Rewind with Karen & Georgia - Episode 41: Live from EW Popfest

Summary

Podcast Summary: My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
Episode: Rewind with Karen & Georgia - Episode 41: Live from EW Popfest
Release Date: April 16, 2025

My Favorite Murder, the acclaimed true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark, ventures into a nostalgic recap in this special episode titled "Rewind with Karen & Georgia - Episode 41: Live from EW Popfest." Originally aired on November 3, 2016, this episode revisits the hosts' experiences at the Entertainment Weekly Pop Fest, blending past memories with fresh insights and commentary.

---

1. Introduction to Rewind Episode

The episode kicks off with Karen and Georgia introducing the concept of their "Rewind" series, where they revisit old episodes with new perspectives.

• Karen Kilgariff [00:37]: "Today we're recapping episode 41 that came out on November 3rd, 2016, and at the time, we entitled it Live from EW Pop Fest."

2. Overview of EW Pop Fest

Georgia provides context about the Entertainment Weekly Pop Fest, describing it as a significant two-day event in downtown Los Angeles that celebrates stars and creators from various entertainment sectors.

• Georgia Hardstark [00:49]: "Entertainment Weekly Pop Fest was a two-day event... It was the first time we were like, acknowledged as part of this community."

3. Hosts' Involvement and Experience

Karen and her writing partner, Alison Agosti, attended the Pop Fest not only as guests but also involved in a featured TV show, "Making History." Karen shares her comprehensive experience, oscillating between participating and supporting the show from the audience.

• Karen Kilgariff [01:09]: "Our writer Alison Agosti and I were writing on a TV show that was also featured there."

4. Behind-the-Scenes Humor and Personal Anecdotes

The hosts engage in light-hearted banter about their appearances and mishaps during the event, including humorous reflections on unflattering photos and interactions with their sound engineer, Steven Ray Morris.

• Georgia Hardstark [01:56]: "I'm slouching so hard. Like, I hear my mom every time I look at it, saying, sit up, Georgia."

5. Live Performance Highlights

The core of the episode revolves around their live stage show at the Pop Fest. They perform a dramatized retelling of a true crime story involving Hollywood legend Lana Turner, showcasing their signature blend of humor and horror.

• Alison Agosti [21:34]: "Lana Turner... she was this like, film noir actress... hot blonde, bombshell chick."

6. Acting and Storytelling Dynamics

Karen and Alison delve into their performances, adopting different characters to narrate the story, adding depth and engagement to the recounting of Lana Turner's turbulent life and tragic events.

• Steven Ray Morris [30:04]: "He grabbed me by the arms and started shaking me and cursing very badly."

7. Discussion on Hollywood's Dark Side

The story highlights the intersection of Hollywood glamour and underlying darkness, touching upon themes like abuse, scandal, and the complexities of public personas.

• Alison Agosti [26:00]: "He exposes himself to her in a sauna. Like, sweaty dick. It's just like, what a pervert."

8. Reflections on Audience Interaction and Reception

Post-story, Karen and Georgia reflect on the subdued audience response during their live performance, interpreting the silence as a learning experience for future shows.

• Karen Kilgariff [39:43]: "But yeah, more so because that audience just didn't respond to us in any way, shape or form."

9. Updates and Case Revisions

The hosts provide updates on the case discussed, mentioning recent publications that challenge previous narratives and offer new perspectives on the events surrounding Johnny Stompanato's death.

• Georgia Hardstark [41:06]: "In February of 2024 last year, author Casey Sherman released A Murder in Hollywood..."

10. Introduction of Hometown Segment

Towards the end, the episode transitions to the "Hometown Story" segment, featuring Margie, a listener who shares a personal murder story from her own community.

• Margie [66:57]: "I worked in this office with this dude... he would, like, rub my shoulders..."

11. Community Engagement and Closing Remarks

The episode concludes with heartfelt thanks to the EW Pop Fest audience, acknowledgments of support from friends like Steven Ray Morris, and playful discussions about potential alternative titles for the episode.

• Karen Kilgariff [71:10]: "Thanks for being at the EW Pop Fest with us. And stay sexy and don't get murdered."

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Georgia Hardstark [00:49]: "It was the first time we were like, acknowledged as part of this community."

• Karen Kilgariff [01:09]: "It's like getting invited up to the big table... the big time."

• Alison Agosti [21:34]: "Lana Turner... hot blonde, bombshell chick who was like, a leading actress in, like, crazy dark films."

• Alison Agosti [26:00]: "He exposes himself to her in a sauna. Like, sweaty dick."

• Karen Kilgariff [39:43]: "That audience just didn't respond to us in any way, shape or form."

• Georgia Hardstark [41:06]: "A Murder in Hollywood revisits the circumstances surrounding Johnny Stompanato's death."

• Karen Kilgariff [71:10]: "Stay sexy and don't get murdered."

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Key Takeaways

• Community Recognition: The EW Pop Fest served as a milestone for Karen and Georgia, marking their recognition within the broader entertainment community.

• Blend of Humor and Horror: Their live performance adeptly balances comedic elements with the gravity of true crime storytelling, a hallmark of the My Favorite Murder podcast.

• Reflective Insights: Revisiting past episodes allows the hosts to gain new perspectives, understand audience dynamics better, and refine their storytelling techniques.

• Engagement with Listeners: The inclusion of a hometown story segment fosters a sense of community and engagement, inviting listeners to share personal narratives.

• Continuous Learning: The hosts acknowledge areas for improvement, such as audience interaction during live shows, showcasing their commitment to growth and enhancing listener experience.

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This episode not only serves as a trip down memory lane but also enriches the listeners' understanding of Karen and Georgia's journey within the true crime podcasting realm. By intertwining past events with present reflections, the episode offers a comprehensive and entertaining recap for both long-time followers and new audiences alike.

Transcript

[Karen Kilgariff]

This is exactly right.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Hello and welcome to Rewind with Karen.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It is Wednesday, and that could only mean one thing.

[Georgia Hardstark]

It means we're going to recap one of our old episodes with all new commentary, updates, insights, you know, all of it, anything.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Today we're recapping episode 41 that came out on November 3rd, 2016, and at the time, we entitled it Live from EW Pop Fest.

[Alison Agosti]

So as you can tell, we put a lot of time into naming this.

[Georgia Hardstark]

One for you guys and for everyone who doesn't know. The Entertainment Weekly Pop Fest was a two day event. It was held in downtown Los Angeles. There were panels with stars and creators from movies, tv, music and podcasts. It was a really fun event to be invited to. Cause I feel like that was the first time we were like, acknowledged as part of this community.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah, well, and it's Entertainment Weekly, which is a big deal. That was like. It's like getting invited up to the big table. I don't know where. At a wedding. It doesn't work that way at weddings. But just like that kind of like this is kind of the big time. The people there, you know, stars like Jennifer Aniston, Joe Jonas, TJ Miller, they were all there promoting their latest thing. And as we have talked about on the show, our writer Alison Agosti and I were writing on a TV show that was also featured there. So I went there with you one day that week and then went back as an audience member later on to like, support the show. So I had a full 360 experience.

[Georgia Hardstark]

What show is it?

[Karen Kilgariff]

It was called Making History. I think it's on Hulu or it's on some streaming platform.

[Alison Agosti]

Oh, can I also say about this.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Episode that there's a photo from this that has been since then on my, like, Google image search page that I hate so much and have hated for nine years because I'm slouching. I mentioned I have sciatica in it, so I'm slouching really low. We're in like little director's chairs or whatever.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And that image just like kills me every time I fucking see it.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Isn't that awful? But kind of like, it's like, look, pictures are pictures. There's now a billion jillion of them always around. I know, I know.

[Steven Ray Morris]

But that one's always no one remembers.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I know, I know. That's like the first eight years for me, I was just like, this is a nightmare that will never end. Every picture was worse than the last one. And I'm just like, let's take a picture. And I'm like, can I get a fucking leg up? Here I am. Couldn't be older, couldn't be more resistant. I'm from the 90s where no one had pictures of fucking anything ever. Everything was a secret.

[Alison Agosti]

I love pictures.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And this one, I'm slouching so hard. Like, I hear my mom every time I look at it, saying, sit up, Georgia.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Janet, please. Janet, could you just give us one EW Pop Fest? Can we just. Sciatica, Janet, let us have one Pop Fest.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Well, let's listen to the intro to episode 41 live from EW pop fest.

[Alison Agosti]

Hi, guys.

[Unknown]

Welcome to day two of EW's pop fest. You guys having a good time so far? Good. I hope you guys have been having fun at the other events, and there's still more to come tonight, but I'm so excited to welcome this next show because it's actually my personal favorite, favorite show. And I'm sure I'm hoping there's a lot of Murderinos in the crowd because I am one. All right, so without further ado, I am so pleased to welcome my favorite Murder with Georgia Hardstock and Karen Kilgerth.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Ew. Whoa. What is this?

[Alison Agosti]

Where are you going? What is this?

[Steven Ray Morris]

Where are we?

[Alison Agosti]

This is our stage show. Karen's gonna.

[Steven Ray Morris]

I'm gonna do a song by Jojo right now. I know you wish you could be outside watching her and supporting her.

[Alison Agosti]

Was that really Jojo?

[Steven Ray Morris]

Yes, it was.

[Alison Agosti]

I thought you were being. I thought you were kidding. I don't know.

[Steven Ray Morris]

I never joke about Jojo. I can't.

[Alison Agosti]

I thought it was like, that's Jojo. No, I don't know who anyone is. You guys are so cute, all of you. Hi.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Thanks for. Did you have to wait in a line and stuff for this?

[Alison Agosti]

That's so important?

[Steven Ray Morris]

We're super into that. Yeah, we should have made them wait longer.

