen real people talk to each other. This is not real people talking to each other. We know this, it doesn't pass the sniff test.

• 56:42Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 56:43Karen Kilgariff?

  So a few days later, on September 14th, the executives at Who Wants to be a Millionaire call Scotland Yard, and they share their suspicion that Charles Ingram somehow cheated. They're refusing to pay out his prize money until the police look into the matter. So they escalate the whole thing.

• 57:01Georgia Hardstark?

  Whoa, is that, is that an illegal thing, to cheat on a game show?

• 57:04Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 57:04Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 57:05Karen Kilgariff?

  Fraud.

• 57:05Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 57:06Karen Kilgariff?

  It's just bad vibes. And they've already shelved his episode, which was supposed to air the following week.

• 57:12Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh.

• 57:13Karen Kilgariff?

  That's not good. An official investigation kicks off, and Charles gives a statement to The Guardian saying, quote, "I have no idea why they're investigating me. I don't know what there is to investigate." End quote. So he's claiming complete innocence.

• 57:26Georgia Hardstark?

  You want to phone a friend? Find out, dude?

• 57:28Karen Kilgariff?

  Phone a friend with a better...

• 57:29Georgia Hardstark?

  Guess what?

• 57:30Karen Kilgariff?

  A better alibi than that? The millionaire crew is already working out its own theory, so they start looking through the footage from Charles' episode. And when they get to the 32,000 pound question about the album Born to Do It, where Charles claims not to know who Craig David is, but then picks him as the final answer, Charles' wife Diana is being filmed for her reactions to her husband's game. So she's in the audience.

• 57:57Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 57:58Karen Kilgariff?

  And of course, the cameraman is on her the entire time because whether her husband wins or lose, they need that shot.

• 58:03Georgia Hardstark?

  Sure.

• 58:04Karen Kilgariff?

  Here's an interesting side note. Diana comes from a trivia-obsessed family. Her brother Adrian is on the British game show circuit.

• 58:13Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh.

• 58:14Karen Kilgariff?

  That's a thing.

• 58:14Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 58:15Karen Kilgariff?

  You could do it too if you wanted. Get, let's get over there. Having made it on to several game shows himself, including Who Wants to be a Millionaire. So they've, he's played it already. And, and when he played it, he won 32,000 pounds. He got to that question.

• 58:30Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 58:31Karen Kilgariff?

  Also, Diana has already been in the hot seat herself. She has made it through the fastest finger and made it into the seat.

• 58:39Georgia Hardstark?

  That seems hard.

• 58:40Karen Kilgariff?

  Right? Like her brother, she won 32,000 pounds just a few months before Charles made his appearance. And in the interim between Diana and Charles' appearances, they together were selected as potential contestants for a couples' edition of Who Wants to be a Millionaire, but they never got into the hot seat. So the millionaire crew goes back and watches the footage from the audience cameras. And because they're focused on Diana for her reaction, they notice that she suddenly develops a cough just as Charles runs through the multiple choice answers.

• 59:13Georgia Hardstark?

  I wish it were something brilliant. Can we, don't, can you lie to me?

• 59:19Karen Kilgariff?

  No, I can't.

• 59:20Georgia Hardstark?

  Tell me it was like telepathy.

• 59:21Karen Kilgariff?

  I won't. Never. Her coughs seem to come whenever Charles reads the name.

• 59:27Georgia Hardstark?

  What the fuck?

• 59:27Karen Kilgariff?

  Craig David. It's such a good system. You have to admit it.

• 59:32Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 59:32Karen Kilgariff?

  And she's not alone. There's another cougher, and it's Tekwin Whitick, the other guy who, the guy who won the game after him.

• 59:40Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh.

• 59:41Karen Kilgariff?

  Tekwin also coughs right as Charles reads the correct answer to various questions out loud. So some coughing, of course, is expected during a studio taping like this, but a, but a millionaire crew member will later describe seeing Tekwin cough in real time. And he'll later say, quote, "He was only about 10 or 15 feet directly in front of me, and the way he was coughing was rather bizarre. He was actually turning toward the set to cough."

• 1:00:11Georgia Hardstark?

  I want to try it. Can we try it?

• 1:00:13Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:14Georgia Hardstark?

  Like that? You go.

• 1:00:18Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:18Karen Kilgariff?

  Like, it's that.

• 1:00:19Georgia Hardstark?

  Yes.

• 1:00:20Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay.

• 1:00:21Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, that's

• 1:00:21Karen Kilgariff?

  Because you have to have, this, this guy has to hear it.

• 1:00:24Georgia Hardstark?

  Like, at some point, the guy next to you that doesn't know you is gonna get annoyed with you.

• 1:00:28Karen Kilgariff?

  It's gonna be like, can you get this fucking person to cough her out of here? Assistant director, can I speak to you for a second?

• 1:00:36Karen Kilgariff?

  But this is pre-COVID.

• 1:00:39Karen Kilgariff?

