475 - My Favorite Firework

Summary

My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark Episode 475 - "My Favorite Firework" Release Date: April 10, 2025

"My Favorite Firework" delves into two gripping true crime narratives, intertwining historical events with intriguing character studies. Hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark, this episode offers a deep dive into the dark underbelly of society, all while maintaining the show's signature blend of suspense and humor.

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1. Toronto's Gay Village Murders

[14:23 - 38:26]

Karen and Georgia commence the episode by recounting the harrowing series of disappearances in Toronto's LGBTQ-friendly Church and Wellesley neighborhood. Over a span of decades, eight men with ties to this vibrant community mysteriously vanished, leaving families and friends desperate for answers.

Background and Initial Investigations

The story begins in January 2018, with the disappearance of Skandha Navaratnam and progresses through subsequent cases involving individuals like Bazeer Faizi, Majid Khayyan, Soroush Mahmoudi, Karishna Kumar Kanagaratnam, Dean Lisowick, Selim Essen, and Andrew Kinsman. The common threads among these victims include their immigrant backgrounds, involvement in the queer community, and connections to specific locales within the village.

Karen narrates, "Between 1975 and 1978, the bodies of 14 men were found strangled or stabbed to death, and only about half of those cases were solved" (17:55). The police's indifferent response, coupled with rampant anti-gay discrimination, impeded effective investigations and deterred witnesses from coming forward.

Emergence of a Serial Killer

As more men disappeared, the pattern became undeniable. Activist Meeda Hans highlighted the community's growing fears: "This is not chance. This is not a lover's quarrel gone awry. This is a pattern." (18:34). The turning point came when police linked Andrew Kinsman's disappearance in 2017 to earlier cases, revealing connections to Bruce MacArthur—a seemingly ordinary landscaper who worked across multiple properties in Toronto.

Arrest and Conviction of Bruce MacArthur

Under heightened surveillance, Bruce MacArthur's activities raised suspicions. Detective-led investigations uncovered incriminating evidence, including blood traces linking him to Selim Essen and Andrew Kinsman (30:22). A warrant led to the discovery of Harvey McArthur's heinous collection of evidence—folders named after each victim, some containing grim photos taken post-mortem (31:11).

Karen reflects on the gravity of the situation: "The case against Bruce MacArthur is overwhelming." (35:03). Ultimately, MacArthur pleaded guilty to eight counts of first-degree murder, receiving a life sentence with no parole for 25 years (35:44). However, lingering doubts remain about earlier unsolved cases potentially linked to him, underscoring systemic failures in law enforcement's handling of marginalized communities.

Impact and Community Response

The murders left an indelible mark on Toronto's queer community, highlighting issues of police neglect and societal prejudices. Nikki Ward, a prominent advocate, stated: "Bruce MacArthur picked people he thought he could get away with killing because they were immigrants, people of color, maybe closeted, maybe homeless." (37:10). This sentiment echoes the broader narrative of vulnerability faced by marginalized groups and the dire consequences of institutional indifference.

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2. The Tale of Janet (Margaret Lydia Burton)

[43:41 - 71:50]

Transitioning from modern-day true crime, Karen and Georgia recount the story of Janet Gray, an alleged embezzler from the 1950s, whose life of deceit and theft paints a picture of a master manipulator.

Introduction to Janet Gray

In December 1954, Margaret Lydia Burton, under the alias Janet Gray, relocates to Decatur, Georgia, accompanied by her 15-year-old niece, Candy Victoria Lane. Presenting a tragic backstory, Janet captivates her new neighbors with tales of loss, establishing herself as a sympathetic figure despite the incongruities in her story.

Karen jokes, "She inherits like 30 to 50 cocker spaniels." (46:58), highlighting Janet's rapid accumulation of wealth and assets that seem disproportionate to her supposed circumstances.

Embezzlement Schemes and Evasive Tactics

Margaret’s history of embezzlement dates back to the 1930s, involving multiple identities and thefts across various states. Her modus operandi includes posing as a trustworthy employee in doctor’s offices and manipulating financial records to siphon funds. Karen shares her own relatable experiences with petty thefts, humorously noting, "I was like, oh no, I can’t" (58:34), contrasting her minor infractions with Margaret's sophisticated schemes.

The 1957 Collapse and Escape

In July 1957, after discrepancies are found in financial records at her workplace, Janet swiftly orchestrates a dramatic escape. "She rents three moving vans and hires a handyman to help her move out," Karen explains (53:27), detailing how Janet manages to flee the authorities with her niece and a contingent of prized cocker spaniels. The FBI's pursuit is marred by underestimation of Janet's cunning, leading to her temporary evasion.

Capture and Legal Proceedings

Janet’s downfall begins when an office manager connects her to public records, prompting an FBI raid in Tulsa. Despite her elaborate facade, Janet and her niece are arrested, leading to charges of forgery and larceny. However, the legal system's shortcomings result in a mistrial due to biased juror influence (67:09). Ultimately, Janet faces limited consequences, serving short prison terms before being deported back to England. Her daughter, Sheila, reintegrates quietly into society, her past shrouded in mystery.

Legacy and Reflections

The story of Janet Gray underscores themes of deception, the ease of manipulating trust, and the systemic failures that allow such individuals to evade justice. Georgia muses, "Everything is either for money or cocker spaniels," (65:34) encapsulating the dual motives that drive Janet's relentless pursuit of wealth and control.

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Notable Quotes

• "This is not chance. This is not a lover's quarrel gone awry. This is a pattern." — Meeda Hans (18:34)

• "Bruce MacArthur picked people he thought he could get away with killing because they were immigrants, people of color, maybe closeted, maybe homeless." — Nikki Ward (37:10)

• "She just wanted to put something up." — Georgia Hardstark on fostering a pet (02:29)

• "If you've got a million tabs open in your brain at all times, you don't need a wireless service that slows you down." — Maren McGlashan (00:37)

---

Conclusion

Episode 475, "My Favorite Firework," masterfully navigates through complex criminal cases, illustrating the profound impacts of societal biases and individual malevolence. Through meticulous storytelling and insightful commentary, Karen and Georgia not only recount chilling narratives but also invite listeners to reflect on the broader implications of these tragedies. This episode stands as a testament to the enduring relevance of true crime in understanding and addressing the intricacies of human behavior and systemic justice.

Transcript

[Karen Kilgariff]

This is exactly right. You know those commercials where a single impossibly shiny car glides down a beautiful winding country road with a horse running along a fence?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Oh, yeah, that's not real life.

[Karen Kilgariff]

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[Georgia Hardstark]

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[Karen Kilgariff]

Learn more about Hyundai at Hyundai USA or call 562-314-4603 for complete details.

[Georgia Hardstark]

That's H Y U N d a I usa.com or call 562-314-4603. Goodbye.

[Maren McGlashan]

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[Karen Kilgariff]

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[Maren McGlashan]

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[Karen Kilgariff]

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[Maren McGlashan]

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[Karen Kilgariff]

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[Georgia Hardstark]

See visible.com for plan features and network management details.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Goodbye.

[Georgia Hardstark]

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[Karen Kilgariff]

Who's paying for the mattress topper? You mean the beanbag chair? Aren't we getting a mini fridge? Can we create a pool on PayPal? It lets us collect the money before we buy. Ooh, yes, that's smart.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Glad we can agree on something easily. Pool split and Send Money with PayPal. Get started in the PayPal app.

[Karen Kilgariff]

A PayPal account is required to send and receive money.

[Georgia Hardstark]

A balance account is required to create a pool. Hello and welcome to my favorite murder.

[Karen Kilgariff]

That's Georgia Hardstar.

[Georgia Hardstark]

That's Karen Kilgariff.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And we're doing it again. We're podcasting again.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. Can you believe it? I see you right here. You were in a dream last night.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Me?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. Oh, you had an extra dog. Is there an extra dog in your life?

[Karen Kilgariff]

No. Maybe you're seeing the future.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I think I am.

[Karen Kilgariff]

What color? Size?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Sweet little medium sized black dog. I can't remember the name, but you were, like, watching it for now, like fostering. So I think you should do it.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Here's the thing. I don't like fostering, of course, because how do you have a dog in your house that you're treating like your own dog. And then you're just like, okay, bye, good luck.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I know, but it's for the, it's.

[Karen Kilgariff]

For the greater good, not my greater good. And I'm. My greater good is the only one I care about.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah, we know.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah, yeah. It's been a real burden. I didn't get to tell you the story of when we were heading home from Chicago and for the first. Well for almost the whole flight. So it was a four hour flight. So for three and a half hours I was convinced I was sitting next to Steve O. And it was so exciting but you.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Couldn'T actually look, so you just convinced yourself.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Well, so when I walked on, it was a dude in the aisle seat with his hat pulled all the way down, real flat billed skater boy hat. And it was like that. So I was like, okay, famous person, whatever. So I just slide past him and sit down. And then of course we have to wait and wait because there's all these crazy delays for weather. And so by the time we've taken off and I'm waiting for that seatbelt sign to go off, I have to pee so bad.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Oh my God.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And so I was just like, he clear. He was like turned away and was like all crunched in. So I was like, I absolutely have to give the signal. I'm not trying to talk to you or make small talk. Literally, I'm not going to wait for that sign to go off. I'm gonna get the fuck outta my way.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I've gotta piss. Oh, I've been there, I've done it.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And I planned accordingly. I didn't choose to wait.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yes.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Like I was forced to wait, thank God. And I'm sorry to say, but it just looked like a crazy old lady came wandering up the aisle and she had kind of like long gray hair. And I was like, oh my God, she's gonna do it first.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yes.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And she did.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Good for her.