[Alison Agosti]

I mean, I do have to pee, but whatever.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Do not do it. They're like, haha. No, start it now.

[Alison Agosti]

She's crying.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Hurry up and start.

[Alison Agosti]

This is really freaking rad, guys.

[Steven Ray Morris]

This is weird because we never sit in chairs like this. We're not used to being directors of any kind.

[Alison Agosti]

Very bright. It's bright.

[Steven Ray Morris]

It's cold. Are we in Antarctica or something?

[Alison Agosti]

I'm sweating. No, I'm sweating.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Are you really?

[Alison Agosti]

Have you noticed that this entire day, that's, like, raining. I haven't had a jacket on.

[Steven Ray Morris]

I have noticed, but I didn't want to criticize you.

[Alison Agosti]

Criticize me? I'm fucking. I'm always Hot.

[Steven Ray Morris]

What's your deal? Hold on a second. Before the murders, Georgia, what's your medical problem?

[Alison Agosti]

You know, I mean, where do we start, right? I mean, let's start with sciatica and end with chronic anxiety for fun. Is Steven here? Yay, Steven Ray Morris.

[Steven Ray Morris]

There he is.

[Alison Agosti]

Steven.

[Steven Ray Morris]

That's a regular sound engineer.

[Alison Agosti]

Yeah, he's blushing.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Look at him.

[Alison Agosti]

Touch him.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Try to grab his mustache.

[Alison Agosti]

Is Elvis here? Someone do the meow. It'd be really funny.

[Steven Ray Morris]

It would be weird if you came walking up this aisle. How did you get down here?

[Alison Agosti]

Uber. We always. Whenever Vince and I are out and we say the word cookie, it's always like, is he gonna come out here? That'd be funny. I was gonna put cross eyed on this cat shirt that I'm wearing, but I didn't. I'm not even. I just didn't.

[Steven Ray Morris]

You just didn't. Too sick.

[Alison Agosti]

So I'm supposed to breathe into the microphone all the time?

[Steven Ray Morris]

Yeah, definitely exhale. That's what JoJo does. She sings a line, she inhales, and then it's just a big sigh of how hard show business is.

[Alison Agosti]

Oh, this is rough, you guys.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Oh, God.

[Alison Agosti]

Yeah, go.

[Steven Ray Morris]

We're honored to be here. If you're not sure if you wandered in and you're from Denmark, this is the podcast My Favorite Murder, where we, Georgia Hardstark and I, Karen Kilgariff, talk about our favorite murders, tell each other true crime stories that we like. We don't necessarily say, research them 100% or. We're not trying to be experts of any kind. Most people that are into this stuff really are experts. God bless their souls. They let us know when we fall down.

[Alison Agosti]

They sure do.

[Steven Ray Morris]

They sure sure do.

[Alison Agosti]

But listen, if you're here to have a good time, then you've come to the. Come to a place.

[Steven Ray Morris]

You've come to a really cold, bright place. You might be dead. Which is thematically appropriate.

[Alison Agosti]

Do you ever wonder that when you start walking, like, I was walking up here and I'm like, this can't be real. I'm probably dead. Again, chronic anxiety possible.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Although it would be a huge relief.

[Alison Agosti]

Emphasizing then I couldn't do anything wrong. Do you ever get into a situation and you're like, what's the most embarrassing thing I could do? Right? Like, get scared that you're gonna do it for sure. What's yours right now?

[Steven Ray Morris]

Well, we were just back. No, brag. We were just back in the. I like to call it the Heineken Lounge. It's where they keep it's like the green room where they keep talent before they go and do their thing.

[Alison Agosti]

We don't have to talk to anyone.

[Steven Ray Morris]

So we kind of stood there with our purses on our shoulders, super uncomfortable, like. And my thing in that situation is, like, you think you know somebody, so you're like, hey, that's not them. Like, that in the Heineken Lounge would have been death.

[Alison Agosti]

My thing is they then don't know who I am, that I've met them. 100. Like, it just happened, actually, when I was like, hey. And then I had to go Georgia, like, Because I saw the look on her face.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Yeah.

[Alison Agosti]

And I was like, oh, God, I've been there. But we've met, like, 17 times. You should maybe know who I am.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Yeah, but nobody does. That's just part of it.

[Alison Agosti]

I'm not special.

[Steven Ray Morris]

No. And I'm not either. Listen, if you're not special, neither am I.

[Alison Agosti]

But then when someone does see you and gets the. This like. Like Aaron Gibson from Throwing Shade, I want here pretty soon.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Yes.

[Alison Agosti]

Fucking best. She saw me and her and, like, opened her arms and her face lit up, and I was like, thank you so much. Like, her. Oh, my God.

[Steven Ray Morris]

She was wearing a lot of eyeshadow, though. So maybe it was just that she.

[Alison Agosti]

Thought it was someone else. It was just covering her. She was wearing a lot of eyeshadow in her eyeballs.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Once she. Once she wiped her irises away, she was like, oh, I don't know you.

[Alison Agosti]

That's not Liza Minnelli. Who the fuck is that by her and Brian. Safi. Thank fucking God. Were like, hi. Were very kind to me.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Yeah, no, you were. Okay.

[Alison Agosti]

Thank you. I get scared. It's a lot of funny comedians.

[Steven Ray Morris]

You told me that you had news about your dad, but you wanted to save it until we were doing this.

[Alison Agosti]

I did. And I wrote dad and rv and here's the reason. Okay, so, okay. We're doing the Chicago Podcast Festival soon, and I'm Big timing and bringing my mom and her boyfriend along because they never go on trips. And it's like, that's not a thing they do. And I have a lot of miles from our credit card from our.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Our wedding. I thought you were gonna say have a lot of money, which would have been so baller. Awesome.

[Alison Agosti]

I don't. I have a lot of miles from the credit card I opened and the debt I racked up to pay for my wedding.

[Steven Ray Morris]

God bless America.

[Alison Agosti]

So I'm bringing them to Chicago. Like, they're staying in our hotel room. It's Not. I'm not, like, big timing it that much.

[Steven Ray Morris]

You started the story by saying you were big timing.

[Alison Agosti]

I'm big timing them by bringing them so they can see that I. That there's a 900 seat theater, and then they'll love me more.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Oh, great.

[Alison Agosti]

You know what I mean?

[Steven Ray Morris]

Good. What a great Christmas this is gonna be.

[Alison Agosti]

We're Jewish. It doesn't matter. Oh, that' Shoot. So then I. So then I had to tell my dad that I'm bringing my mom and her boyfriend to the city he was born in. I know. And he.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Now they're divorced. Right?

[Alison Agosti]

Oh, wait, that would be weird, too.

[Steven Ray Morris]

That would have been awful.

[Alison Agosti]

He also didn't know about the boyfriend.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Or that his marriage had ended.

[Alison Agosti]

Yeah, like 25 years ago. So I had to tell him that. And I was like, but you just went to Chicago, right? So it's okay. And he's like, no, I thought he had just gone, so I wasn't gonna bring him. And now it's like, okay. So then he said, all right, well, do me a favor. If you go to Las Vegas or New York, I want to come, so bring him if we go there.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Okay.

[Alison Agosti]

He's a real party animal.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Nice.

[Alison Agosti]

And then he said, and you know, when you get really up there, just like a small, nice RV trailer he requested something for if we ever get rich, like an art.

[Steven Ray Morris]

A small, nice rv. Let's see. Those don't exist. Marty, I hate to be the one to tell you, it has to be three city blocks long.

[Alison Agosti]

Yeah, he got, like. He got. He put a fucking thing in there. And my sister was there, so there's like, a witness that I said yes.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Yeah. So you're dead.

[Alison Agosti]

I know. The funny thing is, it's already on the list when I, like, daydream about how I'm gonna take care of my parents if I ever, you know, win the lottery.

[Steven Ray Morris]

I mean, an RV's not too bad.

[Alison Agosti]

No, that's all he wants. So I.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Well, in a stark contrast, I found out that my dad has listened to this podcast, which is my fear, because my dad, who talks like a foul mouth sailor anytime I say, even, like, shit or something, in passing as an over 40 woman, he's always like, hey, watch it. Like, gets really mad. And of course, on this one, we, like, celebrate the word fuck. Like, say it as if our lives depend on it. And that would infuriate him like crazy. So I've never told him how to find it or what. I'm always, like, real vague about the name when he Asks about it and.

[Alison Agosti]

It'S called the Fuckward Murder Mystery Show.

[Steven Ray Morris]

That's right. That's right. So my sister texted me and said, dad found out because my sister and two of our childhood friends are also going to Chicago. We're just making it like a weird Clanny event. My sister and Adrian and Audrey are all going. Cause they love drinking in Chicago. That's like the main reason.

[Alison Agosti]

That's why my mom is going to.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Yeah. So it's going to be. They're going to have a great time. But my dad found out that they're all going because he told my sister he tried to listen to the podcast. And when my sister said, what do you mean you tried to. And he goes, eh, they talk too much.

[Alison Agosti]

That's what a pod. What if a podcast was just not talking the whole time?

[Steven Ray Morris]

Just like stoney silence, like we're in a fight. Just like the Silent Treatment, our new podcast.

[Alison Agosti]

Yeah.

[Steven Ray Morris]

So if you ever want to be a stand up comedian, you just need parents who truly are not fans of yours.

[Alison Agosti]

That's.

[Steven Ray Morris]

I would say that's step one.

[Alison Agosti]

My parents and my grandma, who was like 104 years old at the time, like got gathered together to watch the episode of Drunk History I was on. And like, they loved it and were supported. Like my family. They don't give a fuck.

[Steven Ray Morris]

It's not a good time for you to tell me the story right now. It's not. It's not.

[Alison Agosti]

My family loves me so much.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Have a great Hanukkah or whatever.