  Sorry, mid-quote. At one point, it turned into the set to cough. At one point, he was chatting to the contestant to his left in a whispered way, and then he'd turn around a full 90 degrees and cough toward the hot seat.

• 1:00:52Georgia Hardstark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:00:53Karen Kilgariff?

  End quote. The entire Millionaire set audience is heavily mic'd, so the crew can isolate and enhance audio captured near Taekwun. At one point, they hear him chatting with the contestant sitting next to him. The whole thing is on cameras and mics, obviously.

• 1:01:08Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:09Karen Kilgariff?

  About the question Charles is trying to answer, which is, quote, "What type of garment is an Anthony Eden? Is it an overcoat, a hat, shoes, or a tie?"

• 1:01:20Georgia Hardstark?

  A tie.

• 1:01:22Karen Kilgariff?

  Hold on.

• 1:01:22Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 1:01:23Karen Kilgariff?

  This is Charles' 13th question. He's playing for 250,000 pounds. And like he has before, he reads through the four possible answers, as he does.

• 1:01:32Georgia Hardstark?

  Slowly.

• 1:01:33Karen Kilgariff?

  Right? That's what that's all about. Taekwun coughs three times. Each one comes right after Charles says the correct answer, which is, what did you guess?

• 1:01:42Georgia Hardstark?

  A tie?

• 1:01:42Karen Kilgariff?

  Hat.

• 1:01:43Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay. I think he only needed to cough one time.

• 1:01:46Karen Kilgariff?

  For real, bro.

• 1:01:47Georgia Hardstark?

  Like, sorry to teach you how to cheat, but like, you didn't need to do it every single time.

• 1:01:51Karen Kilgariff?

  You're, you're in a silent studio audience that's required to be silent for the taping of the people talking on the stage.

• 1:01:57Georgia Hardstark?

  You only need a one confirmation.

• 1:02:01Karen Kilgariff?

  Insanity.

• 1:02:02Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:03Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay. And this is just one instance of this happening, of many. As one crew member will say, it's not that hard to explain a cough here and there, but, quote, "When you're talking about 17, 18 persistent coughs at specific points that appear to be leading somebody, you back yourself into a corner."

• 1:02:22Georgia Hardstark?

  Can I tell you about cheating one time?

• 1:02:25Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:25Georgia Hardstark?

  In high school. It was English, so of course I had read the book, because I fucking love reading. It was like the only class I did okay in. And a bunch of my friends like hadn't. There was a quiz, pop quiz, and it was yes, no answers. So I put my, I put my feet down on the ground if it was yes, and put my feet up if it was no.

• 1:02:43Karen Kilgariff?

  That's genius.

• 1:02:45Georgia Hardstark?

  And she didn't notice. It was like my favorite teacher, so I'm not even gonna say, but like, I feel terrible.

• 1:02:50Karen Kilgariff?

  And everyone passed, or everyone like did good?

• 1:02:52Georgia Hardstark?

  Just like, it was like three of my friends.

• 1:02:53Karen Kilgariff?

  That's really good.

• 1:02:54Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:55Karen Kilgariff?

  That's

• 1:02:56Georgia Hardstark?

  It was, and I was so subtle about it, just like, oh, I wanna put

• 1:02:59Karen Kilgariff?

  You're just trying to adjust.

• 1:02:59Georgia Hardstark?

  I just have ADHD, I can't sit still.

• 1:03:02Karen Kilgariff?

  You know how I am, with my feet and my seating.

• 1:03:05Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:07Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay. So, the example that's often cited as the most suspicious, if not egregious, happens during the question about Baron Hesman for 500,000 pounds. And this is when Charles nearly answers Berlin before he goes back and picks Paris.

• 1:03:22Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, right.

• 1:03:23Karen Kilgariff?

  Which he had just verbally written off to everybody.

• 1:03:26Georgia Hardstark?

  Right, because he goes like, "I'm gonna pick Berlin."

• 1:03:29Karen Kilgariff?

  That sounds like Berlin to Paris.

• 1:03:31Georgia Hardstark?

  But I wonder if it's, yeah, fuck, dude.

• 1:03:34Karen Kilgariff?

  When the production crew isolates and enhances the audio from the now classic moment, they think they hear Taekwun cough and then follow it up with the word "no." So he's, "No."

• 1:03:47Georgia Hardstark?

  Bro, it's a silent audience.

• 1:03:50Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes.

• 1:03:52Karen Kilgariff?

  I mean, I wonder if there's like, if there's sound effects, or it's like, something they're trying to beat?

• 1:03:57Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:58Karen Kilgariff?

  Maybe it wasn't perfectly silent, but still. Sure enough, instead of saying Berlin, he then basically rereads the options and goes with Paris.

• 1:04:07Georgia Hardstark?

  Sneeze would have been better.

• 1:04:09Karen Kilgariff?

  This time, Taekwun coughs and blows his nose when Paris is read aloud, so.

• 1:04:15Georgia Hardstark?

  That's a cough, oh, weird.

• 1:04:17Karen Kilgariff?

  Yep.

• 1:04:18Georgia Hardstark?

