
Rewind with Karen & Georgia - Episode 32: Just the 32 of Us
It's time to Rewind with Karen & Georgia!
This week, K & G recap Episode 32: Just the 32 of Us. Georgia talked about the life and death of pop singer Selena and Karen gave the lowdown on the Zankou Chicken Murders. Listen for all-new commentary, case updates and much more!
Whether you've listened a thousand times or you're new to the show, join the conversation as we look back on our old episodes and discuss the life lessons we’ve learned along the way. Head to social media to share your favorite moments from this episode!
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Now with updated sources and photos: https://www.myfavoritemurder.com/episodes/rewind-with-karen-georgia-episode-32-just-the-32-of-us
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories, and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921.
The Exactly Right podcast network provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics, including true crime, comedy, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.
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Goodbye. Hello.
Hello. And welcome.
To Rewind with Karen in Georgia. That's right.
That means it's Wednesday, and that means we're recapping one of our old shows with all new commentary, updates, and insights. And today we're recapping episode 32, which we named just the 32 of us.
I thought we were done with the number puns. I mean, I can hear myself, and this may not have happened, but I can absolutely hear myself in my memory going, yeah, but it's so funny.
We have to go back just for this one. Yeah, like, you know, you can't, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
That's right. If there's a good one.
If there's just the 32 of us. That's pretty funny.
It's so good. So join us today as we take you back to September 1st, 2016, when Sausage Party was still in theaters.
Classic. It's a classic.
And now we can all be day one listeners. Okay.
Here's the intro of episode 32. Hello.
Welcome to My Favorite Murder. My name's Karen and I sure love murder.
How about you, girl over there? This week week girl over there is played by Georgia Hartstark. George Hartstark.
Georgia. Georgie Hartstark.
And gee, I love murder too. And of course, engineer Steven is here standing by with his mustache and his, his stuff, his equipment, his general style.
His general style. Stevie Romores.
Of the Perrcast. Thank you.
Welcome. Still trapped in the basement.
Vince, so we have our murderinos that we call people who listen to this podcast. We didn't make that up.
No, we didn't. But that's what people call it.
And Vince said that so Steven Stephen has the per cast about cats and Vince said that he,
the people who listen should be called pervert.
With three R's.
Right.
That's really emphasized.
You got to do that.
I'm going to start doing it.
I said you can have it.
Thank you,
Vince.
He said,
go,
you can tell him you can have it.
That's a free one from Vince.
That's a free one.
Awesome.
Cool.
Hi everybody.
It's episode 32.
What's up? I'm going to bring what's up back. Are you? I have already threatened to do that.
What's up? And that's how she got murdered. She was so hacky.
The town killed her. The city killed her.
She she got killed. Do you have a housekeeping? I mean, I have things I just generally want to talk about.
Well say mine that are internet specific That are important Mine are important, yours aren't And you be quiet because it's my turn How much I hate TV Oh, did you watch The Last Night Of? I fucking, I just, I don't There's a block and I mean to And I haven't, no, the answer's no Well then you don you don't want his DNA inside you. And you'll never get to have it.
He was also on Colbert. We actually watched it at work because enough people at my work like him that we were all like, let's watch.
Is he cute and well? He is perfection. It's there's something like Disney-esque about the scale of the size of his eyes to the rest of his face.
It's ridiculous. His nose looks like he got a nose job.
It's so perfectly shaped. And then in general, he just has the charisma, but he's very low key.
Like he's smart enough to know not to overplay it. We're talking about Riz Ahmed.
We're talking about Riz Ahmed. Britain's own Riz Ahmed.
And he's got the British accent, man. Oh, dude.
The like street British accent. Yeah.
Stop it. But he can do any British accent.
I guess I only heard, I only heard him speaking in a British accent when he was rapping. So I was like, yeah, he was trying to, he was turning it a little bit on, but also I saw him in the, the unwilling fundamentalist.
What's that movie? He stars in a movie about an fundamentalist that doesn't want to be unwilling. Who doesn't.
The word isn't unwilling. No, sorry.
It's part of the title. I'm his number one.
But in that one, he had like a posh British, British accent. No, I want it.
I want it to be dirty, please. Jesus.
Keep it dirty. Hi, Vince.