[Karen Kilgariff]

She did it first. She broke the, she broke the seal for all the people who had to pee. So then she walks back and the second she passes, I think our seats, our aisle was the last one. The second she passed, I just turned, gave full energy of move it. And then he kind of looked, but I wasn't trying to look in his face. Cause I wanted to make sure he knew I am not trying to talk to you. And I just jumped up and slid past him and went to the bathroom. And as I went in, I just looked at this, at the flight attendant and I was like, it's an emergency. And went in. And as I walk in and lock the door, they were like, attention, all passengers. Stay in your seat.

[Georgia Hardstark]

It's just for you. It's totally just for you.

[Karen Kilgariff]

They announced shame to me. So then at the very end of the flight, he stood up, opened up the overhead, looked at me and said, do you have anything up here you want me to get down? And I was like, no, because you're not Steve O. So you can truly go to hell forever.

[Georgia Hardstark]

That whole time, it was so exciting.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It was.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I. It's weird. I think we're all gonna agree that it's weird that you got so excited about Steve O. Like, I wouldn't have pictured that as like a Karen gets excited about celeb.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Really?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Well, maybe you weren't listening all the times I told you, but a huge thing.

[Georgia Hardstark]

What?

[Karen Kilgariff]

No, just kidding. But I used to watch Wild Boys. Wild Boys came on on my TV when I lived in a studio apartment. It was broke and literally got like, three channels.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Somehow I was able to watch that show.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I don't even know what it is.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It was Steve O and Chris Pontius, I believe is how you pronounce his last name. And they would go all around the world and, like, dress as bananas and go sit near Silverbac gorillas. Oh, my God. Like pranks around the world.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Like, pranks to themselves too, almost.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Oh, yeah. Like, lots of bungee jumping off of bridges that. Like, they're both having nervous breakdowns, that kind of stuff. But, like, adventure show. Yes.

[Georgia Hardstark]

That's amazing. And I didn't know that. And congratulations.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It is kind of funny when you sit. I do that all the time on planes. Think I recognize people were flying out of lax.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah, of course.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Like, look around a little bit. But also when people get Heidi like that, you're like, why would you be doing this?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Does he have a zit? He probably had a big zit. That's why I'd hide.

[Karen Kilgariff]

He looked like a regular guy when he stood up.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Not even a hot skater. Come on.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I mean, let's get skater. They're like, karen, that was George Clooney. Like, oh, I thought it was Steve.

[Georgia Hardstark]

O. I don't give a shit. I love the idea of you, like, get out of my way, George Clooney. Steve O's right there. I gotta talk to him. Get a photo.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Here's the thing. I feel like I know Steve O better than I know George Clooney. So it is that thing of, like, you feel like it's the boy from high school that got Famous.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Not just a celebrity. Right?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Not the famous guy.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Right.

[Georgia Hardstark]

That makes sense.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah. Also, I tricked my dad into watching the most recent Jackass. Thank you. Is it Jackass4?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Fuck if I know.

[Karen Kilgariff]

The most recent. And I thought he would make me turn it off because of all the filth.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And we watched it for so long before they literally showed men's genitals. And he went, all right, turn this off.

[Georgia Hardstark]

That's puts his heart out. Is like four genital shots.

[Karen Kilgariff]

He's like, I can't.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

This I would have normally been so mad about.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

But I think they won him over too.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Wow. Wow.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Genital shots with your dad. No.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I couldn't believe it. I was just like, all of a sudden, it smash cut to like, here's how we're gonna up this prank. And then I was just like, what are we watching?

[Georgia Hardstark]

That's. I've turned movies off with my dad because of that. Or we both go, oh, no. And like, both of us turn away.

[Karen Kilgariff]

From the tv, like, okay, yeah, no thanks.

[Georgia Hardstark]

No thanks, dad.

[Karen Kilgariff]

No, thanks. How was your flight home?

[Georgia Hardstark]

It was uneventful. And I was so happy to be home. That Friday afternoon home thing where you're just like, I just want to sleep for the entire weekend.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And I did.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And it was great.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And you get to. You're justified. Yeah. Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Should we do highlights for our network?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Let's do it.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Okay, you guys, we have a podcast network. It's called Exactly Right Media. Please follow it everywhere if you want and can and should, if you would, please. Yeah. And here are some highlights this week.

[Karen Kilgariff]

On our weird news show, Bananas Median, Abby Gavinden joins Kurt and Scotty. And they cover important news of the world like a reckless driver who was fined for not stopping at a crosswalk for his own children. And of course, Walgreens shocking revelation that locking up every item in their stores is bad for business. Who knew?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Shocking, right? Shocking. And then on that's messed up. Kara and Lisa cover the SVU episode exile season 20, episode 6 that covers the strange disappearance of Hannah up and chat with actress Amy Spring Fortier, who plays two different charact on the same episode. Wow, she's got range.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yes. And then over on our brand new true crime podcast, the ninth, they've got a new episode out. Today. Hannah and Patia are sharing Tony Nova's story. Tony was newly married and just a month into her pregnancy when her husband became physically abusive. Today, she's bravely telling her story in hopes of helping others find safety in similar situations.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Amazing. The knife is doing the work.

[Karen Kilgariff]

They're doing it.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And Buried Bones has a big week. First, the new episode drops on Wednesday as Kate and Paul head to Delaware in to investigate the brutal murder of a 17 year old woman. Then on Friday, 4pm Pacific, join Kate and Paul for the premiere of their very first video episode. It'[e-mail] exactlyrightmedia. They'll be in the comments live, answering, listening to your questions. You get to see their beautiful faces talking about awesome stuff. Please go and check that out.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yes, Kate and Paul on video. Can't miss.

[Georgia Hardstark]

What more do you want?

[Karen Kilgariff]

And finally, we have a personal question for you, listener. Have you checked out our merch lately? There's something for everyone, but especially there's stuff now for our day one listeners. Look. Very small. But here it is, the day one listener pin. It's a little blue ribbon pin. I love it. Yep. You've been telling everyone you've been here since the beginning, so now you can brag about it in pin form.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. And also we're not going to check your work. If you are a day 37 listener or day 200 listener, you can still wear this beautiful pin.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I feel like it's a. We are.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

We've had to listen to this shit the whole time.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Well, I'll wear it.

[Karen Kilgariff]

As the weather starts to get warmer and we can finally go places again, it's time to face a hard truth. Your travel wardrobe is not ready.

[Maren McGlashan]

You can't bring bad fashion on your vacation. They won't let you out of the airport.

[Karen Kilgariff]

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[Maren McGlashan]

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[Karen Kilgariff]

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[Maren McGlashan]

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[Karen Kilgariff]

Georgia, I don't want to brag or anything, but I just got a box of three brand new quint sweaters because I wear my 50 Mongolian cashmere sweaters that I got years ago so much that I was finally like, I need to freshen this up a little bit.

[Georgia Hardstark]

For your next trip, treat yourself to.

[Maren McGlashan]

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[Karen Kilgariff]

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[Maren McGlashan]

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[Karen Kilgariff]

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[Georgia Hardstark]

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[Karen Kilgariff]

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[Georgia Hardstark]

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[Karen Kilgariff]

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[Georgia Hardstark]

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[Karen Kilgariff]

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[Georgia Hardstark]

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[Karen Kilgariff]

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[Georgia Hardstark]

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[Karen Kilgariff]

Look at that near a dresser on their website. Just go and take a look at that one piece and you will see what we are talking about. It is as mid century as you could get.

[Georgia Hardstark]

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[Karen Kilgariff]

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[Georgia Hardstark]

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[Karen Kilgariff]

Goodbye.

[Maren McGlashan]

You love your cat but you don't love the smell of their litter box.

[Karen Kilgariff]

The solution? Get a dog.

[Maren McGlashan]

Karen. I tried that and actually doesn't work. The real solution is Pretty Litter.

[Karen Kilgariff]

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[Maren McGlashan]

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[Georgia Hardstark]

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[Maren McGlashan]

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[Karen Kilgariff]

It's a true test.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yes.

[Maren McGlashan]

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[Karen Kilgariff]

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[Maren McGlashan]

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[Karen Kilgariff]

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[Maren McGlashan]

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[Karen Kilgariff]

C site for details. Goodbye.

[Georgia Hardstark]

All right, you're first.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Let's do the thing. That is the thing we're supposed to do.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Let's do it. Let's do the thing they've been fast forwarding to for the the past two minutes.

[Karen Kilgariff]

All right, this is a story that got suggested to me and I said, I'm positive I've covered that before. And then Maren looked it all up and was like, you've talked about it before. You have not covered it. And the reason I thought I covered it is because I listened to and then recommended and talked about a lot a podcast by the CBC called the Village. It's a limited series podcast that is such an incredible deep dive. Journalist Justin Ling did it and it is such a good podcast. It's heavily cited in this. So that's why it was so familiar to me. But now I'm gonna tell it to you myself.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Okay.