  Something to do with snot.

• 1:04:19Karen Kilgariff?

  I'm trying to fix this, I'm trying to make it seem, yeah, no.

• 1:04:22Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh my god.

• 1:04:23Karen Kilgariff?

  So that's when Charles picks it as his final answer. So now, it is November. A couple months after Charles' taped appearance on Millionaire, Scotland Yard's investigation concludes with the arrests of Charles Ingram, Diana, and Taekwun. They're accused of conspiring to defraud the show of the million pound prize. So I bet that's what it was. It's like, oh, if it was just a game show, it wasn't that big of a deal.

• 1:04:48Georgia Hardstark?

  It's fraud.

• 1:04:48Karen Kilgariff?

  But it's so much money.

• 1:04:49Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:50Karen Kilgariff?

  Though each defendant adamantly denies the charges against them, they all plead not guilty.

• 1:04:55Georgia Hardstark?

  Huh. Guilty.

• 1:04:59Karen Kilgariff?

  The prosecution makes a strong case in court. As they have the material evidence, the coughing audio, The Guardian reports that the first time the recording of Taekwun's cough "no" moment is played aloud, quote, "Every journalist and member of the public burst out laughing."

• 1:05:14Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, no, you're gonna plea, you're gonna go ahead and plea.

• 1:05:16Karen Kilgariff?

  You got to.

• 1:05:17Georgia Hardstark?

  Like, you wanna be humiliated?

• 1:05:19Karen Kilgariff?

  And also, here's the thing, and people always do this, they double down.

• 1:05:23Georgia Hardstark?

  Totally.

• 1:05:23Karen Kilgariff?

  You get caught, you double down.

• 1:05:25Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:25Karen Kilgariff?

  Take the hit, you're gonna end up taking it anyway.

• 1:05:27Georgia Hardstark?

  And the guy who's going against you is like, okay.

• 1:05:29Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, I mean, if you want to, here we go, let's roll the tape.

• 1:05:33Georgia Hardstark?

  Say the wife did it. Let's see what happens.

• 1:05:35Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:38Karen Kilgariff?

  They present footage that appears to show Diana repeatedly looking over to the area where Taekwun is seated while Charles is playing, as if for reassurance. So she's like, "Should we be doing this? We should, I don't know."

• 1:05:49Georgia Hardstark?

  Should we be doing?

• 1:05:52Karen Kilgariff?

  All on film. They also bring in other contestants who claimed that they too had noticed Taekwun's suspiciously timed coughs. And then they share Diana's phone records. She'd been in contact with Taekwun a handful of times in the weeks leading up to the show, including a five-minute phone call made on the day Charles' episode was recorded. Police put forward the theory that the trio's motive is money, because they

• 1:06:18Georgia Hardstark?

  Sherlock, literally Sherlock.

• 1:06:19Karen Kilgariff?

  It wasn't, and it wasn't trivia. We did it to learn. It's money because both the Ingrams and Taekwun are in significant debt.

• 1:06:30Georgia Hardstark?

  Sure.

• 1:06:30Karen Kilgariff?

  Who is it? They also suggest that the argument between Charles and Diana backstage after the taping may have been about Charles and Taekwun going rogue and advancing further in the game than was planned.

• 1:06:44Georgia Hardstark?

  Totally.

• 1:06:45Karen Kilgariff?

  Which risks exposing the entire scheme.

• 1:06:47Georgia Hardstark?

  She knew that like, you only win a little bit.

• 1:06:49Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes.

• 1:06:49Georgia Hardstark?

  And people don't question it.

• 1:06:50Karen Kilgariff?

  Don't get greedy.

• 1:06:51Georgia Hardstark?

  Don't get greedy.

• 1:06:52Karen Kilgariff?

  And don't be crazy.

• 1:06:53Georgia Hardstark?

  No, they fucked around and found out.

• 1:06:54Karen Kilgariff?

  That's British style, which was politely. But the defense hits back. Charles denies arguing with his wife after the show and maintains that he picked the correct answers fair and square. He claims that talking through each possible answer was genuine strategy. He and his lawyers tried to establish that Charles is smart enough to have correctly answered all the questions without help, though it's unclear if they are successful.

• 1:07:20Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:22Karen Kilgariff?

  The Guardian adds in its court reporting, quote, "Nobody notices that Charles is wearing a Mensa badge. He put it on as a special touch, but it is so tiny, just a little M on his lapel, that the jury can't spot it."

• 1:07:36Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh my god.

• 1:07:39Karen Kilgariff?

  What eagle-eyed Guardian reporter got in there and was like, you know what he's trying to do?

• 1:07:44Georgia Hardstark?

  Totally, I'm the only one who noticed.

• 1:07:46Karen Kilgariff?

  And also, just, he's like, but I'm real smart.

• 1:07:49Georgia Hardstark?

  I got a pin.

• 1:07:50Karen Kilgariff?

  I found this M on the street.

• 1:07:52Georgia Hardstark?

  They gave me a badge, they called them badges, they gave me a badge.

