MFM Minisode 442

This is exactly right.

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This is Larry Flick, owner of the Floor Store.

Labor Day is the last sale of the summer, but this one is our biggest sale of the year.

Now through September 2nd, get up to 50% off store-wide on carpet, hardwood, laminate, waterproof flooring, and much more.

Plus two years interest-free financing, and we pay your sales tax.

The Floor Stores Labor Day sale.

Don't let the sun set on this one.

Go to floorstores.com to find the nearest of our 10 showrooms from Santa Rosa to San Jose.

The floor store, your area flooring authority.

Celebrating is about embracing the moments that matter.

It's sharing laughter at a barbecue.

Before the drinks begin, take Z-Biotics Pre-Alcohol so you can wake up ready for what's next.

Z-Biotics, the science behind your next great morning.

Hello and welcome to my favorite murder, the mini-sode, where we read you your stories back to you.

Summer edition.

Yeah, these are just some stories that have summer themes.

Yeah.

Kind of lightly, loosely.

My first one's called Fourth of July Murders.

It starts out a bummer.

It ends on a like a hopeful note.

So here we go.

Okay.

Dear Georgia and Karen, the 4th of July fireworks in my hometown of Concord, New Hampshire attract a large crowd.

On July 4th, 2003, amidst 10,000 spectators, Manuel Goering abducted his two children, Philip, 11 years old, and Sarah, 14 years old.

Witnesses recall an argument between the dad and daughter, and it was the last place the two kids were seen alive.

Going and his ex-wife Terry were in the middle of a custody battle.

The children were staying with Manuel the weekend of the fireworks, and mother Terry returned home on July 6th to find her children had gone missing.

Manuel Goering took his two children the night of the fireworks, headed west by car, killed them along the way, buried their bodies, and then continued west until he was located and arrested in Gilroy, California on July 10th.

He was returned to Concord, New Hampshire, where he'd be arraigned for interfering with a custody battle and later two counts of first-degree murder.

Goering ultimately confessed to the murder, but couldn't remember exactly where he buried the children.

On February 19th, 2004, Goering killed himself in his jail cell awaiting his trial after revealing what he could remember about the children's burial site.

Information included a rough drawing and other descriptive clues like a chain link fence, six-foot-tall grass.

With this vague information, repeated searches for the bodies were conducted along a 700-mile stretch of I-80 from Pennsylvania to Nebraska.

But the FBI weren't unable to locate the bodies.

Terry launched her own search efforts, which included enlisting the public's health to locate her children.

She drove around the Midwest, holding press conferences to keep the search for her missing children alive.

God, what a horrifying thing to happen to a mother.

Heartbreaking.

The search caught the attention of an Ohio woman named Stephanie Dietrich, who felt like the details about the burial site could be around her town in rural Ohio.

According to an interview conducted by North Carolina Public Radio, Stephanie worked part-time at a grocery store and spent her days off for months looking for the bodies during walks with her dog, Rico.

Her efforts paid off because in December of 2005, two and a half years after the kids had gone missing, she located the remains of the Goering children.

Holy wow.

I know.

To this day, the Fourth of July fireworks have a daunting memory for those who grew up in the town at the time of the Goering murders.

While we went to different elementary schools, I was the same age as Philip and my brother was in the same grade as Sarah.

They would have been 29 and 32 years old if they were still alive.

I oddly think of them often, despite not knowing them personally.

I feel like Stephanie Dietrich would have definitely been a murderino after reading about her and her helping locate the Goering kids.

If this gets featured on an MFM podcast, and if you're listening, Stephanie, you are a true hero.

Yep, you are.

Stay sexy.

And then it's signed, a Granite State MFM fan.

And I guess that's what New Hampshire is called, the Granite State.

Oh, wow.

And then it'd say, I'd prefer to be anonymous if this gets featured.

Yep.

Heavy.

Sorry, heavy hitter.

But also, what a beautiful thing that, sorry, her name is Stephanie that donated her time and basically was like, I'm going to take this up and try to figure this out.

And then having this like sixth sense that you're going to be able to find it and actually finding it, like, what an incredible gift to give to the mother.

Yeah.

I think people are learning that more and more.

It's like, you don't have to know people to care about people.

You don't, they don't have to be your best friends or your family.

Totally.

All right.

Let's take a little left turn because this one is actually ridiculous.

Okay.

I need ridiculous right now.

Yeah.

The subject line is Trash Dad and the Skunk.

That's my favorite show from the 80s.

And then it just starts.

Here's the beginning.

Pleasantries in this economy.