[Karen Kilgariff]

So it starts in January of 2018 in Toronto, Canada, in and around the city's LGBTQ district. You know, that area's known as the Church and Wellesley neighborhood, also known as Toronto's Gay Village. Over the past 10 years, eight men with connections to the queer community have simply vanished from the city. And for all those years, their loved ones have been waiting for answers. Now, on the morning of January 18, 2018, just before 10:30am, a team of officers storms a Toronto apartment and arrests the homeowner. He's been the target of their investigation in these disappearances for weeks and he's been under 24 hour surveillance. Soon the investigators suspicions about this man will be confirmed. He is in fact a serial killer who has been hiding in plain sight all this time. Today I'm gonna tell you the story of Toronto's Gay Village murders.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Wow. Yeah. We've never covered this.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Right.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I think a lot of it was playing out over the past few years and we've been like, probably waiting to see the results of it too, before we covered it.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Right. The trial, I think is 2019 and goes into 2020. It's recent in terms of our Covid brains of, like, we wouldn't have talked about it then. And then I think listening to this podcast, the village is just like, oh, I know this story. Like, then it becomes like, well, I know the story the way I would if I had told it.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Right. Right.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And that's when the lies begin. The rest of our sources are in our show notes if you want to go read those. So I'm gonna start in the 1970s, before the gay village exists. Back then, Toronto's queer scene was centered around what they called gay strip, which is a cluster of dive bars on the same street after Canada decriminalizes sex between consenting adults of the same sex. That happened in 1969. Now the gay strip is the hub for the city's queer community. Unsurprisingly, local bigots come out in full force against the gay strip and its patrons. They hurl, slurs, eggs and rocks at them. And sometimes it escalates into physical beatings. But the police do not intervene. In fact, Toronto police refused to meet with members of the queer community to discuss safety. As York University historian Dr. Tom Hooper tells CBC's the Fifth Estate, quote, When a gay person is a victim of a crime, they expect the police to pay attention. That was not happening in the 1970s. But on the flip side, when it came to lesser crimes, like, for example, jaywalking, the police were hypersensitive to the gay community. So the police paid close attention to enforcing the law, but not to protecting the community from threats. End quote. So then, between 1975 and 1978, a span of just three years, the bodies of 14 men are found strangled, stabbed to death, or both. And only about half of those cases are solved.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Jesus, how long is that between when?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Three years. So 75 to 78.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Okay.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It's clearly a pressing matter of public safety, but the police seem to have very little interest in solving those remaining homicide cases. And on top of that lack of urgency, there's also an issue with finding witnesses who can help push the investigations forward. Because, of course, it's a time when anti gay discrimination is rampant. So many people don't feel like they can safely speak up because that would mean outing themselves. Not to mention, coming forward would require working with a police force that has been at best indifferent and at worst, overtly hostile towards the gay community.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah, you'd like, get on their radar then, right? And that's a dangerous place to be.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah, it's like just a problem of any marginalized group of people where it's like all the people that the Police work fine for which is basically rich white people go, well then go tell the police and be. Yeah, why didn't you speak up?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Right. Why didn't you? Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yes. So then in 1981, tensions between Toronto's queer community and the police hit an all time high during what are now the infamous bathhouse raids, when more than 150 police officers sweep four of the city's bath houses, sometimes using crowbars to violently open private rooms and lockers and arrest employees and near 300 patrons, who they then charge with gross indecency or minor drug offenses. So the backlash to the bathhouse raids is swift. Over 3,000 people take to the streets protesting police brutality and discrimination. And those protests are sometimes talked about like the Canadian counterpart to Stonewall in America. In New York City, the fallout in Toronto is that many people in their queer community remain deeply skeptical of law enforcement. So now we're gonna jump ahead 30 years. It's 2010, and nobody has heard from 40 year old Skandha Navaratnam for days. Skanda has first moved to Canada in the 90s as a refugee from Sri Lanka. His loved ones describe him as a charismatic, fun and excellent friend who, wherever he goes, is always making more friends. People are drawn to his infectious personality, but him not being heard from for days is extremely out of character. So people are worried. Lately, Skanda has been very excited about his new husky puppy who he brings everywhere. So when his friends find the puppy at home in Skanda's apartment with no food or water, they know something is terribly wrong.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

So that's when Skanda's reported missing. That same year, a man in his early 40s named Bazeer Faizi is also reported missing. He's a native of Afghanistan. He's a beloved father who works hard for his family. And Basir comes from a culturally conservative background, was not out to his family. Shortly before vanishing, he called his wife at the end of his workday, told her he had plans with co workers, but then he actually drove to a bar in the village called the Black Eagle. So when Basir's car is found abandoned on a residential street about 10 minutes away from the village a few days later, the police and his family are baffled. All of this is 45 minutes away from Basir's home, so they don't know why it would be there. Two years later in 2012, the same story plays out again when 58 year old Majid Khayyan, who goes by the name Hamid, disappears. Hamid is also from Afghanistan and he hasn't come out to his family either. He's living in an apartment near Church in Wellesley, and he has many dear friends in the area. They will all later comment on his deep love for Bollywood films and their music. Which is just like, I don't know why that got me when I was reading this research of like the most lively, enlivening, like positive fun at the end of a Bollywood movie when they do the dance number and everyone does it. It's like that idea that this was his favorite thing is like, you can kind of imagine that type of personality.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Totally.

[Karen Kilgariff]

So it doesn't take long for members of Toronto's queer community to connect the dots here. These three missing person cases all involve men who fall in the same general age range, have emigrated to Canada from socially conservative Asian nations, and have spent time in the gay village. An advocate and member of Toronto's queer community, meta Hans tells journalist Justin Ling, quote, everybody who saw the missing posters brought up the words serial killer. This is not chance. This is not a lover's quarrel gone awry. This is a pattern. This is a definitive pattern. Yeah, and Meeda Hans is a big part of the Village podcast. She's in it the whole time. She's amazing. So, of course the initial police response to these three disappearances is, in a word, baffling. Not all bad. For example, a close friend of Hamid's named Kyle Andrews goes to the police and he's relieved to discover the detective that is handling the case seems both non judgmental and interested in the information he's giving. So Kyle shares as much as he possibly can. He mentions that Hamid has been dating a guy named Bruce, but he doesn't know the man all that well. Kyle is surprised when the detective follows up about Bruce. Then Kyle gets the sense that the police are, for whatever reason, interested in knowing more about him specifically. But here's where the baffling part comes in. Kyle eventually learns that Bruce, whose full name is Bruce MacArthur, actually has connections to both Skanda and Basir. Which means he knows all three of the missing men. The police learn this when they search all of the missing men's dating profiles and find Bruce's dating profile in connections with theirs. Okay, and Bruce's profile is pretty unremarkable. He's a landscaper in his early 60s. He looks so much like Santa Claus that he actually works as Santa Claus at a local mall during the holiday season. Meanwhile, he writes on his own profile. Quote, I can be a bit shy until I get to know you, but am a romantic at heart, police interview this Bruce MacArthur as part of the investigation, but for whatever reason, they treat him more like a witness than a suspect. In general, police are rejecting the idea that a serial killer could be behind these disappearances. In fact, they release a statement saying that they've, quote, not found any evidence to say that any of the missing men mentioned above knew each other. The only information between all three that is similar is that they all like to attend similar bars, especially the Black Eagle. So the police investigation loses momentum. The case has stall. Detectives seem to accept the explanation that Hamid, Basir and Skanda all decided to leave Toronto on their own. Of course, that explanation doesn't make sense to the people who know these men, including their friends in the queer community who've experienced the police's disinterest, discrimination and hostility. Mita Hans says, quote, quote, initially I think the tones were very civil, asking for help, asking for acknowledgement, asking for a spotlight to be shown on this because obviously there's something going on. But when that didn't happen, I think the tone became more urgent, more animated and finally the tone became very angry. Why are you not listening? If we see this is happening, if everybody we know sees this is happening, how can you not see this? End quote. So now it's 2015. Skanda and Vasir have been missing for five years and Hamid has been missing for three. And then in August of 2015, 50 year old Soroush Mahmoudi disappears. He's come to Canada from Iran and he's reported missing by his wife who's worried sick. The two have a loving relationship and she speaks publicly about his beautiful smile and his good heart. Like Basir, Hamid and Skanda, Soroush comes from a socially conservative culture. His family members, including his wife, don't know that he spends time in the church and Wellesley neighborhood. And because of that, investigators don't initially connect him with these other missing men. And then 37 year old Karishna Kumar Kanagaratnam disappears around the same time. He is also not connected to the other missing person cases because he has no clear ties to Toronto's gay village and police have investigated, he still to this day. Karishna has been in Canada since 2010, arriving as a refugee from Sri Lanka after a dangerous hundred day journey on a boat from his war torn native country. But because his refugee claim is denied when he gets to Canada, when he falls out of contact, his family thinks he's laying low to avoid being deported and he ends up having to live on the street like he's really in a bad position when his refugee claim is denied. Then in 2016, a 47 year old man named Dean Lisowick disappears. He's never reported missing to the police. Dean is white. He was born in Canada. He's a familiar face in the church and Wellesley neighborhood. Justin Ling reports that quote, everyone remembers him as an incredibly nice guy who had fallen on hard times. Dean is often seen panhandling in the area and sometimes he engages in sex work. He's last been seen in a nearby homeless shelter. Then in 2017, 44 year old Selim Essen goes missing. Seline has moved to Canada from Turkey in 2013. Things haven't always been easy for him. He's previously struggled with addiction. But his friends say that life for him lately had been good and that he'd been turning things around. So when friends suddenly stop hearing from Seline, he is reported missing to police and he's last seen at his own home near the gay village. His brothers will later release a statement about him saying, quote, he was very friendly, kind hearted, open, independent minded and curious. Passionate about learning new things, gardening, exploring new places and meeting new people. His tender and kind humanity came before everything else. So then in July of the same year after, after the end of all the Pride celebrations, 49 year old man named Andrew Kinsman vanishes. Andrew, who's like Dean White and born in Canada, is very active in Toronto's queer community. He's described by loved ones as, quote, an extraordinary, quirky and caring individual. So unlike the last three disappearances, Andrew and Saleem's cases are soon linked to the 2010 and 2012 disappearances in the gayville. And this reignites the queer community's suspicion that there is a serial killer targeting the area. And finally, the police start listening. They launch a task force known as Project PRISM aimed at solving these active cases. But by this point, Toronto's queer community has been trying to ring the alarm bell for so long about these missing men, they have real reason to worry that the police are going to let these cases go cold again. As prominent church and Wellesley community member and advocate Nikki Ward puts it, quote, the anger was palpable. But then summer turns to fall, turns to winter, the media moves on. Some missing posters stay up and you still see their faces around the city. But the feeling sets into the community that these cases would go unsolved just like the others. But then, fortunately, there's a break in the case. As investigators are looking into Andrew Kinsman's case, they find a handwritten name in Andrew's calendar. And that name is Bruce. That's how they learned that Andrew also knew Bruce MacArthur, the 66 year old Santa Claus landscaper who was treated like a witness back in 2012. So finally, five years after they first connect him to the three other missing men, investigators finally take a look at Bruce MacArthur. They discreetly put him under 24 hour surveillance. And when they do, detectives follow him to a Toronto property belonging to one of his landscaping clients. And that property is not far from where Bazir's car was abandoned back in 2012.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I just realized how sinister landscaping is in this.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yes.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Oh, my God.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Really bad. So now It's September of 2017. Bruce MacArthur is under surveillance, and investigators watch as he. He sells the van he owns to an auto parts shop. They go in basically right after, sees the vehicle without Bruce knowing. And when the forensic team gets in there, they find traces of blood inside. And when the DNA testing comes back, it confirms that the blood belongs to both Celine Essen and Andrew Kinsman.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Oh, my gosh.