• 1:07:54Karen Kilgariff?

  Good one.

• 1:07:55Georgia Hardstark?

  And now I'm

• 1:07:56Karen Kilgariff?

  And my badge makes me spot.

• 1:07:58Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:59Karen Kilgariff?

  And so Craig David, I am your number one fan. Taekwun testifies that he suffers from allergies and legitimately has a coughing issue. Usually, it's less coughing and more sneezing, but okay. When it's pointed out that his cough seemed to vanish when he took the hot seat himself,

• 1:08:15Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 1:08:15Karen Kilgariff?

  he claims that he'd had some water just before.

• 1:08:18Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, you know, water cures everything.

• 1:08:21Karen Kilgariff?

  It cures allergies.

• 1:08:22Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:23Karen Kilgariff?

  Taekwun and Diana also explain that they did know each other at the time of the taping, though not well. Months prior, Taekwun had reached out to Diana through her brother Adrian, asking for tips on how to get onto the show. Diana and Adrian both have been on Millionaire at this point, and they both are becoming self-styled experts. In fact, they're writing a how-to book called "Win a Million." So they're basically trying to teach people how to get on the show.

• 1:08:52Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:53Karen Kilgariff?

  Imagine writing a book of like, how to get on Jeopardy.

• 1:08:55Georgia Hardstark?

  It sounds like a pamphlet, at best.

• 1:08:57Karen Kilgariff?

  I mean, it's just like, you got, you read some books.

• 1:09:00Georgia Hardstark?

  Booklet.

• 1:09:01Karen Kilgariff?

  Page.

• 1:09:01Georgia Hardstark?

  That's it.

• 1:09:02Karen Kilgariff?

  Read, reads

• 1:09:03Georgia Hardstark?

  Like, large font, maybe, booklet.

• 1:09:05Karen Kilgariff?

  If you're in Las Vegas, take the pamphlets being handed to you and read them.

• 1:09:09Georgia Hardstark?

  Always.

• 1:09:10Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, so they were in the process of writing this how-to book when Charles makes it into the hot seat. The publication of that book is axed.

• 1:09:18Georgia Hardstark?

  No.

• 1:09:19Karen Kilgariff?

  They lose the book deal. So it turns out, there is not much hard evidence proving that Charles Ingram knew Taekwun. The defense also points out that it would have been difficult for him to differentiate Diana or Taekwun's individual coughs during the taping, as opposed to any other random cough that was heard.

• 1:09:37Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:38Karen Kilgariff?

  A sound expert will testify.

• 1:09:40Georgia Hardstark?

  Sound expert?

• 1:09:41Karen Kilgariff?

  A sound expert.

• 1:09:42Georgia Hardstark?

  I'm a sound expert.

• 1:09:43Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes, you are.

• 1:09:44Georgia Hardstark?

  Can everyone be a sound, anyone?

• 1:09:45Karen Kilgariff?

  Everyone in that control room is a sound expert. We got a lot of them around here. There is one, and they testify, there was a total of around 192 coughs during the taping of Charles' episode.

• 1:09:59Georgia Hardstark?

  All right.

• 1:10:00Karen Kilgariff?

  Although a notable amount, 19 coughs, were attributed to Taekwun alone.

• 1:10:05Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 1:10:06Karen Kilgariff?

  So

• 1:10:07Georgia Hardstark?

  Is that a lot? Like, I don't know, I don't know what the number's supposed to be.

• 1:10:11Karen Kilgariff?

  It

• 1:10:11Georgia Hardstark?

  Seems like a lot.

• 1:10:12Karen Kilgariff?

  Well, they're basically saying, I think it's very common, because in that situation, you know you're not supposed to cough.

• 1:10:18Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 1:10:18Karen Kilgariff?

  And then that's when you really have to cough.

• 1:10:19Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 1:10:20Karen Kilgariff?

  So it's probably kinda common, and they're used to editing them out. But usually, everybody gets one or two.

• 1:10:25Georgia Hardstark?

  Sure.

• 1:10:26Karen Kilgariff?

  Not 19.

• 1:10:27Georgia Hardstark?

  19, okay.

• 1:10:28Karen Kilgariff?

  Like, cough 19 times, that's how you realize how obvious and insane it is.

• 1:10:32Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:33Karen Kilgariff?

  In another fun trial moment, a coughing expert is put on the stand.

• 1:10:37Georgia Hardstark?

  What? Oh my god, what if the sound expert and the coughing expert started dating?

• 1:10:41Karen Kilgariff?

  Falling in love.

• 1:10:42Georgia Hardstark?

  And they have a baby, and it's a baby expert.

• 1:10:44Karen Kilgariff?

  And the baby is an expert about himself.

• 1:10:49Karen Kilgariff?

  But when the coughing expert gets put on the stand, court has to be put on hold because two jurors go into coughing fits. Because it's also suggestible.

• 1:10:58Georgia Hardstark?

  Yes, totally, totally.

• 1:10:59Karen Kilgariff?