Just goes right in.

The scene.

It's 1996 in southwest Florida.

I'm six years old and about to experience a core memory.

Our little house was surrounded by swampy woods and tons of wildlife.

Pretty much everything from tortoises, boars, alligators to fucking feral cats.

Oh, sorry, they wrote it to feral fucking cats.

One Saturday morning, a skunk the size of a robust Pekinese decided

God geez, I love this person.

Okay, I love them.

Decided to move into our garage.

My mom went out to do laundry and saw the skunk and totally freaked out and made my siblings and I stay inside the house to avoid setting it off.

That's not freaking it out.

If you've ever been near a skunk when it goes off, it is one of the most disturbing and long-lasting experiences.

Really?

Yes.

Like the spraying part?

I've never, I'm a suburban girl.

Yes, it's spraying.

It's very bad.

The initial spray smells like chemicals.

Yeah.

So you're like, whoa, what's that chemical?

And then the second wave of it is the skunk smell.

What a really stupid question.

Okay.

Because I've only seen this happen in cartoons.

Yeah.

Is there a visual of the spray?

I believe so.

I can't say for sure because I've only been, we had it where a skunk sprayed outside an open window when I lived off Michael Terena in Silver Lake.

And that's so we experienced it purely smell

style.

Okay.

But I think I've seen it where like cat sprays similarly.

It's like pee.

Yeah, their tail goes up and then stuff shoots out.

Okay.

So I'm just saying the mom didn't over, because also like we've had dogs and pets and stuff that get sprayed and they smell like that for like two months.

Yeah, I've heard that.

Okay, so

so it says now, big mistake.

My mom gets my dad to address the unfolding situation.

My dad agrees, but needs a drink first.

Cue the 12-pack of Bud Light beer.

No.

Chased with some crisp white wine because culture.

What?

He drank while blasting Andrea Bogelli.

What the f?

I love him.

This is a real slice of 90s life.

He had a big Italian opera phase in the 90s.

This Florida man's idea, easy.

He would use an old roll of carpet that we had in the garage in lieu of a humane trap, which we didn't have.

My mom wasn't impressed, but we still went along with it.

So essentially the dad's like, I'll take care of it, but I have to be drunk first.

Yeah, fair.

Can't you need that liquid courage?

Please.

So it says, Italian opera music is blasting from the speakers as his plan unfolds.

To get the skunk into the carpet roll, he smears peanut butter all up in there.

The skunk totally went for it, savoring its surprise peanut butter meal.

My now very very drunk dad tells my mom to help him carry the carpet roll outside.

How did they?

The worst fucking idea.

Oh, my God.

To carry the carpet roll outside with each one holding an end.

Together, they walk this giant carpet roll over to the woods.

My dad then tells my mom to let go of her side, and my dad proceeds, and this is on all caps, to tilt the carpet roll up while spinning around as fast as he could.

What?

The skunk went flying out the other end

of the carpet roll, like that circus act where the guy launches himself out of a cannon.

I'm impressed.

Yeah.

My dad, now dizzy in addition to being very drunk, proceeds to drop the carpet roll and book it in a feverish zigzag.

Yes!

Zigzag, like he's getting shot at.

Serpentine shell.

In a feverish zigzag away from the scene while yelling for my mom to run.

And then it just says, no one got sprayed.

I mean, it's a fucking miracle.

That's impressive.

My siblings and I managed to witness all of this through the window while Time to Say Goodbye by Andrea Bocelli was blasting from the speakers.

It's like a movie.

It's so good.

Because parents are just people.

Yeah.

There's people trying to get

a ton of drunk people.

I bet mom's a little drunk too.

Except I hope that's.

Dad's drinking.

Mom's drinking.

I would hope.

If you're rightly worried about this innocent skunk, allow me to ease your concerns.

The skunk was okay and back in our garage by later that night.

They're like, where's that peanut butter?

The next day, my frustrated mom called an animal control company who correctly trapped and humanely relocated it much further out into the Everglades because skunks can find their way back home within roughly a five-mile radius of wherever they are.

Aw, amazing.

That's kind of nuts.

The good old boy who came to trap the skunk cried laughing when my mom told him about my dad's attempt.

Thanks for all you do, George and Karen.

Thanks to everyone at MFM, exactly right.

And Stephen's mustache, you legend.

I've been listening since your first year, and I am so thankful to do life alongside such incredible people.

Oh, my God.

Wow.

Stay sexy and don't trust your alcoholic dad with skunk removal of any kind.

Jocelyn, she, her.