[Alison Agosti]

He just wants to picture you as like the sweet baby angel that he thinks you is. Thinks you is. And I had too many of these plastic cups of wine. Look at that.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Does anyone have a little tiny wine? That fucking green room, y'all.

[Alison Agosti]

I put one in my purse.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Green room X. Is it plastic?

[Alison Agosti]

It's totally plastic. So you can bring it to a park.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Incredibly parks are for incredibly hometown.

[Alison Agosti]

And my family knows I'm a fucking lunatic. They're just glad I'm alive. That's the only thing I am too. Thank y'all.

[Steven Ray Morris]

All right, should we get into this? Oh, by the way, this is. For some reason, as I was leaving my house, I didn't want to bend my papers. And so I picked up the Mystic Places Time Life series book that Steven got us. I don't know if you heard about that. It was. We talked about it in the last podcast. And so just to prove that we are not liars and we don't lie about gifts or things that Stephen gives us or anything Steven's involved in.

[Alison Agosti]

Except you didn't tell me and I didn't bring mine, so I might be a liar.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Oh, that's right. That's a cliffhanger. You have to find out. Next up.

[Alison Agosti]

All right, you want. Okay, so let's tell everyone our thoughts behind all this.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Oh, okay. So since we are at the EW Pop Fest. What is this?

[Alison Agosti]

Where are we? The Entertainment Weekly Pop Fest. We thought.

[Steven Ray Morris]

We thought it would be cool to do entertainment murders. Yeah, Entertainment based murders.

[Alison Agosti]

I got a lot of murmurs.

[Steven Ray Morris]

I knew it would. I knew they'd murmur.

[Alison Agosti]

You were good.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Okay, there it was, our names being mispronounced. The first. You named the first of many times.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I mean, that is a funny thing. Oh, you. We just did get an award where they misspelled your name. Your first name on it.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah, they did.

[Karen Kilgariff]

That was pretty funny. I mean, it ha. What mistakes happen.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Whatever AI.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Let's blame AI.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And I get so nervous when I'm announcing things, too, that I, like, I couldn't. I could miss pronounced Smith and B. Oh, yeah. You know what I mean?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Well, that's exactly the time you second guess yourself. Just like when you see a friend that you know and you go to say hi to them and then you're like, is his name Steven?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Or is it Steve?

[Georgia Hardstark]

I definitely know his name, but what if I'm wrong?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yes. I usually just immediately tell the person that that's what is happening in my brain. And they don't usually like it, and.

[Georgia Hardstark]

It doesn't work and you shouldn't do it.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Don't do it.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It's not a recommendation.

[Georgia Hardstark]

So what's hilarious is that JoJo is performing at the same time as us.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And we mentioned. Because you can hear it in our little room, because we had this, like, little. It wasn't a conference room even. It was like. There was, like, partitions that had been put up for the festival.

[Steven Ray Morris]

They had to break up a bunch.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Of conference rooms, I think, and make them like. What would you say? There's 100 people in that room or 50 people in that room?

[Georgia Hardstark]

I'd say I was closer to 50, but I'm really bad at that.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Well, like, five across 10 back.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. And then some people standing in the back. Yeah.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

So it was a small audience of people who were like. It was like a comic con for, like, TV and movie people.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah, exactly. So it was very intimate with JoJo.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Pulling over with JoJo right next door. Do you want a JoJo update? Because I do have one for You. Allison went and looked some stuff up, so I couldn't stop laughing. That I called that it was Jojo, like, out of the blue that way. Then I remembered she was on. And maybe I told the story real time, but she was on Ellen. When I worked on Ellen, she was literally, like, 14 years old, and she had this hit song, and she was such a good singer, and she was such a badass. And do you remember that song? It was like she was moving out from her boyfriend's house or something. Where you're like.

[Steven Ray Morris]

You are literally in seventh grade.

[Karen Kilgariff]

What is happening? So I always loved JoJo because she really was. It seemed like she was the real deal to me.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Like, she had the talent there.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah, exactly. She had the range. So she had taken 10 years off because she got in a big fight with her record label. So this was her first return to, like, entertaining again, which is kind of amazing.

[Georgia Hardstark]

This thing that we were at was.

[Karen Kilgariff]

The yes in 2016. She had, like. She stopped performing in 2006. I love the young women in entertainment who aren't playing the part of, like, I don't know, daddy. Instead, they're kind of like, I've been divorced twice. And it's like, no, you have not. What are you doing? Like, singing those songs. But since that time, she made her Broadway debut in 2024 in Moulin Rouge, she played Satine. She also released. The same year, she released a memoir called over the Influence, which was an unflinching look at her journey through child stardom, legal battles, and personal struggles.

[Alison Agosti]

Damn, I love that title.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Oh, that's a good one.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Over the influence, JoJo. And then she released a new EP this year called NGL. Not gonna lie.

[Alison Agosti]

Wow. Karen is a fucking Jojo Siwa.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Stan. Who knew?

[Karen Kilgariff]

This is entirely Alison going and being like, I'm gonna give you an update for JoJo, but, you know, this isn't. JoJo is not JoJo siwa. Those are two different people.

[Alison Agosti]

Wait, okay.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I was worried about that this whole time.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah. No, it's JoJo Siwa is that blonde girl that's from, like, the Disney Channel. That's JoJo. Crazy dancer. JoJo literally looks like she is from the wrong side of the tracks. Eyeliner girl. She had that song get out when she was, like, 13 or 14 years old.

[Alison Agosti]

Get out, JoJo.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Check out JoJo.

[Alison Agosti]

Oh, God. I didn't know that was two different people.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Yes.

[Alison Agosti]

I thought you were into JoJo.

[Steven Ray Morris]

How many.

[Karen Kilgariff]

How many JoJo's could there be on. On the Disney Channel? The answer is A ton.

[Georgia Hardstark]

That's she? Yeah, she kind of looks like. Yeah, I like it. Okay, all right. Now I get it. I thought you were with the girl who said that she invented gay pop, like, last year, and everyone hated her.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Jojo Siwa said that?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Siwa, yeah. Yeah. Okay, I get it now.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Wow.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I bet everyone that ever had a hit during the disco era really disagrees with that.

[Alison Agosti]

Oh, my God. I thought they were the same person. I feel like if someone's mom who's.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Like, I love that Jojo, I'd be listening. And it's like, jojo Siwa.

[Karen Kilgariff]

That Jojo is so talented. She sings, she can dance, she has every color hair. She's tall, she's short.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I'm so embarrassed.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Who cares?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Okay, so, yeah, that was playing. Now I know. Now I can picture it.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Full detail.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It is, I think, important to say aside from all that. Like, so we're trying to paint the picture for you guys of what it was like to do this, because, of course, we're honored to do it. But then once you get there, it's like doing a nooner at a college where you're like, I'm excited to be making money as a comedian, but this sucks.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Wild.

[Alison Agosti]

And they.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Everyone.

[Georgia Hardstark]

No one knows who I am. Yeah.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It's like that audience was happy that we were there, but they were so quiet that it was just like, are we just supposed to power through this? And so that's kind of what we.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Did, because there were no my favorite Murder Live shows, really, yet. So I also want to say that in it, I talk about my mom and stepdad and bringing them to Chicago. And I did that, and it was great.

[Alison Agosti]

It was okay.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I always told my dad that when I made it, I would get him a nice little rv. And Vince and I did stick to our word, and we got him a cute little conversion band. That's all he wanted. We offered him, like, a real rv, and he was like, no, I want to be inconspicuous when spending the night in a parking lot. Like, it's just. He's living his dream.

[Karen Kilgariff]

So, yes, he's a real. He's Jack Kerouac on the road.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yes.

[Steven Ray Morris]

That's Marty's life. Exactly.

[Alison Agosti]

Exactly.

[Karen Kilgariff]

He's like a poet wanderer man.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Right. But with a lot of desert hot springs involved.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yes. It makes sense to me because having driven in some RVs and some kind of sleeper vans like that, the van is so much better because you get the same. Once you're inside. You're just inside, and it's nice when it's, like, smaller. Cause you're warmer. Those big ones are just kind of, like, hard to drive.

[Georgia Hardstark]

They're hard to park anywhere to drive, to navigate. Yeah. He's so cute.

[Karen Kilgariff]

They take down all the banners, right? Every banner gets ripped down. So let's get into George's story about Lana Turner.

[Steven Ray Morris]

So you want to go first this week?

[Alison Agosti]

Who's I. I think I'm first. Yeah, I want to be first because I'm scared. We got the same one, and then we're going to.

[Steven Ray Morris]

And then you do yours. Yes.

[Alison Agosti]

No, I mean, jump right in if we did.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Okay.

[Alison Agosti]

Does the person that the story revolves around, does her name start with Lana?

[Steven Ray Morris]

No.

[Alison Agosti]

Okay, okay. Lana Turner. Everyone knows her and loves her. The way you said that was like.

[Steven Ray Morris]

You'Re gonna get an applause break. Lana Turner.

[Alison Agosti]

I realized as. Thank you. As I realized I said that maybe nobody here knows who that is. They're under 30, so it's a possibility. She was born in 1921. So that was a long time ago. She was this like, like, film noir actress. Like, hot blonde, like, bombshell chick who was like, a leading actress in, like, crazy dark films, Right?

[Steven Ray Morris]

Like noir film.

[Alison Agosti]

Like, film noir. Like noir films.

[Steven Ray Morris]

But you were translating it from the French into just dark for the American.

[Alison Agosti]

Darkest for this American film noir means dark as fuck. She. She was discovered in 1937. And this is, like, probably bullshit, right? But, like, the story is that she was sipping a. The counter at the Top Hat Cafe on Sunset Boulevard and the founder of the Hollywood Reporter, which I just realized might be competition with Entertainment Weekly.

[Steven Ray Morris]

You can't say that name like giving us the cutoff sign.