  The yawning thing. I just took the yawning thing, applied it to coughing.

• 1:11:03Georgia Hardstark?

  Hundred percent.

• 1:11:04Karen Kilgariff?

  Thank you.

• 1:11:05Georgia Hardstark?

  Now I need, I feel like I need a cough.

• 1:11:06Karen Kilgariff?

  Do it. Do it. Cheat me into the end of this story. In the end, though, the jury finds Charles and Diana Ingram and Teklin Whitick guilty. Charles and Diana each receive an 18-month suspended sentence and are fined a collective 25,000 pounds.

• 1:11:25Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 1:11:26Karen Kilgariff?

  So they don't get the money.

• 1:11:27Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, they never got the money. Oh.

• 1:11:31Karen Kilgariff?

  Teklin, meanwhile, gets a 12-month suspended sentence and his fines and fees total 17,500 pounds. The Who Wants to be a Millionaire scandal breaks at a time when British tabloids are particularly ruthless. Right? Late 90s?

• 1:11:47Georgia Hardstark?

  So mean.

• 1:11:48Karen Kilgariff?

  So bad.

• 1:11:48Georgia Hardstark?

  And so naked, like just tits everywhere.

• 1:11:51Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes, that's right. The media attention in this scandal is overwhelming. The public do not treat the Ingrams kindly.

• 1:11:59Georgia Hardstark?

  No.

• 1:11:59Karen Kilgariff?

  They're disgraced, they're financially ruined. Charles loses both his military status and his pension.

• 1:12:06Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 1:12:07Karen Kilgariff?

  Loses everything.

• 1:12:08Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 1:12:09Karen Kilgariff?

  And the family are subjected to near constant harassment. Charles later talks about their windows being broken, bags of vomit hurled at their house.

• 1:12:18Georgia Hardstark?

  Ew.

• 1:12:19Karen Kilgariff?

  And even their pets being attacked.

• 1:12:21Georgia Hardstark?

  No.

• 1:12:21Karen Kilgariff?

  Their three young children are bullied at school. It is a, for them, like a nationwide scandal. Everyone knows about it. It's huge.

• 1:12:30Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 1:12:31Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah. Teklin loses his job and, like Charles and Diana, becomes the butt of a nationwide running joke. At one point, he has to trademark his own name after a company tries to use it for a line of cough drops.

• 1:12:45Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, my God. They got canceled. They got 2,000 canceled.

• 1:12:51Karen Kilgariff?

  They got, they got 90s canceled, which is like the bullying.

• 1:12:55Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:56Karen Kilgariff?

  It's okay.

• 1:12:57Georgia Hardstark?

  They can say anything about you.

• 1:12:58Karen Kilgariff?

  Be evil.

• 1:12:59Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:59Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah. Then in 2003, ITV airs a documentary about this case called Major Fraud that is heavily weighted towards the prosecution's version of events. It's watched by nearly 17 million people. So almost as much as Who Wants to be a Millionaire, with the highest ratings for a nonfictional TV program since Princess Diana's funeral.

• 1:13:20Georgia Hardstark?

  Holy shit.

• 1:13:22Karen Kilgariff?

  This documentary arguably helps solidify Charles' guilt in the minds of the public, but over the years, more and more journalists and writers have questioned whether the prosecution's evidence proved beyond a reasonable doubt that these three genuinely cheated.

• 1:13:37Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, I thought it was gonna be not guilty, honestly.

• 1:13:39Karen Kilgariff?

  Right. Because it's like, it's vague enough to be like, there's a...

• 1:13:43Georgia Hardstark?

  It's like, it's opinion, really, rather than fact.

• 1:13:47Karen Kilgariff?

  Well...

• 1:13:48Georgia Hardstark?

  Like, it's very nuanced.

• 1:13:50Karen Kilgariff?

  Or it's almost like, do, do these, does A plus B equals C?

• 1:13:55Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah. I mean, I obviously believe it. It's true. They cheated, but...

• 1:13:58Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah. But you can't prove it.

• 1:14:00Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:00Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah. You're saying court-wise.

• 1:14:01Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:03Karen Kilgariff?

  Today, the story of the coughing major is alive and well in Britain. The reason we don't know it well is because this incident happened two days before 9/11.

• 1:14:13Georgia Hardstark?

  I noticed that.

• 1:14:13Karen Kilgariff?

  It's one of those lost...

• 1:14:15Georgia Hardstark?

  Totally.

• 1:14:15Karen Kilgariff?

  Things where everyone in England knows it very well. There was a recent mini-series starring Matthew McFadden.

• 1:14:23Georgia Hardstark?

  No.

• 1:14:25Karen Kilgariff?

  And Fleabag's Sean Clifford, the sister.

• 1:14:28Georgia Hardstark?

  No way.

• 1:14:29Karen Kilgariff?

  As the Ingrams.