Come on.

That's got to be an MFM animated.

That's pretty epic.

There's more to San Francisco with the Chronicle.

There's more food for thought, more thought for food.

There's more data insights to help with those day-to-day choices.

There's more to the weather than whether it's going to rain.

And with our arts and entertainment coverage, you won't just get out more, you'll get more out of it.

At the Chronicle, knowing more about San Francisco is our passion.

Discover more at sfchronicle.com.

This is Larry Flick, owner of the floor store.

Labor Day is the last sale of the summer, but this one is our biggest sale of the year.

Now through September 2nd, get up to 50% off store-wide on carpet, hardwood, laminate, waterproof flooring, and much more.

Plus two years interest-free financing and we pay your sales tax.

The Floor Stores Labor Day sale.

Don't let the sun set on this one.

Go to floorstores.com to find the nearest of our 10 showrooms from Santa Rosa to San Jose.

The Floor Store, your area flooring authority.

Okay, my next one's called My Near-Death Experience Summer Break Edition.

Great.

Hi, Karen in Georgia.

As the title suggests, I'm writing in about the time I came within a few inches of death.

I'm a native Floridian who grew up in Daytona Beach.

In high school, I would work summers on a pool deck at a 25-story hotel on the beach here.

I had a stand where I would do henna tattoos, hair wraps, and hair braiding.

It was such an amazing gig, all cash.

I got a killer tan and I would wear my bathing suit under my clothes so when it got scorching hot in midday, I could just take a quick dip in the pool.

i always went down to the boardwalk at night after i got off to get myself a little treat from the ice cream shop before heading home those were the days rewind to june 2012 the hotel is packed with summer vacationers business is booming i typically set up my stand on the far side of the pool deck further away from the hotel but this day the uv index was very high so i set up shop closer to the building to hide in its shade i was braiding a little girl's hair constantly moving around her as she sat on a stool i had just taken one step away to get more supplies from my cart when I heard what I only could have imagined was an explosion right next to me.

Immediately I felt tiny stabs of pain all over my legs and arms.

I seriously thought a bomb went off.

People ran over to help.

The little girl was crying.

I had blood dripping from spots on my legs, but no one could really tell what happened.

Security quickly made their way over and started looking at the ground around us, noticing large and small chunks of rock.

They seemed to recognize this scene as they both went from looking at the rocks on the ground to looking up at the balconies above our head.

Oh.

Security continued their investigation while I closed up my cart for the day, happy to be alive.

I was picking small rocks out of my calves when they finally returned an hour or so later with what had happened.

They went room to room, floor by floor, directly up from where my stand was, looking for people that were in those rooms.

This turned out to be pretty easy since it was midday in the summer, so most people were out on the beach or on the pool deck, except for one room.

An older grandma tasked with watching her grandson while the parents enjoyed a lunch to themselves.

You're making a fucking uh-oh-face and you are correct.

I'm so worried.

After some questioning, security learned that grandma might not have had a very close eye on the boy while he was playing on the balcony.

And the all-caps grapefruit-size rock was now missing.

This is a 25-floor hotel.

That he basically basically threw a boulder off the roof.

Totally.

Holy shit.

Onto the deck, the pool deck below, full of people vacationing.

That's right.

This kid yeeted his enormous pet rock over the balcony of the 23rd floor directly above my stand.

Based off the markings from where it hit the ground, if I hadn't stepped away right when I did to get something from my cart, it would have hit me, certainly leading to my demise.

Oh my God.

Fast forward 12 years.

I'm an international airline pilot using your voices to keep me company during my commutes and during my nap breaks while crossing the Atlantic.

Hey.

Damn.

You go from a henna tattoo artist to a pilot.

So proud of you.

Yes.

Great job.

Stay sexy and don't let your grandson play with citrus-sized rocks on a balcony unsupervised or it just might end in attempted murder.

Cora Joe, she, her.

Cora Joe, first of all, you were meant to be an international pilot.

Yeah.

Because, good lord.

Yeah.

That's so scary and crazy.

some final destination shit right there yet

so scared to fly on those flights it's so crazy okay the subject line of this email is shitbag triplet sister story okay

and then it starts hello fellow shitbags I'm a triplet

that's gonna be my new icebreaker at parties hello fellow shitbags I'm a triplet Yes, three girls, one womb, endless chaos.

We fought so much growing up that my mom practically begged begged the school to separate us into different classrooms like we were volatile lab chemicals.

Oh my god.

And then it says, spoiler, we were.

But this story isn't about school.