It's Karen. She said more gross stuff about Riz Ahmed this time.
The thing I wanted to mention was a woman named Liam Moffat made us this amazing animated opening to our podcast theme song. You can see it on the Twitter page.
You can see it on the Facebook page. I'll put it on the page i'll put it on the i'll put it on the we have a new facebook fan page because people told us that that's how you're supposed to do things don't don't be closed off all the time maybe open some stuff up yeah so we have a new facebook fan page i will post it on there it is it's your like how do you how did you feel watching it with your music and your voice i couldn't't breathe.
Yeah. And but also it's that weird thing of like it's very strange when someone holds up something you did and goes now here's something I did to match it.
Like it's just magical. I love it.
Gorgeous. And it's the cutest like the style of it is so like there's a little skeleton in every scene.
And the way it moves. everything flows and moves but it's creepy very creepy it's all perfectly done so leanne moffitt thank you so much for thank you doing that and thinking of us and participating in that very creative and cool way thanks to everyone who like there's so many cute drawings of us even though we just berated them last week they like it i know I know.
I keep posting them on Instagram. We have an Instagram, my favorite murder, and I just am constantly.
I like can't stop posting all day. And I feel like I'm getting annoying because there's just so much cool shit to post.
Well, it's fun to be able to go like, oh, here's here. Because the people like it.
Yeah. You notice their shit.
It's, you know, can I tell you my favorite one from our last episode is, know the part where i go doe a dead body a female dead body someone took a photo of my face and put it over the face in um sound of music sound of music where she's singing on this on the hilltop to all the children and it's just my little face like a perfect photo of me with my mouth open like looking like i'm'm singing. And it says, Stephen's showing it to Karen right now.
I will put that on the Facebook page. Brilliant.
Who did it? Jessica P. Thank you, Jessica P.
Well done, Jessica P. That is hilarious.
Because also the Georgia's face, her mouth is open. It looks like she's going, hi.
But she's holding a guitar. That's hilarious.
So much good shit. Good.
You know, sadly somebody put my face inside of Selena's face. No, no, no.
It's not, not truly sadly. Oh, this is a comedy podcast, but it was a picture of me before I stopped drinking.
You can find such a range of hideous pictures of me online. It's hilarious.
I hate it. It's not cool at all.
When your weight fluctuates, it's you just and you get photographed for things a lot. Yeah.
And you just you just kind of have to separate and you just like my thing is just like, whatever. I know what I look like.
Mine's not. Oh, my God.
This one where they put my face and just I'm pretty sure it was Selena's picture. It was like big eighties hair with the pink background.
Did you see that Steven? It was, I was like, is that Charles Bronson wearing a wig? Like it looked horrifying, but of course I'm not complaining. Cause of course all the people who saw it were like, Oh my God, this is so cute.
Where you're just like, what? Anyway, I had to complain. And also just, we looked it up.
This was in, oh wait, this, if it was from the Minnesota, then you might not know what we're talking about. But last week's Minnesota.
What's that? We have to say correction corner. Correction corner, meow, meow, meow.
Georgia talked about a lady who had a disease. And many doctors, frighteningly enough, listen to this podcast.
Do they? Yeah, because those are the people, or medical students. I'm not sure.
People who know how it's actually pronounced. Well, sorry, not sorry.
I'm not a doctor or a medical student. Never say sorry, not sorry.
Just don't be sorry. Oh, okay.
Yeah. I thought you were berating me for trying to bring that back when you're trying to bring, what was it? Oh, good point.
No, throw that right in my face. I accept that you're a hundred percent right, but I hate sorry, not sorry because you don't have to be sorry at all.
Yeah. Is that I, I saw that crop up in like girls talking where it's like, look, sorry, that's not sorry.
Where it's like, no, no, no.
What you start out as look motherfucker.
And then you say your actual opinion.
Sorry, I'm yelling.
Don't apologize.
I'm so tired.
Oh, you're right.
I'm so tired.
Oh, here's how you pronounce it.
Well, now I'm having a fucking seizure.
Jesus. I got it.
There's like, that's a sound clip from some guys on the radio or something in England who also didn't know how to say Guillain-Barre syndrome. Guillain-Barre.
Well, so there. Well, consider me wrong again.