• 1:14:30Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 1:14:31Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes. And the real Charles and Diana Ingram have appeared on other game shows here and there as novelty contestants, but mostly they live a private life and they reportedly sell custom-made jewelry at craft markets. They still maintain their innocence, with Charles Ingram emerging in the press around the time Quiz was released, saying, quote, "I should make one thing clear, and I'll only say it once and then move on. We didn't cheat on that show. There was no plan to cheat on that show. I won that money perfectly, honestly, and fairly and squarely."

• 1:15:08Georgia Hardstark?

  No.

• 1:15:10Georgia Hardstark?

  Allegedly.

• 1:15:10Karen Kilgariff?

  And that is the story of the Who Wants to be a Millionaire cheating scandal.

• 1:15:14Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow, I didn't know that one.

• 1:15:17Karen Kilgariff?

  Crazy.

• 1:15:18Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:18Karen Kilgariff?

  Right?

• 1:15:19Georgia Hardstark?

  I thought, I had some crazy idea of the cheat. So when you said coughing and it was that simple, because I thought it was like a multi-level, like people who worked there were in on it.

• 1:15:28Karen Kilgariff?

  Computers.

• 1:15:29Georgia Hardstark?

  Computers, like a fucking buzzer on your leg or whatever. Wow.

• 1:15:33Karen Kilgariff?

  No, it was old school. It was Georgian high school level.

• 1:15:36Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:37Karen Kilgariff?

  Right?

• 1:15:37Georgia Hardstark?

  Which is like...

• 1:15:38Karen Kilgariff?

  But yours was way better. You can't do something audio.

• 1:15:42Georgia Hardstark?

  I just, I just think that getting greedy was the fucking thing.

• 1:15:47Karen Kilgariff?

  They had the perfect plan up until 32,000.

• 1:15:51Georgia Hardstark?

  That's why she was mad at him.

• 1:15:52Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:52Georgia Hardstark?

  I want, I feel bad for them, though, now, like that they were so ripped apart. Like, that just sucks.

• 1:15:58Karen Kilgariff?

  Right. Because also, it's like, trying to get money on a game show.

• 1:16:02Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:03Karen Kilgariff?

  It's like, you shouldn't be the worst person in the country.

• 1:16:06Georgia Hardstark?

  I would have thought they were like heroes a little bit, like hometown heroes, kind of.

• 1:16:10Karen Kilgariff?

  Right, but it was the toxic 90s, 2000s.

• 1:16:13Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 1:16:14Karen Kilgariff?

  Where it was just like, here's the latest person we're gonna crucify. Let's all go, everybody, brainlessly and mindlessly.

• 1:16:21Georgia Hardstark?

  I feel like at some point, it's gonna change and they're gonna be beloved by their people.

• 1:16:26Karen Kilgariff?

  We're gonna start it right now.

• 1:16:27Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:27Karen Kilgariff?

  Guys, England, hear us out. We've made a lot of mistakes with your pronunciations.

• 1:16:33Georgia Hardstark?

  What is the UK? What isn't the UK? Sometimes we don't know.

• 1:16:36Karen Kilgariff?

  I think about that twice a week, that I made the mistake of calling Ireland the UK. Why am I saying it again? But this is what I'm saying. It's just like, this is, this is what happens when you fucking volunteer to put yourself on TV.

• 1:16:50Georgia Hardstark?

  When you fuck around, you usually find out.

• 1:16:52Karen Kilgariff?

  You get found out.

• 1:16:53Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:54Karen Kilgariff?

  Often.

• 1:16:54Georgia Hardstark?

  Often.

• 1:16:55Karen Kilgariff?

  So true.

• 1:16:56Georgia Hardstark?

  Wait, did this ever air?

• 1:16:57Karen Kilgariff?

  No.

• 1:16:58Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 1:16:59Karen Kilgariff?

  So we do, of course, have pictures because it was all filmed.

• 1:17:02Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:03Karen Kilgariff?

  So this is when Diana was a contestant.

• 1:17:05Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 1:17:06Karen Kilgariff?

  She made it. And then here's when Teklin was a contestant.

• 1:17:10Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay. They don't look like cheaters.

• 1:17:13Karen Kilgariff?

  They really don't.

• 1:17:14Georgia Hardstark?

  They look like teachers.

• 1:17:15Karen Kilgariff?

  But I think that's the thing about British people.

• 1:17:17Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 1:17:18Karen Kilgariff?

  It's just like, you're so polite and you look so, you look so kind.

• 1:17:21Georgia Hardstark?

  You sound smart. Your accent makes you sound really smart.

• 1:17:24Karen Kilgariff?

  And yet you colonized the entire world. Sorry.

• 1:17:28Georgia Hardstark?

  And yet, you won't give Ireland its own country back.

• 1:17:33Karen Kilgariff?

  Give Ireland back to the Irish. They're not a part of the UK. We've learned that on this show.

• 1:17:39Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, my God. What are we doing?

• 1:17:40Karen Kilgariff?

  We learned that here. And then here's the couple together.

• 1:17:43Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay, let's see. Oh, I mean, they win because they found love. Like, in everyone else's face, they're still together.

• 1:17:50Karen Kilgariff?