[Alison Agosti]

It just goes dark in here. And then when it lights come up, we're gone.

[Steven Ray Morris]

It's super hot all of a sudden.

[Alison Agosti]

So. I mean, come on. Is that true? She's eating a fucking sandwich.

[Steven Ray Morris]

No, those are all lies. That's all publicist shit.

[Alison Agosti]

She was like, I don't want to get gross. Or do I? Okay, so she was 16, apparently signed to a contract at Warner Brothers, and then she became an ingenue. Do you guys hear that loud music through the wall?

[Steven Ray Morris]

No, it's just you.

[Alison Agosti]

Oh, okay. Blonde, bombshell, leading actress, reputation as a glamorous femme fatale.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Femme fatale.

[Alison Agosti]

Thank you.

[Steven Ray Morris]

No, I wasn't correcting you.

[Alison Agosti]

No, but you were right. She. She was nominated for an Academy Award in 1957 for Peyton Place. What I'm saying is big time. You know what I mean? Like, gorgeous big time. While she kicked at. While she kicked ass at her career. I wrote she sucked at relationships.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Oh, no, haven't we all been there, lady?

[Alison Agosti]

She dated a lot, changed partners often, and never shied away from the topic of how many lovers she'd had in her lifetime. And then I wrote, which is fine for men, but if a woman does it, it makes everyone uncomfortable. Bullshit. Fuck the page, you know? And then she said, I kind of want to make you read her voice.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Let's do it.

[Alison Agosti]

Are you good? Okay, here in quotes.

[Steven Ray Morris]

All those years that my image on the screen as sex goddess. Well, that makes me laugh. Sex was never important to me. I'm sorry if that disappoints you, but it's true romance. Yes, romance was very important. But I never liked being rushed into bed, and I never allowed it. I would put it off as long as I could, and I gave in only when I was in love or.

[Alison Agosti]

Thought I was, which, again, thank you so much. Take a bow.

[Steven Ray Morris]

JoJo.

[Alison Agosti]

And I actually put a lot of quotes in this just so you.

[Steven Ray Morris]

So I could do action.

[Alison Agosti]

I should have had you prep your voice before this.

[Steven Ray Morris]

What if I get discovered at EW Pop Fest?

[Alison Agosti]

Oh, my God.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I'd be. My man.

[Alison Agosti]

Who eating a tuna fish sandwich at the counter.

[Steven Ray Morris]

You can do the void.

[Alison Agosti]

Thank you. Which, again, is bullshit. She fucked immediately, probably, and then dated them, and it's fine. It's fine.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Listen, you get to do what you want. Is the idea.

[Alison Agosti]

Like, she. She can be like I like. I'd like to screw, but only when I like. If I. If I like. If I have to romance, if I. If I'm. I never allow it. Allow it. It's fine. That was my diadright.

[Steven Ray Morris]

She's dead. It doesn't matter about. You just ruined my story. Spoiler alert. Fuck spoiler alert. She gets murdered at the end of this.

[Alison Agosti]

Oh, she doesn't. Is that disappointing?

[Steven Ray Morris]

Oh, did she murder someone?

[Alison Agosti]

No. You don't know the story.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Oh, that's good.

[Alison Agosti]

I'm excited. Okay, great. I'm glad. All right, 1942, marries her second husband, actor and restaurateur Joseph Stephen Crane. They have a daughter, ended up being her only kid. Cheryl Crane, in 1943. Then they divorced in 44. And then I wrote. Okay, now this story gets dark.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Great.

[Alison Agosti]

Ready for this? Yes. Her fourth husband was actor Lex Barker, and she married him in 1953. And then in Cheryl's memoir, Detour, A Hollywood Story, which came out way later, Cheryl Crane claims that Barker, the husband, repeatedly molested and raped her.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Bad news.

[Alison Agosti]

Saying that at age 10, he lured her into the sauna, which sounds like a nightmare to begin with.

[Steven Ray Morris]

That's horrible.

[Alison Agosti]

Like with your stepdad in a fucking sauna and told him it's kind of.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Saunas anyway because have you ever gone to, like, the one at Burke Williams and then the door closes and you're like, what if it locks forever separate from a creep being in there with you?

[Alison Agosti]

Remember the girl who died in the cryogenic freezer?

[Steven Ray Morris]

Oh, yeah, that's right.

[Alison Agosti]

What a fucking nightmare.

[Steven Ray Morris]

It's a different episode. Sorry.

[Alison Agosti]

Yeah. Told her it was up. Oh, God. It's like, how gross do you want me to get? He exposes himself to her in a sauna. Like, sweaty dick. It's just like, what a pervert. Perverted. Sweaty. Then he starts raping her a lot. But when Lana Turner found out about it, she held a gun to Barker's head while he slept and thought about killing him. She didn't. And in the morning, she kicked his ass out. Which is great, because a lot of times back then they were like, you're a lying liar.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Yes.

[Alison Agosti]

You know what I mean? I love.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Yeah.

[Alison Agosti]

They divorced. But to avoid scandal, no criminal action was taken against Barker. Fuck that shit, man.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Yeah, that's old Hollywood.

[Alison Agosti]

I mean, that's fucking current Hollywood probably, too.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Let's not talk.

[Alison Agosti]

Oh, right. Actors are the best.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Love Hollywood, people. It's so fun and light.

[Alison Agosti]

Oh, and they never worked again.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Our last appearance was at EW PodFest 2016.

[Alison Agosti]

So, okay, so Cheryl is 13 and her mom starts dating Johnny Stampanato. Yeah.

[Steven Ray Morris]

No, not at all.

[Alison Agosti]

You're wrong.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Does he have a big white suit? Like.

[Alison Agosti]

Like Stompanato? Like, is he in Talking Heads? Is that kind of thing?

[Steven Ray Morris]

Or, like, he looks like. Why can't I think of his name? Who's the guy that hosts Family Feud?

[Alison Agosti]

Steve Harvey, probably looks like that.

[Steven Ray Morris]

The audience never likes a joke if they're the ones that have to provide the punchline. I've learned that over the years.

[Alison Agosti]

They think you're lazy, but we're not.

[Steven Ray Morris]

And crazy.

[Alison Agosti]

We've just. I've just. Yeah, I pickled my brain. White wine? Yeah.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Tell me about Johnny Stampanato.

[Alison Agosti]

Well, he was a. Well, here he's a bodyguard for Mickey Cohen, the famous gangster bad guy. And he was an enforcer for the crime family. So in case you guys don't know, Mickey Cohen was like a hardcore gang gangster. Like, gangland gangster. And in her memoir, Cheryl describes him as a B picture.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Good looks, thick set, powerfully built and soft spoken and talked in short sentences to cover a poor grasp of grammar and spoken deep baritone voice. With friends, he seldom smiled or laughed out loud, but seemed always coiled, holding himself in. Had watchful, hooded eyes that took in more than he wanted anyone to notice. Aaron Gibson, like, than her mother, Lana Turner, apparently. Yeah, I'm doing all different characters today.

[Alison Agosti]

I love it. Thank you. So he is a jealous, abusive man. And one time he got super pissed because Lana was filming. Another time, another place in London with Sean Connery. Who, like, man, he's hot. He's hot back then. And he got super jealous. Like, showed up in London and then they. They got in a fight. He choked her. And she had to miss three weeks of filming because her fucking vocal cords are screwed up because, like, he's a fucking dick.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Well, Mafia, they're serious.

[Alison Agosti]

Yeah. He later shows up on set with a gun and threatens her and. And Connery, motherfucking Sean Connery overpowers him, grabs the gun and beats his ass and sends him fucking running from the set. Sean Connery.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Sean Connery. Next month on Entertainment Weekly.

[Alison Agosti]

Let's see. And then later. But then later, he holds a razor blade to Lana Turner's face and says that he'll disfigure her and, like, end her career. So he's a fucking dick. Back in, Lana Turner tells Cheryl, her daughter, who's 13. Ready. It's Lana Turner.

[Steven Ray Morris]

I'm going to end it with him tonight, baby. It's going to be a rough night. Are you prepared for it?

[Alison Agosti]

Super chill.

[Steven Ray Morris]

That's someone's mother.

[Alison Agosti]

Yeah, like, send her to fucking.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Mom. I'm trying to watch tv. Get out of here.

[Alison Agosti]

What would they be watching back then? Like Dick Van Dyke, My mother, the car. There you go.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Dead silence.

[Alison Agosti]

I thought that was funny.

[Steven Ray Morris]

I thought I made it up.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Alison Agosti]

Isn't that from Arrested Development? Okay, so Stampanato comes over and when she told him it was over. You ready again? Do you want me to start going? I'll go. I'll go.

[Steven Ray Morris]

I'll do it. You do it.

[Alison Agosti]

He grabbed me by the arms and started shaking me and cursing very badly. And he's saying that if I.

[Georgia Hardstark]

If I.

[Alison Agosti]

If he said jump, I would jump. If he said hop, I would hop. And if I had to do anything, this is why I had you do it and everything. He told me he'd cut my face or cripple me. And if I went beyond that, he would kill me and my daughter and my mother. This is why I'm. This is why you're the actor of the Family.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Interesting. Anytime you're doing a voice halfway through you want to give up, you just power through.

[Alison Agosti]

Okay?

[Steven Ray Morris]

That's my advice.

[Alison Agosti]

All right. I guess.

[Steven Ray Morris]

But here's what I love. He said, if I say jump, you'll jump, and if I say hop, you'll hop.

[Alison Agosti]

That's a hip hop song, isn't it? If I say jump, you say, what?

[Steven Ray Morris]

I'm just saying, why doesn't he pick other stuff that's different than jumping and hopping? Like he could have total control over this woman.