Consider me always wrong. Correction cornerrection corner Correction corner What else? How are you? What do you want to say? Anything? I wish you guys could see Georgia right now Her legs are so far up in the air She is the most casual person I've ever seen in my life This is the loungiest You're fucking lounging in your home Lounging so hard right now As is your American right Steven, can you take a photo of me lounging hard right now? I'll put it on the vent.
Let me fix my sweat. I'm also sweating.
That's cool. Sweat lounging.
And I got a Mimi cat on the... Cool.
I took one too. Photo just happened.
Check it on the... Well, let's plug our places.
Instagram.com slash MyFavoriteMortar. Oh, the face...
That's like a picture. Finally, a picture of myself I'm not mad about.
No, I love it. Look at those cheekbones karen i i wasn't even really sucking them in you my parts a bit off look at you look so hilarious that's my entire butt also that's gonna end up on that's gonna end up on wiki feet i promise you can i have a wiki feet page i mean look at my feet they're pretty fucking cute let's be honest you deserve it thank you yeah i'm gonna own it you know why because i don't have a wikipedia page so i'm okay with wikipedia so you're gonna be fine here we go um you gotta break in somehow you know what else pisses me off i'm not gonna tell you never mind i am pissed off that my high school they have like a list of like alumni who have done things not on there where's the list on wikipedia oh uh please will someone who's good at computers go on to wikipedia and edit that page what's the high school name woodbridge high school in irvine california woodbridge high school irvine california also let everyone know i hate i hated them all i hate them no don't put that part in now this is your high school wiki feet page um okay the fan page okay here's this is hilarious so i tried to start the fan page we can't use the word murder in the title because facebook is like we recognize a word that you can't fucking you can't say because you're not you're a grown adult and you know what i mean i'm fine so it's mfm podcast is the name of the facebook fan page cool so you You kind of have to be be an insider to know that it's the, just the initials like winky wink.
And then I think that means also that maybe your friend, your family and friends won't know that you're part of a murder group. It'll just say MFM.
Yeah. I think that's what people are worried about until they see the logo again, grown adults.
Yeah. I mean, that's the other thing too, of all the people we know that, that say, I'm not weird.
I'm not alone. You know, all that excitement.
Well, now it's turning into, because then the second wave seemed to be, um, people at work keep catching me listening to this and giving me dirty looks or seeing my, the logo and giving me a weird look. Yeah.
But we just got a tweet from somebody who sent a picture that said, was it on the Facebook page or Twitter? I can't remember where they hang up a sign on the door that says murder time. Do not come in and then listen to the podcast at, at work altogether.
Oh, like the whole crew does. Yeah.
Well, I mean, she didn't, she was very vague about all of it. We're shouting her out.
I should find the name, but if you guys hear this, will you please send us at least slightly more information so we can give you a legit shout out? Because I, it made me laugh so hard when I saw that person. Or send us a photo of all of you listening.
Secretly listening. Also, I love that I've been, I've been noticing in the Facebook page, like I'll like look at some comments sometimes late at night and it'll be like comment comment comment and then someone will comment to someone who already commented and be like Alex you're in this group you're in her arena like oh my god Melissa I can't believe it we're like we're totally good like it's people keep recognizing their friends in there and it's like hilarious I love it well the same thing happened to me with's best friend, Adrienne, who I talked about, I think on the very first episode, she had a hometown.
Yeah. She, well, she loved Richard Ramirez.
So when I said, who should I talk about? It came out of her mouth so fast that that's when I discovered she was a murderer before the podcast had even started. And it was shocking because I've known her since she was 12 years old and I was 10 years old.
So, and never knew that that was an interest of hers. So she recently started listening.
She went backwards through it and has been texting me constantly of like, dude, I love this podcast so much. And Adrian and my sister were two of the most evil teenage girls anyone could have had the nightmare to grow up with.
They were sullen and sulky.
And the only way they would let me hang out with them when she spent the night on the weekend,
she would come and stay the whole weekend with us.
But they would lock the door and leave me out of the room.
And what I had to do to get in the room with Laura and Adrian
was make up a lip sync dance routine to a Pat Benatar song.
Well, we're not moving forward right now on this podcast until you fucking do that. Let's relive your nightmares.
We just basically play a Pat Benatar song. But yeah, that's all it would be.