[Karen Kilgariff]

So now investigators are able to get a warrant to search Bruce's house. And they do secretly, without him knowing. And when they do that, they find a hard drive. And when they open the hard drive, there's a bunch of different folders. And eight of those folders are titled with the names of the missing men.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Holy shit.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And inside those folders are photos of the missing men, some of them clearly taken after they had been murdered.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Can you imagine being the forensic investigator? Oh, but seeing those names and then being like, I know what's gonna happen when I open these.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And there's a ninth folder of a name of a person they don't recognize.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Holy shit.

[Karen Kilgariff]

No one's been reported missing. They. They cross check it. And now they realize there's a victim out there. Oh, my God. So in January 2018, the police raid Bruce McArthur's apartment just in the nick of time. Inside the apartment, they find a man tied to Bruce's bed.

[Georgia Hardstark]

No.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Luckily, he is physically unharmed. At that point, the police have probably just saved his life, because when they interview him, they learn this is the man whose name is the title of that ninth folder.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Oh, my God. It's like a fucking movie.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It's a horrible movie. And so Police arrest Bruce McArthur for the murders of Saleem Essom and Andrew Kinsman.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Holy shit.

[Karen Kilgariff]

So Bruce MacArthur, just to get a little background on him.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

For context, he's born in a small farming village in 1951. He comes from a, quote, good family. His high School yearbook notes that his ambition is to, quote, be successful. Okay, go for it. After graduating, Bruce gets married, has two children with his wife, and becomes very involved in his church. In the 70s, he gets a job at a department store in downtown Toronto. And that department store is just steps away from what then was known as the gay strip. And that's exactly around the same time those unsolved murders start taking place.

[Georgia Hardstark]

My God.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Eventually, Bruce gets a different job, and that job is as a traveling salesman.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Oh, no.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Later, he starts doing landscaping work. And in doing landscaping work, he builds up an impressive clientele. He seems to have a charmed life. He's a family man. He donates to charity. He stays active in his church, puts on a Santa suit at the local mall at Christmas time. People like him. So eventually, Bruce divorces his wife and begins to live as an openly gay man. But then a darker picture begins to surface. Bruce's son will later claim that he was abusive. Men who encounter Bruce in Toronto's gay community describe him as being very controlling and aggressive. And then in 2001, Bruce is arrested after beating a man he's presumably about to have sex with with. With a metal pipe until he is unconscious. Bruce turns himself in the next day, and because of that, is able to avoid jail time. But he's banned from the gay village for the length of his probation. And then he has to take anger management classes.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Right.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Once probation ends, Bruce starts hanging out in the area again. And even worse, I would say, becomes active on gay dating sites.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yikes.

[Karen Kilgariff]

So after Bruce MacArthur's arrest in 2018, police search for and find the dismembered remains of the eight missing men. Their bodies have been hidden on the various Toronto properties that Bruce is a landscaper for.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Imagine being one of those people who live at the property.

[Karen Kilgariff]

So horrible.

[Georgia Hardstark]

You're just like. You're reading the newspaper in the morning, and then, like, you look at your backyard and you're just like, oh.

[Karen Kilgariff]

For years and years, missing people have been hidden on a lot of them. Were the body parts were put in these really large stone planters.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Oh, my God.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Oh, my God. Yeah, it's like.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Cause also, like, the smell would be. You could explain away the smell really easily. Manure or whatever. Like, you know, it's gonna smell for.

[Karen Kilgariff]

A few days, right?

[Georgia Hardstark]

But that is just so creepy. Yeah, so creepy.

[Karen Kilgariff]

So creepy. So the case against Bruce McArthur is overwhelming. Investigators collect more than 18,000 pieces of evidence, including clippings of the victim's hair that Bruce was keeping, presumably as trophies. He ultimately pleads guilty to eight counts of first degree murder. Then in February of 2019, he is sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years, which is the way they do it in Canada. He will almost certainly spend the rest of his life behind bars. But even with this sentencing, there are many people who worry this story is not over. Because the idea that Bruce MacArthur started killing when he was in his 60s is hard to believe.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Right. Well, he didn't. Right. The 1970s ones are from him.

[Karen Kilgariff]

We don't know that.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Okay.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It's unproven. It's just circumstantial that he was basically around the corner when all that started.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Okay.

[Karen Kilgariff]

But that's just. It is. If they keep on going, like he was a traveling salesman.

[Georgia Hardstark]

That's horrifying.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And so is there somebody that's actually going to sit down now that he's in jail? Will someone sit down and actually map out where he was? And if there were missing people and.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Totally.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Maybe some podcaster of the future. That reminds me of True Crime.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Oh, my God.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Where he's just like mapping the Israel Keys disappearances.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Or Payne Lindsay. Get on that.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Right. So far there's no confirmed links. The composite sketches of the potential suspect from the 70s, you know, you could say doesn't look like him, but he looks like Santa Claus now.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Right.

[Karen Kilgariff]

So what did he look like in the 70s? I actually have a picture of that composite sketch. One of the composite sketches itself is very scary.

[Georgia Hardstark]

You also don't know if the composite sketch is of the actual perpetrator or just someone. Someone saw at the same time in the same place.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Right.

[Georgia Hardstark]

It doesn't. Like you didn't see him getting murdered by this perpetrator. You saw this random person around there at the same time. So it doesn't necessarily mean that's what the killer looked like. Yes, you know, totally like Unabomber. It's the same thing. Like that creepy sketch with the hoodie and the glasses. That's not him. That's someone else completely.

[Karen Kilgariff]

That's the bass player of a yacht rock band. Clearly. So. So police have never shared or found any physical evidence connecting him to those cases. But there's another reason why for many people, the case doesn't feel fully resolved. And that's because of how the police handled it for so long. The lives of the victims matter just as much as any other person in any other neighborhood in Toronto. And again, those victims names are Skanda Navaratnam Basir Faizi Majid Khayyan. Sarosh Mahmoudy, Karishna Kumar Kanagaratnam, Dean Lizowic, Salim Essen, and Andrew Kinsman. And we'll finish the story with another quote from activist Nikki Ward, who said, quote, Bruce MacArthur picked people he thought he could get away with killing because they were immigrants, people of color, maybe closeted, maybe homeless. That's the common thread tying these men together. And to learn that he was someone walking among us, a wolf in sheep's clothing, was sadly not surprising. I take exception to the phrase he was one of our own, because he most definitely was not. And that's the story of Toronto's Gay Village murders.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Wow. I'm so glad you covered that.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I could have sworn I did.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Did you do it when we were in Toronto?

[Karen Kilgariff]

I don't think so.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Great job.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Thank you.

[Georgia Hardstark]

That was amazing. I do think that we should be able to do stories that we did live that never got aired on the podcast now. You know what I mean?

[Karen Kilgariff]

I know, but I think there's only.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Like, three that we didn't ever air.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah. Remember, remember, remember back in the days, like, pre Covid days, when we get down to it, we'd be like, no, that one's really bad. This audio's bad.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

We'd be like, we don't care. We don't. We just want to put something up.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Steven, post the. How's the audio from. How is the Des Moines audio? Not great. Put it up.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Put it up. We don't care.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I can't do it this week. This week. My brain is fucking broken. We're, like, getting into Covid. Put up a fucking live episode, and then we just have a week off. And it would just be lovely and beautiful.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It was just like in that second apartment. Things got real fucking intense in the loft. In the loft. It was like, for me, it felt like it was all going up like this, but nothing else was coming back down. It was like me working multiple jobs and trying to do it. Very intense.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah, things were not good in that period.