[Alison Agosti]

If I say, give me all your money, you give me all your money.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Or just. Just shut up for a while. But instead, it's hopping and jumping, hopping and jumping.

[Alison Agosti]

Sounds exhausting. Take a nap. So she breaks away and says, don't ever touch me again. I am absolutely finished. This is so bad. This is the end and I want to get you out. And then she says, I was walking toward the bedroom door and he was right behind me. And I opened it and my daughter came in. I swear, it was so fast. Truthfully, I thought she had hit him in the stomach. The best I can remember, they came together and then they parted.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Wait a second.

[Alison Agosti]

I still never saw the blade.

[Steven Ray Morris]

The daughter killed Johnny Stampanato. Wait, did you guys know about this? What The f? A 13 year old.

[Alison Agosti]

13 years old.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Fuck.

[Alison Agosti]

Fucking. Stands at the bedroom door. She had come in earlier because she heard her mom getting beat up. And her mom was like, please go back to your room. I'm fine. This is taken care of. And she said she doesn't remember going down to the kitchen and grabbing a butcher knife. And she stood by the door and begged her mom to let her in. Finally, the mom lets her in and she fucking barrels past Lana Turner and stabs him in the fucking gut. And then he. Let's see, let's see. Oh. Single time in the abdomen, slicing his kidney. And it struck the vertebrae and twisted upward, puncturing his aorta.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Whoa.

[Alison Agosti]

She went for it.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Wow.

[Alison Agosti]

Badass little. And there's photos of her and she's just like, cute. Cheryl in taffeta.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Cheryl. Cheryl.

[Alison Agosti]

She defended her mother. I mean, right?

[Steven Ray Morris]

She was like, where? Why didn't she get the spleen in there? While she was at it, she hit so many keys, she knew how to stab.

[Alison Agosti]

Like, it's not just the thing, it's like a fucking thing, you know, it's like a ripping.

[Steven Ray Morris]

But also, there's. To me, the first thing I think of is like, this is a child who's been put in danger by these men, strange men. That keep coming into the house because of the mother, and the mother isn't safe, and she's got to fucking, like, take action.

[Alison Agosti]

But it's also probably this crazy thing of, like, you know, this mother who you keep seeing making these mistakes that are affecting you as well. And you're gonna prove to your mom how much you care about her and, like, that you will do anything to take care of her.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Yeah.

[Alison Agosti]

You know, this, like, sad woman who had to. Had to be, like, through the industry and taken advantage of and bullshit at the. Fucking. Having a Coke at the counter. Like, she probably went through a lot more shit.

[Margie]

Yeah.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Oh, yeah, right.

[Alison Agosti]

She wants to. She wants to take care of her mom.

[Steven Ray Morris]

I just like that when we get serious, there's some gorgeous house music to play behind.

[Alison Agosti]

I mean, I wonder if.

[Steven Ray Morris]

To set that mood.

[Alison Agosti]

Yeah, this is very. This is actually. Yeah. We become an NPR podcast where there's like. It's very. There's music in the background all the time.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Yes. Ambient music.

[Alison Agosti]

Ambient music. And it's like.

[Steven Ray Morris]

It.

[Alison Agosti]

Yeah. JoJo singing in the background. So she fucking. Oh, you're dancing a little bit. I thought you were pointing at me to, like, fucking finish. Can you Go on, wrap it up. So she fucking stabs him. And there were all these room, like. There are all these, like, you know, everyone who likes to do a. What's it called when you have these conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theory that Lana Turner actually, you know, sometimes you got to work through it on your own. Yeah.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Sound it out.

[Alison Agosti]

Yes.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Make it come to you.

[Alison Agosti]

Conspiracy theories that Lana Turner actually killed him and, like, made her daughter take the blame because she was 13 or 14, and she wouldn't get as much trouble. But then, let's see. So the police arrive. Cheryl admits to the stabbing. She's taken a juvie. And then there's a coroner's interest in. Nope. Inquest and in it. So there's like, basically a trial to see if she should go to trial, I think was what it was because she's a minor. And. And mobster Mickey Cohen, who is big time, like.

[Steven Ray Morris]

And this is when I invent Las Vegas.

[Alison Agosti]

Yeah.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Yeah.

[Alison Agosti]

And this is like when. When.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Oh, no, that's Bugsy Siegel.

[Alison Agosti]

Right. Yes. They're all Jews.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Anyone in the mafia here today?

[Alison Agosti]

Anyone? Anyone? Anyone? We'll know when they murder me at the end of this. Big time guy. Like. And this is when Hollywood and the mob were kind of, you know, they needed each other in certain ways, and so they were commingling. But he was the person who identified Johnny's body at the morgue. So he had to testify. Can you imagine having, like, being the lawyer who's about to fucking question a huge. Yeah, he's like, later days, but.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Sorry, go ahead.

[Alison Agosti]

No, go ahead.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Well, I was just gonna say, was he there to, like, speak against Cheryl or were they were just there to kind of state the facts?

[Alison Agosti]

I think that they. I think that the mob was pissed off that she. That. That they. Well, let me tell you what happened.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Okay?

[Alison Agosti]

So Lana Turner testified, and it's like in the. In her best role yet, she explained what happened that night, which insinuates that she's fucking lying.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Right.

[Alison Agosti]

You know, and then so she testifies, and that's where all those quotes come in that you read earlier so brilliantly.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Thank you.

[Alison Agosti]

You're welcome. Then the jury takes less than half an hour and decides that Johnny Stompanato's death was a case of justifiable homicide. And so all these gang members are fucking pissed about that. And they say that Cheryl was acting out of fear for her life and for that of her mother. And they found that she is justified in using deadly force to stop him. And everyone was like, someone said, this is the wall.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Just. This is down.

[Alison Agosti]

I'm trying hard to ignore it. When the fucking background music is louder than the laughter of the crowd, there's a problem.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Well, the back of my head is shaking, so, yeah, there's not a lot we can do.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Alison Agosti]

I mean, just life. Okay. So they were like, this is the first time someone has been convicted of their own murder. That kind of thing. They were pissed off about it. Eventually, the family of Johnny sues Lana Turner for wrongful death. They settle out of court. Which I always wonder, like, when you settle out of court, that kind of implies your guilt, or does it imply that you just didn't want to go through this huge, crazy trial? I mean, they're like, give me two grants, like, $2,200,000. How much is a lot of money back?

[Steven Ray Morris]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Alison Agosti]

I'm not sure.

[Steven Ray Morris]

I mean, I think it could just be whatever. It's like, either you're not going to win or you don't want to keep paying for a lawyer. There's all kinds of reasons to do that.

[Alison Agosti]

Basically, give me some money. Which makes sense. I mean, if he was bringing money home for his mother and she's like, I don't have the source of income anymore. Yeah, but also, you were maybe molesting my daughter. So it comes out later in Cheryl's memoir, and she was Quiet about it for years and years and finally came out with a memoir that details her molestation by her fucking the second husband and says that Johnny was molesting her.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Oh, no.

[Alison Agosti]

I know there were rumors that Lana Turner did it, but she takes the blame completely.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Cheryl does.

[Alison Agosti]

Yeah, Cheryl takes the blame completely. She had stabbed him and also that he had been abusing her sexually. But this fucking badass bitch, she had some trouble years at a teen, like went to like insane asylum and like was sent to, you know, boarding school and all this shit. And it was going very badly for her. And then she. She tried to commit suicide a couple times and then got her shit together and she became a successful businesswoman and real estate agent. She fucking kicked ass and then ended up having a really close relationship with her mom. Oh, nice. She came out of the closet and her mom completely. Lana Turner supported her 100%. She's been with this woman for, you know, decades. And she's this fucking awesome, crazy awesome bitch who fucking killed her mom's abuser.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Right?

[Alison Agosti]

That's so badass. So that's fucking it. Oh, thank you. This rare. The applause rarely happens in my living room. So this is so weird.

[Steven Ray Morris]

It's very satisfying.

[Alison Agosti]

Steven will like do a silent clap and then. And Elvis knows when like the last person goes.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Yes.

[Alison Agosti]

But he doesn't. He.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Yeah, he'll come out of the bedroom for that. I just like watching you throw down your papers in total victory.

[Alison Agosti]

I know.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Legal and otherwise.

[Alison Agosti]

I don't even know if like that was a good story, but I just act like it.

[Steven Ray Morris]

It absolutely was.

[Alison Agosti]

Thank you.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I mean, what a story that is. It is one of the craziest kind of murder story, Hollywood murder stories there.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Is, I would say really heartbreaking in.

[Alison Agosti]

A lot of ways.

[Karen Kilgariff]

But yeah, more so because that audience just didn't respond to us in any way, shape or form.

[Alison Agosti]

They gave us nothing.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And it was almost like a dry run for like the bigger shows because we expected nothing in that Chicago show.

[Alison Agosti]

Oh, and then they.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It's like we paid every one of our dues at the EW Pop Fest and then we got to go on to just have Beatles style receptions every.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Time we walked on stage.

[Georgia Hardstark]

But you know who was in the front row from the very beginning cheering us on?

[Steven Ray Morris]

Who?

[Alison Agosti]

Steven Ray Morris, of course.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Steven.

[Alison Agosti]

Steven from the beginning.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And I'm sure he laughed solo. Cause he does stuff like that. He's not afraid to like laugh when other people aren't.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It's like, so try to be the laugh starter.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. Because he's like, a regular comedy, like, comedy fan, so he knows, like, how important it is. Yeah. So that his job is.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yes.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Steven sent me a text the other.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Day, and it had, like, five crows. There was a. Did he send you this? No, it was a flat screen TV that was sitting in the gutter and then, like, five crows just sitting in front of it. And he took a picture of that and sent it to me and said, these crows are watching tv.

[Alison Agosti]

Steve.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Like, Steven.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Steven.