And then you'd be like, right now she's lifting her legs straight above her head. Oh my God.
That's so big sisters, man. Well, and also just if you're younger and you hate your sister, just know that's going to change around when you're like 22 and then you're going to be besties for the rest of your life.
You're going to become the cool one. Exactly.
My sister knows what's up. Well, and also I have my sister and Adrian to thank for like all of my training because that's pretty much the most professional training I got.
And then. Oh, yeah.
On stage. It was pretty exciting.
I think my I'm scared. I think my dad might start listening to this because what I thought he was already I don't think so because he was like I was hanging out with him over the weekend and he was like tell me about your thing like they don't understand that it's a thing and I was like oh it's this thing and I'm like well he doesn't know how to download a podcast and then he was like looked at his phone and he like showed me the podcast and he was like this and I was like uh-huh it's okay.
He's cool. He doesn't care about the F word, does he? Oh my God.
No, my God. You can't have me as a child and care about the F word, care about a lot of things.
Honestly, I think he's happy that I'm alive, survived my own. I am too.
I mean, that I'm alive or that you're alive. That you're alive.
Me too. It was supposed to be a compliment.
Oh, thank you. All right, you guys, we're going to get into our favorite murders.
Yes. We're going to take a quick pee break.
We'll be right back for my favorite murder. Skippers.
This is your time to come on home. Come on home.
Be right back. All right.
That was a big, long one. Did you really not ever finish The Night Of? You've never seen The End? I didn't ever finish it.
I just... I'm so impatient with shows.
I just don't... I can't get through anything.
If I get through a series, it should get an Oscar immediately because it's good. Can you think of an example of a series you got through because you liked the lead actor the way I, of course, was returning week after week for my friend Riz Ahmed? No, but I can think of one that I got through even though I don't like the lead actor and that's how good it was.
But this might get us in trouble because it's Ozark. Oh, you're not bateman fan i love jason bateman he's a great actor he just does this thing that drives me crazy and you'll never you'll never not see it again if i tell you or he goes okay at the end of every like sentence okay okay okay yeah he's being he does that he's being casual improvisational real real talking exactly and i know that i know it's what he's doing but i can't ignore it and i can't be like that's a character because jason bateman keeps fucking doing that yes that's right but it was such a good show that i was able to get past that wow so yeah i think we can leave that in okay his hands on his hips okay
what that wow so yeah i think we can leave that in okay okay his hands on his hips okay okay yeah
no leave it let's fucking let's get some fucking drama yeah let's podcasting come on cross cross
podcast uh rivalries well come on they've never heard of us let's fuck here's yeah exactly well
here's how they will hear of you do you know that uh you talked about that you didn't make it on your
Thank you. Do you know that you talked about that you didn't make it on your high school's Wikipedia page? You are now on your high school's Wikipedia page.
I know. Some beautiful Mortarino fucking went and added me.
I wonder if it's still there. And said that Georgia attended high school, da-da-da-da-da, and she hated every minute of it.
Hey, yeah. Hey.
That was an honor. That was definitely one of those moments in the podcast where I was like, wow, this is like, this is real.
This is huge. This is like, cool.
It's huge. And I was so appreciative of it.
What I think is funny is that it's the Wikipedia page for your high school. It's not even your wikipedia page it's like you were bummed about something that's real sub sub sub you know no because every high school wikipedia page has people who of note who attended every single one of them including this one and had like these random like you know sports fucking commentator or whatever and i'm like i can i i think i i think i've reached that excuse me i was on cooking channel can i please have it you know yeah so i mean i bet yours has one too did we ever look it up i doubt it i mean no i don't think a high school that has like literally 200 kids at it in a small town in northern california has a Wikipedia page.
Yeah, this was a big one too. Yeah, we may have done, unless we broke the law somehow.
Or like because we got a nice new football field or something, but I don't think so. Yeah, yeah.
Okay. I don't know though.
That's okay. It's like your high school is like low.
And mine is like, you know. High key.
High key. In the highest key.
I think we should post the photo on the when we post this episode on socials of the couch photo of us. One of my favorites.
One of the great casual photos. What's the real word I'm looking for? Ass shot.