It's about one fateful day when, in a miraculous turn of events, we decided to get along.

That's when everything goes wrong.

That's a red flag.

Watch out, mom.

Watch out.

If you're always fighting with someone and suddenly everything's going great.

If it's quiet and everyone's smiling, you're in for it.

Our activity of choice, playing jail.

Because

obviously nothing says bonding like simulated incarceration.

As the youngest, I was naturally assigned the role of prisoner.

The youngest have triple A.

It doesn't even matter.

Like you could be two minutes younger and you're the youngest and treated that way.

We need pecking orders as human beings.

What followed was less game and more like a low-budget psychological thriller.

My lovely sisters duct taped me to a chair, shoved a sock into my mouth, taped over that for good measure.

What the fuck?

Tipped me over and locked the door behind them.

Wow.

Damn.

That is sinister.

What kind of content were these children watching to know how to do that?

From inside.

So yeah, no escaping, no screaming, no rescue mission incoming.

No.

I lay there for a solid 30 minutes, face to floor, marinating in betrayal and foot carpet.

Eventually, they picked the lock with a paperclip and graciously released me, laughing like villains straight out of a Disney movie.

Anyway, stay sexy and try not to get psychologically booby-trapped by your own bloodline.

Thanks, Alex.

She, her.

My brother strategically tied some knots around our door handles that ended up locking my sister and I in our room.

Like there were no locks, but he was so smart that he just like figured this thing out and then said, you have to drink this if you want to get out and squeezed what looked like an innocent cup of orange juice.

But hey, look, that's a raw egg bobbing in it.

You have to drink it if you want to come out.

I know how she feels.

Asher, Asher.

Well, because here in my favorite murder, it's Hot Dog Summer.

Yeah.

I'm going to do a hot dog story.

Great.

And it's just, I don't know.

It's just a time and a place, and I kind of love it.

It starts, my ladies.

An ode to the great American hot dog and a new invention by my friend Jamie.

This is a story about this.

It was long ago in the the summer of 2009.

I was rapidly aging in San Francisco, clinging on to the last gasp of my 20s before I had to grow up and not be a slimy bartender anymore who did cocaine and Enderberg shots for dinner every night.

Yeah, he had to do something.

Yeah.

I had a gorgeous asymmetrical haircut and a fixed gear bike.

I probably would have dated you for sure.

In San Francisco, especially in that time, it's a little after my time, a little bit.

But man, that was the look and feel.

It was fixed gear bikes.

Oh my God.

That seat up real high.

I was like somebody that's tall.

We were just like, that's scary.

The bar you go went to, I bet it's Zeitgeist.

There's this bar called Zeitgeist in San Francisco that is just for bike messengers.

I think it's still there.

It's definitely still there.

We go there every day.

I fucking love it.

Okay.

I wore skinny jeans and looked so fucking cool with my little useless bandana around my neck that I got to sleep with a new person every other night on my floor mattress.

It was the best, but I am glad it's over now.

Are you?

Sometime during this era, my bartender friends and I set up a barbecue out back by the dumpsters behind the bar we worked at.

I don't know where we forged it from, but it was a little black weber, and we used to get those huge packs of shitty hot dogs and buns from the grocery outlet and keep them in the fridge and just make hot dogs for ourselves all the time during, after, and before our shifts.

We used to give them to bar customers who we, quote, liked, who were regulars, like it was some cool ass club or something.

Like, we'll let you in on this dumpster hot dog club.

You're welcome.

This sounds fucking familiar to me.

Does it?

It does, but maybe it's just that kind of thing of like bartenders who are like, you're a regular and you're in our group, so you get this weird thing that you're drunk, so you're excited to get it.

The drawing room had like a crock pot full of hot dogs with hot dogs, hot dog water, didn't it?

Did it too?

I think it did.

I ate them.

Okay, one time early on, we made a batch of dogs at the end of our shift and we were all getting ready to go.

Some of us to party elsewhere or to our dealer's house with our tips from a night's earnings.

Dirt bags.

I love a dirt bag.

And my buddy Janie picks up a dog, eats it in two bites, then takes another hot dog and shoves it into the front pocket of his jeans, bare, no wrapping, and just looks at us and says, pocket dog for later.

Then he swings his skinny legs onto his bike, finishing the last gulp of Pap's blue ribbon and just rides away on his bike.

In 2009, Karen Kilgara faints dead away and cries to herself as she walks home.

Oh my God.

I love Pocket Dog Guy so much.

I love him.

He's an inventor.

He invents things.

He's so clever.

He's creative and clever.