[Steven Ray Morris]

We spent, like, seven years of our.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Lives together in the shit.

[Alison Agosti]

I love it.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Well, I have some case updates, surprisingly, since it's such an old case.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Good. We should really focus on what we're here to do.

[Alison Agosti]

Should we?

[Georgia Hardstark]

I don't think I ended the story very well. So. In February of 2024 last year, author Casey Sherman released A Murder in Hollywood, the Untold Story of Tinseltown's Most Shocking Crime, which revisits the circumstances surrounding Johnny Stompanano's death. Sherman suggests that Lana Turner, rather than her daughter, which. This was a theory. Cheryl. May have been responsible for the stabbing. Challenging the long accepted narrative.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Gotta blame somebody totally.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And people are like, there was mixed. Yeah. Opinions about that. So that's a book you can read if you want. A Murder in Hollywood. And then also. Cheryl Crane has occasionally participated in documentaries and interviews, providing her perspective on the events of 1958. Notably, she contributed to the 2016 documentary Lana Turner. Oh, I'm not going to be able to say that. Yeah. Anyways, it offers insight. Just look up Lana Turner. It offers insights into her mother's life and the infamous incident. She's 81 years old now. She lives in Palm Springs with her wife Joyce, the same partner I mentioned in my story. Like, bless her, I hope she's living her very best life.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I love when, like, old people have retired to Palm Springs. It's such a. It's such a nice place for people to live.

[Alison Agosti]

Totally. Totally.

[Karen Kilgariff]

So fancy.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Maybe my dad can park his RV outside of their.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah, he's. He can get out there at the Lowe's parking lot and make some friends.

[Alison Agosti]

Yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

All right, now it's time for this story that I totally forgot about until I listened to this episode. This is Karen's story. I mean, it's actually funny that we both did stories about children in these murderous circumstances. Isn't that weird? Cause it wasn't supposed to be like that.

[Karen Kilgariff]

No, I think. But we were doing, like, Hollywood stories, and I think maybe it's that thing of, like, you know, in any kind of fucked up family. Yeah, it's like people that aren't doing it well and then.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah, it's like, insular in a way more than.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It's just very Hollywood to have, like, an old lady that won't leave her son alone.

[Steven Ray Morris]

And like, you must bring me my pills.

[Alison Agosti]

Stay here.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Don't join a bowling league.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Oh, my God. Okay, so here's Karen's story about the WASP woman.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Mine is also about a starlet, but she was no Lana Turner. Mine is the story of the WASP woman. Does anybody here know that one?

[Alison Agosti]

Mm.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Mm.

[Alison Agosti]

Well, nobody does.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Then I'll tell you for a second, it looked was gone. I'm just like, how am I gonna lie my way through the facts of first page where everything.

[Alison Agosti]

Make it up, make it up.

[Steven Ray Morris]

It doesn't matter.

[Alison Agosti]

I already told you that facts don't exist.

[Steven Ray Morris]

We just. A sidebar. I just saw a clip. We were on a local news in Sacramento news story about. Because we did the story of Dorothea Puente, who is an old lady who killed all the people in her boarding house. And for some reason, I think it's because it's almost Halloween. The Sacramento local news did a story on. They just kept going a podcast. They, like, didn't use the name until they absolutely had to.

[Alison Agosti]

Oh, yeah. Is that because they didn't want to say murder?

[Steven Ray Morris]

I don't know.

[Alison Agosti]

I thought they were being rude, but they were.

[Steven Ray Morris]

No, they were just mostly they were focusing on the story of Dorothea Puente as opposed to us.

[Alison Agosti]

But.

[Steven Ray Morris]

But they were saying, like, oh, it's my number. I gotta go. 5, 6, 7, 8. Do you believe in love?

[Alison Agosti]

I didn't tell you. We created a 5, 6, 7, 8.

[Steven Ray Morris]

And 1 and 2 and improv dance. Why was I bragging about that? Because. Oh, because as I watched the clip, they start talking. And then I realized, like, there's a woman behind a news desk holding papers about to talk about the story we did. And I was like, oh, God, I hope this is right. Like, honestly worried, like, it was.

[Alison Agosti]

Actually, they didn't find a dead person.

[Steven Ray Morris]

They didn't.

[Alison Agosti]

It was an alternative.

[Steven Ray Morris]

It was a man named Don who was a Holly. Yeah, very nerve wracking. Anyway, all right, so my story is the WASP woman murder. And this is the death of a. A woman who is essentially, if you had to boil it down, a B movie star. Her name is Susan Cabot. I'm assuming it's Cabot. It could be Cabot. I hope it's not Cabot.

[Alison Agosti]

Sounds right.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Cabot looks and sounds right. And she essentially the background on her, it's just gonna be there the whole time. But what if we listened and it was like, oh, my God, it's One Direction. And we had to drop our mics and run out there.

[Alison Agosti]

Everyone follow us.

[Steven Ray Morris]

You guys, everybody. Anthony Monkey.

[Alison Agosti]

You know.

[Steven Ray Morris]

I got most of my information for this story from an article by a guy named James Marison, who writes on criminalelement.com, which. It was a really good article that I ripped off.

[Alison Agosti]

But you gave him credit.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Yeah, exactly. So basically, here's what happened. On the night of December 10, 1986, the police got a call from 4601 Charmian Lane in the San Fernando Valley. Anyone? Valley. Represent Valley.

[Alison Agosti]

Valley. That's where parent is. Hipster parents.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Two people are like, yeah, I'm in.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Sorry.

[Georgia Hardstark]

We had a kid.

[Steven Ray Morris]

And so the caller breathlessly identified himself as Timothy Roman. And he said that a burglar had broken into their house and attacked his mother and himself. Paramedics arrived four minutes later, by which time Timothy was waiting for them calmly outside the front door. And he told the two EMTs that he had been attacked and that his mother was in her bedroom. And he believed that she was also injured.

[Alison Agosti]

Let me guess. He only had cuts down the left side of his body from where he's.

[Steven Ray Morris]

At as a righty. Yeah.

[Alison Agosti]

Fucking asshole.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Give him a chance. We don't know anything about him yet.

[Alison Agosti]

Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure.

[Steven Ray Morris]

So the EMTs went into the back, and his mother had been beaten to death with a weight. A bar dumbbell. And his mother was B movie star Susan Cabot. She. Now I transition into her. See, I tried to make this good storytelling where that's what happened. But then here's the person. But then I already start talking about her at the beginning, so. So now we're back to this part. God damn it, Karen.

[Alison Agosti]

Unprofessional. That's what we are.

[Steven Ray Morris]

You know Susan Cabot from such films as the Enforcer, the Prince who Was a Thief, the Battle of Apache Pass, the Duel at Silver Creek, the Viking Women, and the Sea Serpent.

[Alison Agosti]

Heard of any of these?

[Steven Ray Morris]

All your favorites from the 50s that you love so much. She was also in Machine Gun Kelly with Charles Bronson.

[Alison Agosti]

Okay, another.

[Steven Ray Morris]

But her biggest role, and the one she's known best for, is a 1959 film called the Wasp Woman where she was the lead, and she played an aging cosmetics executive named Janice Starlin, who unwisely injects herself with a rejuvenating serum derived from WASP enzymes, and it turns her into a Lustful, murderous queen wasp. Now, if you have seen this. Yes, it's fucking amazing because they basically, the fly came out, and the fly was a huge hit. So Roger Corman was trying to make a movie and basically get some of the action off the fly. And so when Susan Cabot turns into the wasp woman, it looks like she just pulled a black pantyhose over her head. That has, like, two legs, eggs on either side for eyes. And like, honestly, pike cleaners, I don't.

[Alison Agosti]

Think anyone here knows what legs eggs are.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Legs, eggs.

[Alison Agosti]

I know legs eggs. One person is over 31. Hi.

[Steven Ray Morris]

There used to be pantyhose that came in eggs. I'll tell you about it later. Just super cheap. Be very funny, though, in when you see now, like, I kept pulling pictures. I kind of want to pass my phone around, but do it. It's just like there's one picture where it's like her clearly turned to the screen like this. Except for there's no definable features. It's just these. These really bad pipe cleaner antenna and then these big weird eyes. Oh, and like, kind of fangs. It's hilarious.

[Alison Agosti]

They spent the whole budget on crafty, and then they were like, let's just fucking throw this thing together.

[Steven Ray Morris]

They were like, susan insisted on getting blue cheese, and now I can't afford a wasp outfit.

[Alison Agosti]

She wanted plastic cups of wine.

[Steven Ray Morris]

She had to get her wine cups. The poster from that time is, they used to do, like, the illustrated posters. And it's the thing I hate the most. It's a humongous, like, giant wasp that's bigger, you know, that looks like it's the size of a bus and it's attacking a man. But the wasp has a woman's face with a bunch of makeup on it. And that's. I hate that the most when, like, horror movies or whatever put a human. It's basically like saying, I've turned into a wasp, but my face is still here. That's the worst.

[Alison Agosti]

Because that wouldn't happen.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Well, it would have, but also, what if it did? Then there's your weird face that you took your WASP arm to put lipstick on and shit. Like, this face has so much makeup on.

[Alison Agosti]

Cause you can't go out without makeup.

[Steven Ray Morris]

You can't even if you're a wasp. So. All right, so this is the movie she's best known for. I'm just saying keep it in mind. Okay. She also was. She was gorgeous and very petite, and she dated tons of people, which is her prerogative. Bobby Brown, one of which was King Hussein of Jordan.

[Alison Agosti]

Fuck. He dated around, didn't he?

[Steven Ray Morris]

What's that?

[Alison Agosti]

I think he dated a few actresses.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Yeah. Yeah, I think so. He looked. He had a kind of Clark Gable Y quality. And I think he hung out in LA and he dated her. She actually drove Princess Margaret's Bentley. Like, he. I think he set her up and kind of, like, made sure she had a great life after. Her B movie career was kind of fizzling. But then he broke up with her when he found out she was Jewish.