  I would like to be their defense lawyer for one second and just say, "Look at that lovely kitchen that they came up with this stupid idea in, where they're like, "We're gonna game the system a little bit.

• 1:18:01Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:02Karen Kilgariff?

  "We've already been on there. We can't go again. We need that money."

• 1:18:05Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:06Karen Kilgariff?

  That's what it feels like to me.

• 1:18:07Georgia Hardstark?

  "We need to remodel this kitchen. I'm sick of this kettle. It's the old kettle that we got for our wedding."

• 1:18:12Karen Kilgariff?

  This kettle, you don't hear anything and then all of a sudden it sounds like a train's coming through the front.

• 1:18:17Georgia Hardstark?

  So let's cheat.

• 1:18:19Karen Kilgariff?

  So let's go. Let's go cheat the dumbest public way we possibly can.

• 1:18:23Georgia Hardstark?

  So public. Just rob a bank.

• 1:18:26Karen Kilgariff?

  And also, it is, I think when people get mad about stuff like that, it's because it's this overt disrespect

• 1:18:33Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:33Karen Kilgariff?

  to their intelligence, where it's like,

• 1:18:35Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 1:18:35Karen Kilgariff?

  "You think we didn't notice Coffee McGee over here the whole time?"

• 1:18:41Georgia Hardstark?

  Right. Or they're mad that they didn't think of it. Amazing.

• 1:18:47Karen Kilgariff?

  Right?

• 1:18:47Georgia Hardstark?

  It was fun, it turned out.

• 1:18:50Karen Kilgariff?

  I know. We try, we try to balance it out.

• 1:18:52Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah. Whenever I hear these ones, all I think about is like a couple on a road trip and she's like, "Just, you have to listen to it." It gets, I know this is like horrible and we're talking about like really bad stuff, but the second story is always a little lighter.

• 1:19:05Karen Kilgariff?

  They do, they do something different in the second one.

• 1:19:06Georgia Hardstark?

  Just listen, just wait.

• 1:19:07Karen Kilgariff?

  But the first one's important and you will listen to what it is like.

• 1:19:11Georgia Hardstark?

  The juxtaposition is amazing.

• 1:19:13Karen Kilgariff?

  It's part of the producing.

• 1:19:15Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 1:19:16Karen Kilgariff?

  Also, it's important to talk about the things of, it was the 90s, it was this, but, but now it's kind of like a cardiologist in the autopsy.

• 1:19:28Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 1:19:28Karen Kilgariff?

  Calling the shots.

• 1:19:29Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:30Karen Kilgariff?

  And all the young people from this era.

• 1:19:34Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:34Karen Kilgariff?

  Who are now becoming forensic pathologists.

• 1:19:38Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, I love it.

• 1:19:38Karen Kilgariff?

  And, and whatever else they're coming, becoming, to basically be the people who are like, uh-uh. It doesn't work that way anymore.

• 1:19:46Georgia Hardstark?

  I love it. I love when someone comes up to us and says, "I'm a criminologist or I'm going to school for forensics" or something like that. Yes.

• 1:19:52Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes.

• 1:19:53Georgia Hardstark?

  You're gonna change the world.

• 1:19:54Karen Kilgariff?

  They're gonna go in and represent.

• 1:19:55Georgia Hardstark?

  Hell, yeah.

• 1:19:56Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:56Georgia Hardstark?

  We support you.

• 1:19:57Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah. Murderous, you're doing great with your studies and your, and all the ways that you fight back.

• 1:20:03Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, great work. We're, we're fans.

• 1:20:07Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, we really are.

• 1:20:19Karen Kilgariff?

  Welcome to another installation of Honking Hoorays, brought to you by Hyundai.

• 1:20:23Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 1:20:23Karen Kilgariff?

  You want to go first?

• 1:20:24Georgia Hardstark?

  Sure. This is a good one. This is from Clove and Hound on Instagram. "Hi Karen and Georgia. I was just elected president of my all-volunteer search and rescue team."

• 1:20:35Karen Kilgariff?

  Whoa.

• 1:20:35Georgia Hardstark?

  "And stepped into the role of head trainer at 33 years old."

• 1:20:39Karen Kilgariff?

  Wow.

• 1:20:40Georgia Hardstark?

  SAR, search and rescue, is a very male-dominated field, and as a woman with anxiety, leadership always felt impossible to me. But I've been listening to MFM, that's us, since before I ever started training, and the strength and resilience and the stories you tell helped me push through fear in every tough scenario."

• 1:20:57Karen Kilgariff?

  Wow.

• 1:20:57Georgia Hardstark?

  Isn't that beautiful?

• 1:20:58Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, it is.

• 1:20:58Georgia Hardstark?

  Thank you, Clove and Hound. Congratulations.

• 1:21:00Karen Kilgariff?

  Good job.

• 1:21:01Georgia Hardstark?

  Kick some ass.

• 1:21:02Karen Kilgariff?

  Hooray for you. Well, this one, this hilarious one's from Kate Towery on Instagram, says, "I tried out for a part in a local theater production and got the lead. I'm 40, and it's the first time acting since high school."