You don't understand.

We have to go watch his band at Slims.

I asked him the next day if he ever ate the Pocket Dog, and he said, hell yeah, it was great.

The end.

No fucking way I'm signing my name.

I'm an adult now.

Oh my God.

Yeah.

That was such an epic sketch of being 20 San Francisco.

Slay dots, 20 in San Francisco.

I just can't get over how we truly were living off the fat of the land and we had no idea.

Yeah.

We had it so good.

We did.

All right.

The subject line of my last email is guinea pig sinkhole.

Great.

Hey.

A formerly repressed memory leapt to the forefront of my brain and it made me think maybe this is an MFM story.

I got to say, the people that write in emails to this podcast are really good writers.

They are.

Like that fucking story that that person just told us,

I lived it yeah i could see it i could smell the hot dogs the pocket dogs and the fucking dumpster and the beer i could smell it all i could smell the hipsterism and the the elite the elitism and the unwashed masses and the emotional withholding okay okay so this story has everything a pet guinea pig a sinkhole and general mortification when my brother and i were in elementary school our family got suckered into taking home the school's guinea pigs during summer break and then the science teacher refused them back at the beginning of the next school year.

No, that's illegal.

So Thelma and Louise officially became part of our family.

Thelma and Louise.

They had a little car.

Children's pets named Thelma and Louise.

Okay.

Their dad built a tiny cliff into that hamster cage.

As an eight-year-old, I thought this was hitting the jackpot.

And then in parentheses, it says, when I called my mom to confirm the story, she distinctly remembers not sharing our enthusiasm.

They were already old by guinea pig standards when they came to us.

And about a year after the school refused them, Thelma passed away at the vet.

Louise had already been struggling herself, and I think in true write-or-die fashion, once it was clear that Thelma wasn't coming back, Louise passed away too.

Now it's not so funny.

I know.

Why are you laughing?

I don't know.

My brother and I hadn't been able to say goodbye to Thelma, so we wanted to give Louise a proper send-off.

We wrapped her in an old hand towel and put her in our finest shoebox.

However, we were city kids who only only knew concrete sidewalks and brick patios.

So my mom gave us permission to bury Louise in one of the garden plots at her office building that had a little recreational patio area.

Oh no.

We visited over the weekend so we could have our private guinea pig funeral service and buried her under a small tree among the ivy.

Fast forward a couple of weeks later and my mom shows up to work where there is quite a commotion in the back patio.

A sinkhole had opened up and taken the small tree and other surrounding flora down with it.

What?

There was fear that the entire patio itself was now unstable, and undoubtedly the office smokers were extremely put out.

While the building superintendent and city officials closed the patio and excavated the sinkhole, my mom was sweating bullets waiting for someone to find that makeshift rodent coffin.

They created the sinkhole, right?

Like they disturbed the ground.

They never found the coffin.

Phew.

Did Louise truly deep dive into the depths?

We will never know.

And my mom swore my brother and I to secrecy about Louise's final resting place.

It's now a few decades later, and my mom is mostly over it, but I can only imagine the dread that incident caused her.

Oh my God.

Like,

how would that be the reason?

But still,

it's the only reason.

It's the only reason.

It's the only reason, how would it be the reason?

How do they not find it?

That's fucking Louise forever.

I love it.

But if Louise was the cause, maybe she dropped first if there was some cavern.

Definitely.

Yeah.

As I have learned through sinkhole study.

She went to live her best life at the bottom of the sinkhole.

There's like those caves.

Yeah.

Like a huge cave thing.

There is a full-on aggressive gnat.

In this fucking, okay.

Yeah.

It's coming at us.

And then it just, the sign-off here is called Before You Dig, Folks.

811.

Cheers, Courtney.

I also, the fact that the mom came home and told like the children.

You know what I mean?

Like they actually didn't need to know that and they would have never known.

Yep.

she's like, well, guess what?

Yeah.

Guess what you did?

Guess what your goddamn school did to us by making us take these pets?

Tell us your traumatizing stories from childhood, please.

At my favorite murder at Gmail.

Don't forget it's hot dog summer.

That's right.

Live your best hot dog life, pocket dog style.

Stay sexy.

And don't get murdered.

Goodbye.

Elvis, do you want a cookie?

This has been an Exactly Right Production.

Our senior producers are Alejandra Keck and Molly Smith.

Our editor is Aristotle Aceveda.

This episode was mixed by Liana Spollachi.

Email your hometowns to myfavorite murder at gmail.com.

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Goodbye.

Bye-bye.