[Karen Kilgariff]

We'd just be like, steven, fix it.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Poor Steven. Oh, Steven. Love him. Hey, Karen, I want you to picture yourself going for a drive. What comes to mind?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Not ever being able to merge on any freeway in Los Angeles. And potholes and crying.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Oh, yeah. Well, the truth is, the road can feel like it's out to get you at every turn. But, Karen, it doesn't have to be this way.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Because Hyundai's available advanced safety technology is designed to help keep you protected from all of life's twists and turns.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Their vehicles offer available Features designed to help safeguard you and your loved ones.

[Karen Kilgariff]

You can change lanes with confidence thanks to the available Blind Spot View monitor, which actually shows you a live video feed of your blind spots.

[Georgia Hardstark]

The standard forward collision avoidance assist can help prevent or mitigate accidents by alerting you of imminent collision. Oh my God. This happens to me all the time. And automatically applying the brakes if you don't.

[Karen Kilgariff]

This is needed. Hyundai vehicles are equipped with the standard driver attention warning system, which constantly monitors your retention levels. Oh my God. Once detected, it sounds alerts and visual cues to help bring your focus back to the road.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Oh my God.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I mean, get this for me right now.

[Georgia Hardstark]

With available class exclusive safety features, Hyundai helps to keep you safe so you can enjoy the drive.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Learn more about Hyundai@Hyundai USA.com or call 562-314-4603 for complete details.

[Georgia Hardstark]

That's H Y U N d a I usa.com or call 562-314-4603. Goodbye.

[Maren McGlashan]

Spring is in the air. And that means open windows, outdoor plans, and more time away from home. All the things that burglars love.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Well, bad news, burglars. Now you can protect your home with Simplisafe.

[Maren McGlashan]

With Simplisafe, millions of Americans enjoy greater security and peace of mind every time they arm their system.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Traditional security systems only take action after somebody has already broken in. That's too late.

[Maren McGlashan]

But with active guard outdoor protection, Simplisafe's monitoring agents closely watch your property and stop crimes before they happen.

[Karen Kilgariff]

The cameras use advanced AI to distinguish between friendly faces like family and neighbors and potential threats, alerting agents to suspicious individuals before they get close to your home.

[Maren McGlashan]

So I get that ping on my phone, on my app that tells me when there's someone like on my lawn, I'm such an old lady or like, you know, walking up my driveway because I live up off the street and you shouldn't be there if you're not meant to be there.

[Georgia Hardstark]

So, like, if I get the ping.

[Maren McGlashan]

That someone's on my lawn and I'm like, I know something's up and I can check, check it before they even get to the door or break in in the window, it's great.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Visit simplisafe.com fave to claim 50 off a new system with a professional monitoring plan and get your first month free. That's simplisafe.com fav there's no safe like Simplisafe. Goodbye.

[Maren McGlashan]

The weather's warming up and soon we'll all be out in the world again talking to people.

[Karen Kilgariff]

If social situations leave you feeling awkward or drained, therapy can help you build confidence and actually enjoy connecting.

[Maren McGlashan]

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[Karen Kilgariff]

While therapy can be costly, Talkspace is affordable and in network with most insurance providers, most insured members have a zero dollar copay.

[Maren McGlashan]

One thing I love about telehealth and doing therapy online is that you can schedule your therapy appointment for right before an event that you're worried about. So you are just ready and prepared to walk out the door confidently to talk to people confidently. You work it all out and then you go live your life. That's way harder with traditional therapy to achieve.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah, let the last voice in your head before you walk into a party. Be licensed therapist. As a listener of this podcast, you'll get $80 off your first month with Talkspace when you go to talkspace.com mfm and enter promo code space80 to match.

[Maren McGlashan]

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[Karen Kilgariff]

That's talkspace.com mfm promo code space80. Goodbye.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Great job.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Thank you.

[Georgia Hardstark]

We're going to go in a totally different direction as we are want to do.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Good, good, good.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I think you're going. Okay, I'm gonna tell you about what some people called a grifter, but some people called an international adventurer.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Okay.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Take a spin on it. From the 1950s who caused an uproar in Atlanta society and sent shockwaves throughout the pedigree cocker spaniel community. Your favorite.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I should have heard about this already.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Well, okay. This is the story of someone we're gonna call for now. Janet.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Janet.

[Georgia Hardstark]

The main sources for the story are a book called Confident Women, Swindlers, Grifters and Shapeshifters of the Feminine Persuasion. Yes, read that. By Tori Telfer and reporting from the Tulsa World. Your favorite paper.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It's a good one.

[Georgia Hardstark]

The rest of the sources can be found in the show notes.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I'm definitely reading that book for sure.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah, you should. All right, so here we are. It's 1954. We're in Decatur, Georgia. It's an Atlanta suburb that borders the city limits. So it's kind of small town east. And then a glamorous, somewhat mysterious middle aged woman has just moved into town with her 15 year old niece. The woman introduces herself to the neighbors as Janet Gray and says that the teen is Candice Victoria Lane, her niece who goes by Candy. So her name is Candy Lane, which is already, like, on purpose. Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Okay. Is her middle name Kane? Because what do we.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Janet says she's from Washington, D.C. and the circumstances that have brought her to Atlanta are absolutely tragic. She's just lost her husband, but the details are kind of vague. Janet lost a child at birth, she said. And then two weeks after her husband's sudden death, her last remaining child was hit by a school bus and killed. That's her horror story. Don't get upset, okay. It's not true.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Great. It doesn't feel very true.

[Georgia Hardstark]

It's not. But she comes with. With this sob story why she's here and hey, why I have a lot of fucking money, too.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Oh.

[Georgia Hardstark]

So Janet and Candy settle right into the new neighborhood. Well, actually, Janet settles in. Candy starts at a local, prestigious high school. But she has trouble making friends and she's frequently out of school due to poor health. She's just not getting into the high school spirit and not being accepted. Candy Lane.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Also, everyone thinks it's weird that Candy, who is 15 years old, looks way older than that. That she's called, quote, built like Marilyn Monroe. Oh, like the word buxom is thrown around a lot. So they're like, this isn't a 15 year old girl.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Okay.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Right. Something's fishy. But it's the 1950s. People believe what you tell them.

[Karen Kilgariff]

They just are reading the one newspaper.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Right. And yeah, yeah, it's like, simpler time.

[Karen Kilgariff]

You haven't heard about all the crazy people in the world the way we get to these days.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Right, Exactly. And that's why you listen to this podcast. So meanwhile, Janet, she appears to be thriving. She buys a big house in an upscale neighborhood, hires contractors to put in a big pool in the backyard as well as a big kennel. Because it turns out that one of Janet's big passions, like yours, is cocker spaniel.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Cocker spaniels, always.

[Georgia Hardstark]

That's right.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yep.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Have you ever met one? I've never met a cocker spaniel, I don't think.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Are they the ones that are kind of brown and long ears? Floppy ears? Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Like blondish with, like, curly or, like wavy kind of.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah. I feel like that was a standard dog right around here.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Just holding it like a show dog.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yep. This is tail up, head up.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I think I've met a couple, but my Aunt Jean next door, they had springer spaniels.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Oh, okay.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Nellie was their dog, and I think she was. She may have been a breed dog in some way. Cause that's what like, farm people do that sometimes. Or they're like, when they have puppies, we sell them.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Right, Totally. Yeah. I don't know. The personality. I'm assuming that they're. I don't know why. Hottie. That's just like my take on looking at them.

[Karen Kilgariff]

But cocker spaniels.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. Who knows? Maybe it's cause they're show dogs. And I'm just like.

[Karen Kilgariff]

They're like princess. Princessy.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah, that feels right.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And so in a very short time while she's living in Decatur, she acquires between 30 and 50 of them, some of which have won big prizes at dog shows. Okay, so these are like, she's like a show dog Lady.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Collector.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Collector. 30 to 50 dogs. No, thank you. And her neighbors hated her. And you know, it just up with.

[Karen Kilgariff]

The dawn wind, starts barking.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Oh, my God.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Like, no, you can't do that.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Sorry. In just a regular neighborhood.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I think it was a well to do neighborhood where there's probably lots of, like, land.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I would hope so.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. So they, like built a pool in the backyard. They built. But it wasn't like, you know, countryside. It was like a neighborhood. A well to do neighborhood.

[Karen Kilgariff]

30 dogs?

[Georgia Hardstark]

30 to 50 dogs. 50 dogs. Put 50 dogs in this room right now.

[Karen Kilgariff]

No, not in the fucking.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Tell you.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I'll start screaming. Please don't.

[Georgia Hardstark]

It's too many. I mean, I love dogs, but like, 10, 30 to 50 of anything.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Imagine like 30 to 50 Snickers bars. I'd be like, this is crazy.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I do cats. I would do cats. I would do cats.

[Karen Kilgariff]

You're getting there.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I would. I'd take. I'd take them. They're so much more, like, manageable. And they don't bark.