[Alison Agosti]

I'm sorry.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Yeah.

[Alison Agosti]

Are you fucking.

[Steven Ray Morris]

No. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

[Alison Agosti]

What if I just started vomiting?

[Steven Ray Morris]

Also, do your homework. Like what? Oh, okay. The romance.

[Alison Agosti]

Did I have Wikipedia back then?

[Steven Ray Morris]

You gave her like, the most expensive, expensive car there is. It should have been real, but no. Anyway. A lot of anti Semitism in Hollywood and Jordan, apparently.

[Alison Agosti]

Even though we fucking created Hollywood. No one's laughing.

[Steven Ray Morris]

It's true.

[Alison Agosti]

It's not funny. It's true.

[Steven Ray Morris]

So when the paramedics went inside, they found what would be a classic hoarders episode inside the Cabot's house. It had been Susan Cabot and her son. And they had been living in this house where they said there were garbage bags in every room, newspapers and magazines stacked in toppling piles along corridors, Rotting food everywhere, dead rats floating in the pool. And they had 10 dogs. I was gonna. Two dogs. And I live like a goddamn bum. It's crazy.

[Alison Agosti]

I was gonna say that I would pay to go through that because. What year was that? 87. Oh, 80. I would pay. Like, I would want to see all her weird shit, she say. But then the end kind of bummed me out. And so I'm good.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Yeah.

[Alison Agosti]

Like, I want to go to the estate sale, but only after they cleane this estate sale.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Once they cleaned it up, there'd be nothing left. It'd be like wood beams. And they'd be like, do you want. Do you need wood?

[Alison Agosti]

I'm good.

[Steven Ray Morris]

So when they get back to the bedroom, they find Susan Cabot lying dead on her bed, dressed only in a purple V neck nightgown. Somebody remembered that it was purple. Yeah. V neck, blood everywhere. A large arc of it was sprayed on the bedroom mirror near her bed. There was sweat, a arc of blood. Oh, blood spatter. There's blood spatter on the ceiling above her prone body. And further blood stains on the floor and on the bed. And the killer had covered Cabot's face and head with a piece of bed linen before bludgeoning her to death, which.

[Alison Agosti]

We all know what that means. Huh? Can't. It's personal.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Oh, right. I just wanted someone to answer.

[Alison Agosti]

Oh, I thought we all. Sorry.

[Steven Ray Morris]

It means they're Jewish. What? Stop it.

[Margie]

Stop saying that word.

[Alison Agosti]

Getting very anti Semitic.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Underneath that piece of linen, her face was all but unrecognizable. So overkill. He beat the shit out of her face. So now they come back out and they're like, tim, what happened? And he's like, you will not believe this. I Woke up at 9:30, I hear my mom being attacked in her bedroom. So I go to the kitchen. As I'm reading, I'm like, as you do. You should have said you at least stuck your head in. But he went to the kitchen where he found a ninja warrior.

[Alison Agosti]

Are you. I was waiting for the other thing. They always blame it on what? Black people.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Oh, a black person.

[Alison Agosti]

Yeah.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Well, he. He kind of went. He said there was a ninja who was a Latino. Oh yeah.

[Alison Agosti]

Come on, say it's a white person and they'll believe you every time.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Well, well, so he said he fought with the ninja warrior, the curly haired Mexican ninja warrior in the San Fernando Valley. But the guy knocked him out. And so then that's. Then when he woke up, he called.

[Alison Agosti]

So they were just there to kill the old woman hoarder? Like they didn't want to kill him?

[Steven Ray Morris]

No, no, no. They just wanted to knock him out and then terribly murder her face. You know how ninjas are. So of course the police are like, something smells fishy. Aside from the 12 bags of garbage in every room of your home. So then as they talk to him more and more, I think they bring him in. And then his statements become increasingly inconsistent, of course, and his wounds are overtly self inflicted. And when he was asked about his relationship with his mother, he described it as very close. His mother. And he talked about everything he told investigators, including intimate sexual matters.

[Alison Agosti]

Red flag, right?

[Steven Ray Morris]

Well, I mean, why? What kind of breakfast are you having? That. That's the conversation.

[Alison Agosti]

How was your night?

[Steven Ray Morris]

Well, I fucked so many people. Mommy.

[Alison Agosti]

Pass the catch up ketchup on eggs. Murderer. No, I'm kidding.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I love it.

[Steven Ray Morris]

No, just swipe trash. So when the questioning was over, he form he was formally charged with his mother's murder. He demanded that he be taken home to collect some medication. And that he needed. That he needed. And there, without any prompting at all, Timothy led the detectives to the murder weapon. So in his room he had. They had those 10 dogs. Four of them were Akitas. That were his dogs. And when the paramedics got there, they were in his room going crazy, like, wouldn't stop barking, going insane. So they couldn't go into his room. Well, when they bring him back, after he's questioned in the police department, when they bring him back, he brings them into his room and that's where he put the murder weapon. So that he put the dogs that, like, it's all a little bit convenient of we couldn't go in there because those dogs were going crazy. But actually, here's a bloody dumbbell that I killed my mother with and a scalpel. Oh no. Yes.

[Alison Agosti]

Adopted those dogs after this whole thing.

[Steven Ray Morris]

No, they, they had such a great life. There was a farmer that came into the San Fernando Valley and they live forever. See?

[Alison Agosti]

And here they are today. You guys. Come on, boy. Who's a good boy?

[Steven Ray Morris]

Old really smelly dogs. Oh, my favorite.

[Alison Agosti]

And they're like, I saw murder.

[Steven Ray Morris]

I'm all crazy now. I'm gonna eat your ankle. Okay, so here's my favorite part. And this is something that the paramedics noticed when they got to the house is when they were walking up to the front door, they thought it was a 13 year old boy that was standing at the front door. Oh my God. And then when they got up close, they realized he had old face.

[Alison Agosti]

Why 13?

[Steven Ray Morris]

Which some of us have. And it turned out he was 22. And this situation was that Timothy was born with pituitary dwarfism. And so he, the way he was born, he should have only stood four feet tall. But his mother got him on an experimental drug program.

[Alison Agosti]

That's always chill.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Uh huh. And it worked well for her in the movies. So he had been taking experimental growth hormone for 15 years and he grew to be 5 foot 4. But the problem was that this experimental growth hormone was something that doctors had come up with. It was derived from the pituitary gland of cadavers. So they were basically injecting him with the hormones from dead bodies. And, and later on. This was actually the National Institute of Health. It was like a program that they had set up for children that were born with dwarfism only to then realize because it was an eight year program that they had treated 700 children with this growth hormone who suffered from growth hormone deficiency that gave them this, you know, medicine or whatever, this treatment. And it turns out that as we all know, when you use old blood from dead bodies or old, you know, growth hormone or whatever, that's one of the major ways you can get Creutzfeldt Jakob disease, which is also known as mad cow.

[Alison Agosti]

Fuck. No way.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Yes.

[Alison Agosti]

So key word here is experimental. Like, why would you let your. Who in here has a child? Nobody. Why would you let your kid.

[Steven Ray Morris]

So many questions. Well, but this is the thing where it's like, she is a baby born with dwarfism. As if that's unacceptable. She starts putting him on this program that essentially, you know. And his defense lawyers were like, he was a human experiment, dude.

[Alison Agosti]

Totally.

[Steven Ray Morris]

And when you have the mad cow thing, part of the disease is dementia. Your personality changes. You have mood swings. You don't know where you are. A lot of the time sounds like.

[Alison Agosti]

It'S like get hit on the head or be in an experimental fucking dead blood.

[Steven Ray Morris]

This has to go into the triangle.

[Alison Agosti]

It can't be a lot of them. They're there, dude.

[Steven Ray Morris]

They're there. Keep your eyes peeled. Churches. So then it was revealed. I didn't mean to do a dramatic pause. I lost my place.

[Alison Agosti]

And then laughed.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Then I thought I would use it. Then it was revealed that Susan Cabot, when she put it together, that this pituitary gland hormone that her son was taking. She thought maybe that would make her look young. So she started injecting it in herself, too. So they were both taking this drug that was making them insane.

[Alison Agosti]

Who'd have thought that a hoarder would be crazy?

[Steven Ray Morris]

I mean, and have bad ideas about what to inject into their body? So. Page nine. So, basically, he stood trial in May of 1989. And his legal defense initially put in a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. They just basically said that the psychological symptoms he suffered from extreme change in personality, dementia, loss of ability to think clearly, and memory loss, combined with his mother's behavior. Because apparently she was just sitting in this house. It was actually like. And the guy that writes this article, it's a really good article. He equates it to, like, Sunset Boulevard and all those. There's a lot of movies where it's like the old aging actress that can't let go of her beauty and her fame.

[Alison Agosti]

Like, stopped in time.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Yes. And basically locks herself in a house and goes insane. And then tries to get people to come in the house with her. Well, that's actually what Susan Cabot really was doing with her son. But in the super bummer hoarder's way.

[Alison Agosti]

Not in a charming, interesting caviar.

[Steven Ray Morris]

No. No caviar being served here. Old tuna fish cans. Probably in the way I've pictured it.

[Alison Agosti]

Just the cans are being served.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Do you want to chill on an old can?

[Alison Agosti]

We're Goats. Help yourself.

[Steven Ray Morris]

So essentially, Timothy's tutor came and testified at the trial and said that Susan frequently screamed at her son for no reason. And then when Roman failed to take his medication, like, he didn't shoot himself up. He literally couldn't add two numbers together. So it was weird. They were basically on this drug together that made them insane. And that apparently what he ended up, Timothy, ended up saying was the night that he attacked his mother, he doesn't remember doing it. He doesn't remember going to pick up the barbell or any of the other things he used to bludgeon her to death, but that she would not stop screaming at him. And she had been screaming at him and not recognizing him for, like, a week.