• 1:21:16Georgia Hardstark?

  That is incredible.

• 1:21:17Karen Kilgariff?

  And you know what? She's playing Annie.

• 1:21:19Georgia Hardstark?

  Is she?

• 1:21:19Karen Kilgariff?

  No. No, few mates.

• 1:21:22Georgia Hardstark?

  She's a little girl. She's 40.

• 1:21:23Karen Kilgariff?

  Just a 40-year-old with a weird curly wig on.

• 1:21:26Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay, this one is from Kristin Loves Cats. Good for her.

• 1:21:29Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:30Georgia Hardstark?

  "I only have two weeks left at the office I'm now at before I get to go to a job with better pay."

• 1:21:36Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh.

• 1:21:36Georgia Hardstark?

  Chloe.

• 1:21:37Karen Kilgariff?

  Nice.

• 1:21:37Georgia Hardstark?

  Good job, Chloe.

• 1:21:38Karen Kilgariff?

  Congratulations, Chloe. You've done it.

• 1:21:40Georgia Hardstark?

  Take a vacation.

• 1:21:41Karen Kilgariff?

  What are you gonna buy? This one says, from Kate's286 on Instagram, "As an eldest daughter, putting up boundaries with the fam, no more organizing or planning for me." Wow.

• 1:21:54Georgia Hardstark?

  Sometimes you can just be the person who shows up.

• 1:21:56Karen Kilgariff?

  Just show up as the youngest daughter.

• 1:21:58Georgia Hardstark?

  That's right.

• 1:21:58Karen Kilgariff?

  That's what we say you can do.

• 1:22:00Georgia Hardstark?

  And that is what you're bringing to the party, is yourself.

• 1:22:02Karen Kilgariff?

  That's plenty.

• 1:22:03Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay, this one's from Taylor Caslin. It says, "I bought bedside face wipes at Georgia's recommendation for lazy bedtime makeup removal."

• 1:22:12Karen Kilgariff?

  You did it.

• 1:22:13Georgia Hardstark?

  That's it. Hooray.

• 1:22:14Karen Kilgariff?

  Hooray for that. It's the simple things in life. This one's from Karen S. It's from Fan Cult, and it says, "I found a picture of an Irish relative from the early 1900s. I put it somewhere safe and promptly forgot where it was. It's been quote-unquote 'safe' for a couple of years. I was cleaning out old books the other day, and I found the picture back. It is now safely framed and on a shelf for display."

• 1:22:34Georgia Hardstark?

  Amazing. Always check your books before you donate them, because you never know what you stuck in there.

• 1:22:39Karen Kilgariff?

  Cash?

• 1:22:39Georgia Hardstark?

  Cash. Well, most likely cash.

• 1:22:41Karen Kilgariff?

  Treasure maps?

• 1:22:42Georgia Hardstark?

  Well, thank you, guys, for sending us your hoorays. We love them all, and thank you again to Hyundai for presenting them.

• 1:22:48Karen Kilgariff?

  Stay sexy.

• 1:22:49Georgia Hardstark?

  And don't get murdered. Bye.

• 1:22:52Karen Kilgariff?

  Elvis, do you want a cookie?

• 1:23:01Karen Kilgariff?

  This has been an Exactly Right Production.

• 1:23:03Georgia Hardstark?

  Our managing producer is Molly Smith.

• 1:23:05Karen Kilgariff?

  Our consulting producer is Kate Schellbach.

• 1:23:07Georgia Hardstark?

  Our creative lead is Allison Agosti.

• 1:23:09Karen Kilgariff?

  Our associate producer is Tessa Hughes, and our editor is Aristotle Acevedo.

• 1:23:13Georgia Hardstark?

  This episode was mixed by Leona Scolacci.

• 1:23:16Karen Kilgariff?

  Our researchers are Maren McLaughlin and Ally Elkin.

• 1:23:19Georgia Hardstark?

  Email your hometowns to [email protected] and follow the show on Instagram at MyFavoriteMurder.

• 1:23:24Karen Kilgariff?

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

• 1:23:29Georgia Hardstark?

  Or watch new episodes every week on Netflix. Search for My Favorite Murder, add us to your list, and hit the double thumbs up button.

• 1:23:38Georgia Hardstark?

  Goodbye.

• 1:23:46Karen Kilgariff?

  Calling all amateur detectives and podcast obsessives.

• 1:23:49Georgia Hardstark?

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

• 1:23:58Karen 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.

• 1:24:14Georgia Hardstark?

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

• 1:24:17Karen Kilgariff?

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

• 1:24:23Speaker 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 loads sold.

• 1:24:58Georgia Hardstark?

  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 it. Each week, I bring on an amazing guest.

• 1:25:10Speaker 01

  Ooh, I scammed them.

• 1:25:11Georgia Hardstark?

  What?

• 1:25:12Speaker 01

  I could talk to you for an hour.

• 1:25:13Georgia Hardstark?

  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 iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.