[Karen Kilgariff]

You're like, can I get a slightly smaller home for these cats? I really want to feel all of them.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Oh, poor Vince. Okay, so one of her dogs is named Capital Gain, and it actually wins its division at a dog show in South Carolina in 1956. And she also acquires a famous cocker spaniel named Rise and Shine. I guess they're like racehorses where they have weird nasties names. Yeah, yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Rise and Shine.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Who won the Westminster dog Show?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Holy.

[Georgia Hardstark]

It was still a thing back then.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Y. It still is a thing in our family.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah, you put it on immediately.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Isn't it like Thanksgiving Day? I feel like there's a holiday we watch at E. Thank.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Thinking of the Puppy Bowl.

[Karen Kilgariff]

You're thinking of the Super Bowl.

[Georgia Hardstark]

It's on Thanksgiving, right?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Y. Every year.

[Georgia Hardstark]

So Janet quickly ingratiates Herself into Atlanta society. She is very glamorous. She. She's like older lady, but that just means, you know, like, bigger jewelry. No, just, like, the age thing is like, an old lady is in her 50s. Then, like, it's not. But she acts like an older lady, but she is very, like, refined. She has a closet full of beautiful dresses and furs and hats, and her home is immaculately furnished. It's, like, gorgeous.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Okay.

[Georgia Hardstark]

She's known around town as a very generous tipper, which we love. We got served by a murderino. I forgot what? We got served by a murderino at this restaurant called LA supreme when we were. Vince and I were in Detroit last week. I think her name was Marie. And she was so wonderful and, like, gave us, like, you know, after dinner, drinks, and dessert, and we're just so nice. And then I was like, vince, what if we don't tip her? Wouldn't that be funny? I was totally kidding. But, like, obviously. But, like, how. What a great way to ruin everything.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yes, exactly.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Just not tip.

[Karen Kilgariff]

She's just being super cool. And then you're just. The tip is a weird Bible quote. Yeah, just like, bye, Marie.

[Georgia Hardstark]

How funny would that. I mean, not at all. We obviously never. Yeah, but just kind of like, what if.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Wait, that reminds me of walking down Michigan Avenue. No, I think we're on WACR or something. But when we passed Megan, who saw you first as we were walking and said, heidi.

[Georgia Hardstark]

In Chicago.

[Karen Kilgariff]

In Chicago.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Who was listening to our podcast as she walked by us listening to the.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Podcast and then walked. And I was like, 10 steps behind you, and I'm like.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And I turned around, she looked at me. She was like, oh, my God. And then I pointed back to you, and I was like, and that one's here, too.

[Karen Kilgariff]

She's like. And by the time she got up to me, it kind of looked like she was crying, but it was so cold that it could have just been that. But she just pulled an earpod out and was just like, I'm listening to you now. And I'm like, this must be so weird.

[Georgia Hardstark]

What a trip, right?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Sorry to fuck with you, Megan.

[Georgia Hardstark]

It's the Matrix. And she's also one of the best customers at the local dressmaker. Obviously, she's highly recognizable around town because she drives a bright pink Lincoln.

[Karen Kilgariff]

There's like, a scammer thing where they're basically, like, all eyes on me.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Right?

[Karen Kilgariff]

And then I think the logic of the people around is, like, it couldn't be them. They wouldn't draw this much attention themselves.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Right? And like everyone else, loves her and is around her all the time. It's like a chameleon kind of thing.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

No one knows exactly the source of her wealth, but everyone assumes that her dead husband had a lot of money. People also vaguely allude to her coming from a family of money, and so they think that she's the daughter of a high ranking military officer. I'm sure she's, like, planted little seeds here and there. So it's kind of a surprise when Janet gets a job as a bookkeeper at a local doctor's office in Decatur, because why would she need a job if she's rich? But people assume that she likes to keep herself busy. She works there about three and a half years, and life seems to continue on normally. This all comes to a grinding halt at the end of July 1957, when Janet's bosses from the doctor's clinic where she works give her a call. They said they'd hired an auditor to go over the books because something seemed fishy and the auditor had found that about $100,000 appeared to be unaccounted for in today's money. What they called ring, ring, ring nowadays. And they're like, hey, we got audited. Here's how much is missing. Like, what would a lot of fucking money be?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Well, it's the 50s, so that's like, I was gonna say a hundred years ago, like a million and a half job.

[Georgia Hardstark]

But imagine being like, hey, we're a mil short on the till.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And you're the person who's in charge of all of it.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And you're the one with the big pencil in your hand.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Can you come. And they're like, can you come in and, like, explain this? And she's like, absolutely. Like, I. I'll be in on Monday. Like, don't even worry about it. And I'm sure it's not a big deal, you know? And they're like, okay, good, because they, like, love her and trust her. And also the hundred thousand dollars number goes up, like, later. So that's just like, of a starting point. Starting point, yeah. But as soon as she hangs up the phone, she springs into action. She rents three moving vans and hires a handyman to come help her move out. Two vans are filled with furniture and clothing, and one is filled with about 40 cocker spaniels.

[Karen Kilgariff]

No.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. Into the truck, guys. Up that little ramp.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Was there any cushions in there or anything for them?

[Georgia Hardstark]

No. And she finds homes for a few other dogs and also the number of cocker spaniels is something. The next morning, she and her, quote, niece get into the pink Lincoln with three moving vans following behind, and they skedaddle out of town.

[Karen Kilgariff]

But they do. Now. Can I just say this? Maybe we've all learned this up until this point or since that time. If you're gonna call and say, hey, we've noticed some questions in the books. Do you mind coming in on Monday? You're calling from the car outside their house so that you can see if that's what they're about to do. Right.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And then that's how you know.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Ye.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah, totally.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

So they didn't have car phones back then, did they?

[Karen Kilgariff]

They had their hands. They could have very easily.

[Georgia Hardstark]

They had a banana they could hold up as a phone, didn't they? All right, here's the truth. Janet's real name is Margaret Lydia Burton, although her maiden name is McGlashan. Like Marin McGlashan. Margaret is born in 1906 in Taijin, China. Born to British well to do parents. Margaret's father dies when she's about 11, and the family moves first to England and then to Canada. By the time she's 28, Margaret is living in Panama and manages a rug importing company.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Sure.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Which has ties to part of China where she grew up. So then she marries an American named Jasper Burton, and in the 1930s, they have a baby girl named Sheila. Sheila, it turns out, is the real identity of her niece, Candy Cane.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Her daughter, not in high school, who.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Is 20 years old. So they were not wrong.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Okay, well, we hear more about that later. Kind of like the why.

[Georgia Hardstark]

We'll talk about it.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Okay.

[Georgia Hardstark]

We'll theorize. We're really good at that.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Okay.

[Georgia Hardstark]

So it's not clear why Sheila had to pretend to be younger and a niece maybe, like she was vain and didn't want to seem like an elderly mother with a 20. I don't know. It's just. There's no reasoning that I can understand from that.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Okay.

[Georgia Hardstark]

But it's thought that maybe Margaret wanted to protect her daughter from being culpable for any ambassador embezzlement. So that's. That's the positive one. The negative could be whatever. You know what I mean?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

So the first known case of that kind of embezzlement crops up in 1939. And by that point, the rug company has transferred Margaret to Honolulu. Margaret and Jasper separate when Sheila is about 2 years old and he stays behind in Panama. Margaret's bosses realize she's been stealing money from the company. But before her case goes to court Margaret and her baby daughter. Skid ass Seattle. There's a theme to Los Angeles, where her mother and brother live there. The LAPD arrests her for the Honolulu embezzlement case, but the governor of California, for some reason, declines to extradite her to Hawaii. So shortly after this, and I wrote warning to Nitterinos, Margaret collects investments from Los Angeles knitting enthusiasts, saying that she's planning to open up a yarn shop. Oh, that's her scheme. Instead, she makes off with close to $10,000, which is 113,000 in today's money. And it's at this point that Margaret starts using aliases for herself and her daughter. By the time she's caught, she has about 22 different identities. Yes, a lot. It's easy to do back then.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Margaret and Sheila eventually end up in San Antonio. And it's here that Margaret gets a job at a dog kennel and discovers her passion for cocker spaniels.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I mean, can you imagine the first day she walked into that kennel and suddenly she's like, I gotta get 50 of these yesterday.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Imagine 50 Chihuahuas. If she had fallen in love with.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Chihuahuas instead, there's so many dogs I wouldn't want 50 of.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I'd do 50 Chihuahuas. Yeah. I would do 50 Chihuahuas.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I do 50 terriers like Frank and Blossom. I like that kind of dog.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Maybe it's because Cookie's a chihuahua. And I'm like, definitely.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah. Our dogs have done a good job representing themselves and their breeds to us.

[Georgia Hardstark]

They. What's. They've indoctrinated us into their.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I'm a true believer, but there's some dogs where I'm just like, never.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. So she starts using some of her ill gotten money to buy show dogs. They cost thousands of dollars. There's also reports that she steals some dogs from other owners. Yeah. Y. There's not a lot of information about how many dogs were stolen and how she would have done this because they're show dogs. So they're kind of shuffled around a bit. Like no one knows who the actual owner, who the breeder, who the trainer is. So. So then throughout the 40s and early 50s, Margaret and Sheila bounce around all over town. New Orleans, Denver, St. Louis, Norfolk, Virginia. In each place, Margaret gets a new job, often as a bookkeeper in a doctor's office. And when patients come in and back then, they paid with mostly cash, right? Lots of cash, like, flowing.