[Alison Agosti]

I buy it.

[Steven Ray Morris]

So, yeah, she was completely, like, over the edge. And he basically, not actually being totally stable himself, snapped and just murdered her.

[Alison Agosti]

I kind of believe it.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Yeah, you better believe it, because it happened. And then I got snap, Snap.

[Alison Agosti]

And that's what the prosecutor said during the trial.

[Steven Ray Morris]

So essentially, he was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter. So after hearing all the stories and all the people basically saying she was not. And he was two. He had already spent two and a half years in jail awaiting the trial. And then he basically got three years probation.

[Alison Agosti]

No.

[Steven Ray Morris]

The judge concluded her summation by saying that there was no doubt in her mind that he had loved his mother very much.

[Alison Agosti]

I wish he had gotten put in a fucking insane asylum so he could be taken care of. Right.

[Steven Ray Morris]

I'll tell you that. The episode of. What's it called? It's called, like, Murders, and it's that super cheesy E show with AJ what's his name, and it's, like, called Nis and Murders.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Anyone got this?

[Steven Ray Morris]

Someone do my homework for more. It's on YouTube and you can see it. It's about her. It's about this murder. But the guy himself, Timothy, is on it, and he does that thing where he's, like, the anonymous person, so he's in black and the room's all dark, which, thank God, there's probably, like, newspapers and fishbones and shit, but tuna fish cans. Yeah, just stacks and stacks.

[Alison Agosti]

Oh, yeah.

[Steven Ray Morris]

But he basically said in it, like, he's talking firsthand and just basically saying, yeah, I snapped and it was a really bad situation. Yeah.

[Alison Agosti]

Usually I'm like, oh, yeah, you were crazy. We're all crazy.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Like, man, yeah, that's intense.

[Alison Agosti]

That's like, yeah, that's some next level.

[Steven Ray Morris]

That's entertainment, everybody. That's show business for you. That's how show business works.

[Alison Agosti]

Thank you.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Okay, we are back from that story. I feel like my feelings about it changed so drastically from when you were first telling it till the end, when I just had so much sympathy for this guy and what he was put through. And now that I understand hormones a little well, too. Like, you're not yourself when you've got hormones pumping through you that are not.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Oh, I think there's so many elements in that household that were going on. It was. It seemed like a terrible. It was like the mental version of Hoarders, but, like, inside, just like, terrible interior, not getting outside help, not talking to people outside and just spinning out.

[Alison Agosti]

Totally.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I mean, there's. Everything about this is a little nightmarish on top of the wasp.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yes. Do you have any updates?

[Karen Kilgariff]

No, I didn't say this during the show, but Timothy roman died in 2003 of heart failure. And that is the only. I mean, it's kind of old, but.

[Alison Agosti]

But yeah.

[Georgia Hardstark]

And then this is the first time we. We've only done, like, what, two shows before live shows, but this is when we bring someone up to do a hometown.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Right.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I think for the first time, which is really exciting. And thank God it went well.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Margie delivered.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Margie, great job. Let's listen to Margie's hometown.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Hi. Come over here.

[Alison Agosti]

Come talk to Karen.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Hi.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Hi.

[Steven Ray Morris]

What's your name?

[Margie]

Margie.

[Alison Agosti]

Georgia, this is Margie. Hi, Margie. Nice to meet you.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Do you want to do it up there? Come on, come on, come on.

[Alison Agosti]

Yay, Margie. Margie.

[Steven Ray Morris]

It's so cold.

[Alison Agosti]

I'm getting cold. Which means it's almost over.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Sit here. Does this work?

[Margie]

I don't know.

[Alison Agosti]

Come here, Margie. Yeah, it works. It works.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Margie's got her backpack on. She's gonna run after this.

[Alison Agosti]

Hi. It's your hometown.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Where are you from?

[Margie]

I'm originally from Miami, but I live here now in my house.

[Alison Agosti]

Florida. Welcome.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Sure.

[Margie]

So I live here now, and my hometown murder is here.

[Alison Agosti]

Sorry, no hometown is in court.

[Margie]

So I worked in this office with this dude.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Oh, wait. Is this a firsthand murder?

[Alison Agosti]

Oh, yeah. Oh, here we go.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Whoever pointed. Good job. Yeah.

[Alison Agosti]

Buckle the up.

[Margie]

So this guy, like, I was an intern in this office, and he worked there. He was a writer there, and he kind of would, like, creep on me. He would, like, rub my shoulders and, like. Can I get you a water bottle?

[Alison Agosti]

Called sexual harassment.

[Margie]

Yes. But when you're an unpaid intern, there's not a lot you can do.

[Steven Ray Morris]

That's right.

[Margie]

You just be quiet.

[Steven Ray Morris]

And stop and don't make money.

[Alison Agosti]

Yeah.

[Margie]

So I got the hell out of there. But I stayed in touch with people who work in the office. And basically recently, this dude snapped. So he had this wonderful wife who had given birth to two of his children, and they were in the process of getting a divorce. While they were getting a divorce, he had a living girlfriend who was now pregnant with his next child.

[Alison Agosti]

Honey.

[Margie]

So during this divorce, while he's with this girlfriend, he gets charged with this sexual assault allegation of somebody else.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Oh.

[Margie]

So there's this girl who was raped, divorced wife, new girlfriend, baby's on the way everywhere. And when the rape allegation comes out, the girlfriend's like, no, no, I'm not about this. So she leaves and he. They have, like, this apartment in WeHo. So he begs her to come back. He's like, let's talk about this. Whatever. So she leaves the baby at her.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Mom'S house, goes to the apartment, leaving the baby behind. Yeah, baby's great.

[Margie]

Baby's fine. Okay, Spoiler alert.

[Steven Ray Morris]

So.

[Margie]

She goes to his apartment and is never heard from.

[Alison Agosti]

Ever. Ever.

[Margie]

Basically. I know. Basically. I'm pretty sure it was like the next day, the. Her mother was really worried. They hadn't heard from her, so they send the police over there. He had barricaded all of his furniture against the door. He was locked in his bedroom with her body that he had drained of all its blood. And it had been dismembered.

[Steven Ray Morris]

No.

[Alison Agosti]

We hope. In.

[Steven Ray Morris]

We hope. Of all places.

[Margie]

This year.

[Alison Agosti]

This year in. We hope.

[Margie]

Yes. So more information keeps coming out. The dismemberment thing is like, new information that we didn't know before. But the twist is that he is a graphic novel writer who had written. Listen. He had written.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Listen. This is a podcast.

[Alison Agosti]

Hold on.

[Margie]

He had written this terrible, gruesome story about. I think it's like a scientist who does the same thing to his lab assistant.

[Alison Agosti]

Before this.

[Margie]

Oh, yeah. Like a few years ago, he had. Renegade, had gotten published. It did really well, but it was like this really gruesome, dark graphic novel where he had, like, hung her upside down, drained all the blood in his bathtub, had dismembered her, whatever, and then he fucking did it. Like, there's no way you're getting out of this one, dude.

[Alison Agosti]

So. No, that's my hometown murder.

[Steven Ray Morris]

I love it.

[Alison Agosti]

And you knew him? Oh, yeah. And he massaged you?

[Steven Ray Morris]

Yes.

[Margie]

Welcome to la.

[Alison Agosti]

Yeah, that's what. Yes. Thank you.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Amazing.

[Alison Agosti]

Do you want to plug any. You want to plug anything?

[Margie]

Do I want to plug anything, like.

[Alison Agosti]

Your Twitter or your Instagram.

[Margie]

Okay, well, my Twitter is Margeover matter.

[Alison Agosti]

Love it.

[Margie]

Thank you so much. My best friend John and I and my girlfriend Kirsten, we have a clothing line called do or Die. Kirsten is the one who handles your clothes.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Oh, my business.

[Margie]

Kirsten, Yay.

[Alison Agosti]

I'm gonna hug the shit out of you from the printful, you guys. Oh, my God, that's her.

[Margie]

She really wants to meet you.

[Alison Agosti]

Oh, we're hugging. Yeah. Okay. So much.

[Steven Ray Morris]

You guys have that microphone.

[Alison Agosti]

Yeah. We'll see you after. It's your. It's your parting gift.

[Steven Ray Morris]

He's like, no way. Oh, all right, awesome, you guys. That's it for us, I think.

[Alison Agosti]

Yes. Thank you so much.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Thank you so much for being here. That was so fun.

[Georgia Hardstark]

All right, well, yeah, that was a.

[Steven Ray Morris]

Great hometown and fun times where I'm.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Of course, always being negative, but we had a fun time, and we were truly so honored to be there and be a part of something like that.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Definitely.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Should we pick some alternative titles?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah. So, like, what would we call this episode, this very special episode, if we didn't name it live from EW Popfest.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Which I like to pronounce the EW Popfest eWest. Well, the first suggestion is I never joke about JoJo, which is what I was saying when you were like, is it really Jojo?

[Georgia Hardstark]

Elvis is here. Aw, that would be so sweet.

[Alison Agosti]

What if I brought him?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah, you brought him, and then you had him cue and walk by himself up the aisle like a flower girl. And then, of course, small, nice rv. Just as a little perfect button for this episode.

[Georgia Hardstark]

I like that button.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Good times.

[Georgia Hardstark]

All right, well, thank you guys for listening to this episode of Rewind. We hope you enjoyed it.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Thanks for being at the EW Pop Fest with us. Us it both spiritually and in every other way. And stay sexy and don't get murdered.

[Alison Agosti]

Goodbye.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Goodbye, Elvis.

[Alison Agosti]

Do you want a cookie?