[Karen Kilgariff]

She's like, do, do, do.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. Margaret pockets a lot of it when she gets caught or Close to being caught, she. And she is. Skedaddle. God, yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

What a way to live.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

As my dad said to me once, there's some people that can't keep their hands out of the till. And at the time, I had been stealing $20 a week from the job I was at so I could buy beer.

[Maren McGlashan]

Oh, no.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I'd only done it twice.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And then I was like, oh, no. And I never did it again. That's good, because I was. I justified it. I was like, they're paying me minimum wage. And then deserve. I was like, dude. And then the second time. Oh, it was because the person. I also worked at the student union at SAC State. And our boss, who was always, like, kind of in everyone's business and. Da, da, da. What have you been doing in it? Can we see? Will you do the count again on your thing or whatever?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And they had embezzled, like, $500,000.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Holy shit. Shut up.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yes. So that had just happened.

[Georgia Hardstark]

How do you do that?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Same thing where I think it's just like. Just a little bit here and a little bit there. And you work there for years and no one suspects you.

[Georgia Hardstark]

All the jobs I've had that I've had to work the till, which is a lot of them. Like the countout at the end of the night. If I were under by 5 cents.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yes.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I would be devastated.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yes.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Like that. Because I was so good. Like, I was like, there's no fucking way I did that. But there was always some amount of money. You were under. Yes. Or over randomly.

[Karen Kilgariff]

You were also in trouble. Like, when I worked at the Gap, you were in trouble if you were over and if you were totally, like, you couldn't win. That just reminds me of, though, you keeping perfect track of our merch money in the beginning, where you would just be like, here's. There it is. Just so you know, aren't you glad.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I'm not an embezzler?

[Karen Kilgariff]

I really am. I would have. It would have been very difficult. On top of everything else, where do.

[Georgia Hardstark]

You think that pod loft money came from?

[Karen Kilgariff]

God damn it. Where'd you get all these frames for these pictures?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Okay, so that brings us back to 1957, when Janet. That's the fake name, who's about 51 at this point, fails to show up at her doctor's office. And Decay and her co workers call the police. They quickly loop in the FBI because they're assuming she's crossing state lines. She's driving a pink car and has two moving vans following her One of which is full of cocker spaniels. So one of the agents says it'll be like, quote, finding an elephant in a haystack, you know?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yep.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Like, not the smoothest.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Get her.

[Georgia Hardstark]

In actuality, Margaret proves not so easy to find. It turns out that the FBI's best clue is the trail of cocker spaniels. Okay, so a moving van full of cocker spaniels is, like, reported as a very funny, comical thing, but in actuality, it's clearly not safe or humane, as you said.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

There's no pillows. And two of the 40ish dogs actually don't survive the journey, which is so sad.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It'd be so hot.

[Georgia Hardstark]

So hot. And probably no water.

[Karen Kilgariff]

No, it's horrible.

[Georgia Hardstark]

No, it's awful. Most of the other dogs are dropped off with a trainer in North Carolina, but Margaret keeps three of the dogs herself. She's. She's in love with them. And the FBI.

[Karen Kilgariff]

She's in love with them. Except for the one she killed.

[Georgia Hardstark]

She's in love with these three, I guess. Rise and shine, capital gain, and piccolo Pete.

[Karen Kilgariff]

My favorite firework.

[Georgia Hardstark]

The FBI finds the moving vans and the pink Lincoln abandoned in South Carolina as the news of Margaret's flight from Atlanta spreads. She's actually seen by many as a lovable anti hero. And it's kind of a feminist thing, too, where they're like, she got over on these, like, smart doctors who think they know everything, and people are rooting for her to get out of the country and evade capture. They're like, you know. But one group that's not impressed at all is the southeastern chapter of the American Spaniel Club. Yeah, because they liked her so much, and she was a prominent member that they had been in the process of naming her as the regional leader. So she was an actress. She was good at fooling people.

[Karen Kilgariff]

True sociopath.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Exactly. Exactly. One member says, quote, it was like picking up the paper and reading that President Eisenhower was a spy for the Communists, end quote. Which is like, hey, welcome to Today.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah. Hi, how are you?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Hey, guess what? 1957, I've got some news for you. The FBI underestimates Margaret completely. She manages to evade capture for about a month, getting us to the end of August 1957. She and Sheila wind up in Tulsa. They rent to house. Margaret assumes a new identity, going by Madge Burton.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Madge.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Bring that name back.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Pretty great.

[Georgia Hardstark]

A baby named Madge. Smoking.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Oh, smoking baby.

[Georgia Hardstark]

She loves her slims.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Let her have another one before she goes to sleep. Just let her.

[Georgia Hardstark]

She'll go right down.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And she just Give her two more cigarettes.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Give her a cosmo and a cigarette, and she'll go right down. So she goes to a doctor's office and. And gets a job there.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yes.

[Georgia Hardstark]

They don't ask for any references because Madge tells them her husband was a doctor. She worked in his office for years and years, and he left her for another woman. So she doesn't have references, but she's got a lot of experience. And they're like, great, get over here. And she actually does seem to have a lot of experience because she has done that. So they believe her.

[Karen Kilgariff]

She's stolen at all the great doctor's offices around the Midwest.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Then, after Mag had been at the clinic for a week or two, a story about Margaret Burton, her real identity runs in the Tulsa world. And it catches the attention of the office manager who hired her, partly because of, obviously, working in a doctor's office, but also, Margaret had a lot of freckles, and so she matched that up. And the article describes her daughter Sheila as, quote, buxom. And the office manager had seen this daughter and was like, bingo, it's Jessica Rabbit.

[Karen Kilgariff]

You know, the 15 year old.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah, the 20 year old.

[Karen Kilgariff]

The 15, 20 year.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Exactly. So the office manager is a rat and calls the FBI. I'm kidding. And when they knock on the door of the house rented in Tulsa, they are greeted by the daughter, Sheila, and three cocker spaniels, which is, like, change up the dogs. You're, like, giving it away.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Or at least put them away for a bit.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Or, like, put a disguise on them.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Oh, raccoon disguises.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Three raccoons.

[Karen Kilgariff]

What are you guys doing?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Well, there's no cocker spaniels here. I guess we got to get out of here. This can't be the same place. Margaret and Sheila are both promptly arrested and extradited back to Georgia, where they're slapped with state charges of forgery and larceny. It turns out that the federal charges don't stick. Like, she gets lucky. And so the three dogs are all brought to a local kennel, but they're technically impounded, like, with all of Margaret's other property. Like, can you imagine going to that sale? Oh, my God. Like, up next on the block, the American Spaniel Club raises what is basically today about $17,000 to buy back the best in show dog. Rise and shine.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Take a little peek. Come here. Come here, darling. It's me. It's your mama.

[Georgia Hardstark]

That's your mommy. So all this comes out in the press, and Sheila's birth father, her dad, Jasper Burton, who hasn't seen her since she left Panama as a toddler, comes out of the woodwork. It turns out he'd been living in nearby Athens, Georgia. He's thrilled to find his daughter again. And the charges against Sheila are dropped completely. It does seem like she had nothing to do with her mother's schemes. That again, started when she was a baby. And you've got to imagine the mind fuck she grew up with. Nonstop, nonstop mind fuck.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Everything is either for money or cocker spaniels.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And we gotta get the fuck outta here now. We have to leave. You're not this person. You're that person that probably went on her entire life.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I wonder if the high school thing is like, you can go to high school in Decatur when we get there. Right. You can go to high school at the next place.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Great. You're gonna go. Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Listen, you'll be a cheerleader this year. And she just keeps on doing it.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I mean, it's kind of. What's it called? Not Rosemary's Baby, but Mommie Dearest.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yes.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Where it's just a little like. I mean. Yeah, there's gotta be some kind of like trauma bond with her mother there. Right, Right.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And also, I think Only Child. I'm only saying this because I've observed my sister and my niece where it's like, it's closer than average. Cause there's just one of each.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Totally.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And so they're team for sure.

[Georgia Hardstark]

We have each other. Literally. You can't make friends because you can't tell them truthful.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah. Everything about your mother's life is this insane lie that you're trying to fit into.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Totally.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah. Cuz also, if you were thinking about. If you're past the age of high school, but you're moving to these new towns, what are you supposed to hang around the pool hall or something? Like, what are you doing? Totally to socialize. You wouldn't be able to.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And I'm sure your mom tracks everything that you do. Yeah, right. When reporters ask her questions, they say that she's shy, reserved, and says that she's just scared that she's never going to see her mom again. So Margaret faces charges all over the country. And her Georgia trial begins in December of 1957. Ends in a mistrial because a juror hears his pastor at a sermon talking shit, essentially on Margaret. And so it's shit the juror is not supposed to know. And so it's a mistrial. Wow, great.

[Karen Kilgariff]

That's actually the ultimate getting out of it. Yeah, it's not his fault. Yeah, it was church.

[Georgia Hardstark]

It's my fucking. You know how pastors have big mouths and shit?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Trying to be a good Christian man.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Gossip, gossip.

[Karen Kilgariff]

These fucking pastors every Sunday.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Every Sunday, just talking shit about cases. The second trial, Margaret says that actually the doctors at the clinic she worked for were trying to evade taxes and she caught them and so they tried to accuse her of embezzling.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yes.

[Georgia Hardstark]

It's not her fault.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Nope, she's the victim.

[Georgia Hardstark]

She also faints a lot during the trial.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Oh, as you do one of these.

[Georgia Hardstark]

You know how you just. Women just faint all the time?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Like sitting down in the witness box.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

You. She slide out of the chair like it, like comedy style. Just slide underneath.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Hey, I'm fainting. And people are skeptical of it even then. And in the end, she's found guilty of two counts of larceny and two counts of forgery and serves two years in prison when she gets out. Some of the other states have dropped their charges, but several others opt to ask the federal government to deport her rather than her going to trial, since she's actually a British citizen originally. So they're like, we won't charge her and try her if you get her out of here before she's deported, though, she's charged in Los Angeles for the knitting shop scheme, pleads guilty and serves about nine months in the county jail. And then Sheila, her daughter, winds up moving to LA to live with Margaret's brother back in LA. He's a movie producer. His name is Ian McGlashan. And Ali looked it up on IMDb and the only credit to his name is a 1964 movie called Three Nuts in Search of a Bolt. Your favorite, yes, your favorite late night movie.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Oh, my God, those nuts are nuts.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Svengoolie. It's a Svengoolie classic. It seems like the daughter lives a quiet life. Like there's no information about her online. There's like a photo on her, like, find a grave. Looks like a grandma. She's smiling. That's kind of all you've got.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It's just a tiny picture on the bottom. It's no dogs allowed.

[Georgia Hardstark]

She fudged from that day on. She fucking hates dogs.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Never been around a dog since.

[Georgia Hardstark]

It seems like she lives a quiet life. She gets married and has one child and she dies in 2015 as an older lady. Margaret, meanwhile, is deported back to England in 1960, though some point and no one seems to know when she schemes her way back to the US and dies in Los Angeles in 1992. So I bet she was back with her daughter.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I bet she was.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And who knows what kind of caper she got into that she didn't get caught for, Right?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Because now she's a whole new person.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I bet she was the one at the. At the grocery store who's like, I'll give you a 20. And actually give me back the change for that. And she does, like, the change thing. Oh, no, give me five. Five fives for that, and I'll give you back your 20.

[Karen Kilgariff]

She could be the old lady. When I was so broke and I found a $20 bill, I put it in my pocket of my corduroy pants. And then I was in the super cheap sunglasses store on Hollywood Boulevard because I was going down to, like, the Walgreens or whatever.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And I was standing there like, oh, I can buy a pair of sunglasses for, like, five bucks.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And this old lady came and, like, was standing to the side of me, and I wasn't looking. And finally I looked, and she was standing there smiling, and she's like, hi. And I was like, hi. And then she walked away. My 20 bucks was gone.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Shut the fuck. I thought she was gonna say it was her. That's my 20. No, she straight up robbed you.

[Karen Kilgariff]

She robbed me and then made me look her in the eye with a big smile. And I bet you it was fucking Janet.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I bet you anything she was in Los Angele.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It was her.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Oh, my God. How amazing would that be? So here's her photo. Oh, my God, that's her. So. Yeah. She dies in Los Angeles in 1992 at the age of 85.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Could have been.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yep. And that is the story of the serial embezzler or the international adventurer, Margaret Lydia Burton.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Wow, that was great.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Thank you. There's only a few photos of her, too. And, like, no information about after she went back. There's a photo of her getting. Yeah, she's getting out of this car. She kind of looks like a little old lady, even though she's got, like, no wrinkles. She's like the little old lady. Shampoo set, glamorous dress, and she's got the, like, railroad case with her makeup in. And she's getting out of the car at the courthouse. Like, it's a fucking premiere of a movie, and she's the star.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And she's, like, just eating it up, and it's just kind of like, God, I bet she was fun.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I bet she was fun. And I bet you that's why the press or like, that's why the public was able to get this kind of counter, like, anti hero thing going for her. Because it's like, well, you're showing up in an outfit. You seem to have a great attitude.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Totally.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Americans don't need much more.

[Georgia Hardstark]

No. Yeah. You're getting it over on the man. Yeah. Kind of love that.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

So fuck it.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Fun. Be a stealer.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Be a stealer. Wow.

[Karen Kilgariff]

We did it.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Thank you.

[Karen Kilgariff]

We did it.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Do you want to do some fucking hoorays?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Sure.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Should we be doing fucking hoorays too, you and I?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Sure.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Oh, wait, I don't have one next week. Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Want to start an next. Mine's Stevo. Every. Every week I'm gonna give this Stevo.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Okay, let's do some fucking arrays at the end of the show. We do just things you're fucking happy about. Hashtag us on Instagram or on YouTube page on this episode. Yep.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Mine's from email. My first one. You want me to read it?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Do it. That works.

[Karen Kilgariff]

The subject line is Karen's yogurt fucking hooray. And it says, hi, everyone. I'm an early listener, and your podcast has given me so much over the years. Laughter, comfort, mental health support. But Karen, talking about her little morning yogurt has saved my coffee routine. Do you remember this? I just learned on TikTok, of course, that to save the cortisol zip of drinking coffee on an empty stomach in the morning, I just drink a little drinkable yogurt first and let my body process that, then drink the coffee. Like. That's right.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I also heard, eat a couple walnuts. Just like, two walnuts.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Oh, for the same reason. See, I can't eat one. This guy get cold sore.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Oh, no. Okay, don't do this.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Separate. It says, save my morning coffee routine and my esophagus. And for that I am forever grateful. So fucking hooray for midlife hacks and a terrine of black coffee to keep us going through the terrible. Kate.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I love it. I love hacks so much.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It's a good hack.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

To realize that I was just piling on, like, because I think I'm trying to get started in the morning, and it's like you're literally signaling more cortisol.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Seriously? Yeah. It's a monster. Okay, mine is from YouTube, from our YouTube page. It's YouTube.com exactlyrightmedia. And this is from a Kelsey, because remember we were saying we have to have a Kelsey.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I had a couple of those in there.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I'm a Kelsey and I have a fucking array today. First, my older sister shout out Celia got me listening to you from the start and I've been hooked ever since. Today my hooray is my mom receiving life saving surgery for an aortic aneurysm. She had a complicated health history and I like to think her doctors were nerds who wanted to get to the bottom of it because they ended up coincidentally finding the aneurysm on an unrelated scan. O and today she got it removed and is going to be fine.

[Karen Kilgariff]

God, so scary.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Her first words to my stepfather when she woke up were, do my girls know I'm okay? She truly is. When you were shouting out Kelsey's at the end of the episode, I was like, I have to share this. SSDGM.

[Karen Kilgariff]

KS45kels Kelsey, I'm so glad your mom's okay.

[Georgia Hardstark]

That's amazing.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Very, very scary.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Get your checkups, everyone.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah. Okay. This is from Instagram. It was a social media comment on episode 473, and it is from Deb Miller Landau, the author of the book A Devil Went down to Georgia, which is based on recent story I did about the murder of Lita McClinton.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Oh, my God.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It says my hashtag fucking hooray is that this little murderino's dream came true.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Oh, my God.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Several months ago I emailed MFM and today on episode 473, Karen told the story of Lita McClinton based on my book A Devil Went down to Georgia. Thank you for honoring Lita. Enough with rich white guys getting away with murder and all the other horrible. Right? Yes, yes, Deb Miller landing. Huge shout out to Maren for loving the book and getting the story on the show. Fucking hooray to you all.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I love that. I know.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Isn't that great?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yes.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Congratulations, Deb Miller Landau. What a great book.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Good job. Okay, my last one is also a YouTube comment. It was commented on episode 473 on YouTube. Fucking hooray. April Fool's Day marked five years sober from alcohol. For me, it did not seem possible and it wasn't easy, but the blessings have been abundant. I left the medical field in 2022 and I'm now supervising a group of badass police record clients, clerks. Thanks for all you do. SSDGM. Ashley. AshleyWilliam D5M Congratulations, Ashley. Yeah. Five years.

[Karen Kilgariff]

That's a long time.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I can't.

[Karen Kilgariff]

That's a big deal.

[Georgia Hardstark]

That's a big deal. That's amazing.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yep.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Good job. Send us your fucking hooray. You guys. Maybe we'll do ours next week, too.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah, we'll start doing some, too. Yeah, we'll have a little more gratitude in our lives. That's a good idea.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Let's do it.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Thank you guys for listening. We appreciate you so much.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And stay sexy and don't get murdered.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Goodbye, Elvis. Do you want a cookie?

[Karen Kilgariff]

This has been an Exactly Right production.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Our senior producers are Alejandra Keck and Molly Smith.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo.

[Georgia Hardstark]

This episode was mixed by Liana Squilacci.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Our researchers are Maren McGlashan and Ali Elkin.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Email your hometowns to My favorite [e-mail].

[Karen Kilgariff]

Follow the show on Instagram at My Favorite Murder.

[Georgia Hardstark]

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

[Karen Kilgariff]

And now you can watch us on exactly right's YouTube page while you're there. Please like and subscribe. Goodbye.

[D]

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[Karen Kilgariff]

Commercials where a single, impossibly shiny car glides down a beautiful winding country road with a horse running along a fence?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Oh, yeah, that's not real life.

[Karen Kilgariff]

No. But Hyundai's available Class Exclusive Advanced safety features are designed for the roads we actually drive on, helping to keep you and your family protected.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Hyundai vehicles are equipped equipped with a standard Driver Attention Warning system, which constantly monitors your attention levels.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Learn more about [e-mail] or call 562-314-4603 for complete details.

[Georgia Hardstark]

That's H Y U N d a I usa.com or call 562-314-4603. Goodbye.