Just complete of me yep georgia and feet wearing her hot pants yeah with me with kind of my weird bald spot of like my calic my calic bald spot that's always been there what's noticeable in this is your cheekbones every time this gets posted people comment on your cheekbones cheekbones. I'm very blessed.
Very blessed. Thank you, Pat.
That's all Pat Kilgareff's doing. Pat.
Those feet. I don't know who those are on me.
Thanks, Dad. I think those are Marty's.
It would be amazing if you found out you were making so much money on wiki feet right now. Man, honestly, if fans only, whatever it's called, existed in my 20s, I would have made some serious cash on those feet.
Yeah. But what are you going to do? All right.
Well, let's get into George's story right now about the murder of Selena. For everything you do, the all-new 2025 Chevrolet Equinox is the SUV to help you do it.
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hey we're back skippers hey
friends
alright code space 80. Goodbye.
Hey,
we're back skippers.
Hey,
friends.
All right.
My favorite murder this week is Selena Quintana Perez.
No.
And the reason I'm doing it
is that it is audio engineer
Stevie Ray Morris
of the podcast.
Favorite murder.
Attribute.
I,
yeah,
no,
I,
you've been sending me shit.
I was like,
oh my God,
I'm watching.
And then Aaron Brockovich did like a true crime. It's crazy.
I watched it. Well, I grew up listening to Selena cause I'm half my, I'm half Mexican.
And so that music was always playing. And I remember like even listening to the music, just feeling really sad for you.
Were you little when she died? So you didn't know yet. I mean, I knew it affected because I would still go over to my family's houses and stuff.
And like she was huge. She was like Madonna times 20.
Well, I'll tell you all about it. Oh, oh.
Did I say even Quintanilla? Quintanilla. Oh, I don't.
I mean, I'm not Mexican, but I don't know how to speak Spanish. Okay.
I wrote it down like I was very... She didn't know how to speak Spanish either.
I know. I know.
But you fucking... Both of you, shut up.
Oops. Oh, Karen, your doorbell phone is ringing.
Selena Quintanilla Perez was born on April 16th, 1971 in Lake Jackson, Texas, and was called the Mexican-American Madonna. Oh, I must have known that.
I've watched the movie with J-Lo. I haven't seen it.
Wonderful piece of art. Gosh, she's beautiful.
They were both beautiful. And she was poised to become a crossover success when her death turned her into a legend.
Selena's father discovered Selena's, quote, perfect timing and pitch and helped his kids form a band and she was like nine years old when they started performing wow the band once the parent his parent her parents lost their family restaurant the band became the family's main source of income and they were in poverty and this career selena's career just took them out of poverty um because they were evicted from their home during the texas oil bust of 1982 and they moved to Corpus Christi, Texas, which sounds very hot, doesn't it?
Yes. In fact, It has 25,000.
Cousin Cheryl lived in Corpus Christi when I was like in junior high. But why do I ever say anything?
Is that a big military town?
I think it is.
Yes.
In fact, it has 25 that I have no fucking clue. Let's just talk about Corpus Christi for the rest of this.
So then the family band began recording music professionally.
And in 1984, when Selena was, I think, 13, the band released its first LP, Selena Los Dinos.
Fuck, I hope you don't get it. That's Selena and Fred Flintstone's dog.
Dinosaur. Hate mail can be sent to Karen Kilgariff.
I'm just translating. Karen Kilgariff's apartment or house, the address is.
So, yes, Stephen, you are correct. Selena was a third generation Texan of Mexican descent.
So she didn't grow up speaking Spanish. So she didn't know any, but she learned all her songs phonetically.
And when her popularity grew, she had to learn it. And she did it very quickly.
Just like Roxette. Like what? The band Roxette.
What were they? German? Yeah, or Swedish or something. Oh, they had to learn English? Well, no, they just just sang phonetically they didn't know what they were saying that's funny must have been love but it's all that she had no clue what that song how but it's so powerful but it sounds so the ignorance makes it powerful that's what it is like because that's what love does to you Makes you a stupid idiot.
That's right. Okay.
Groom popularity in the year 1987 she won the uh tenejo oh god i tahono tahono music award i like i was watching videos to get this correctly and i'm just screwing it all up tahono music award for female vocalist the Year. And then she landed her first major record deal with Capital Latin in 1989.
So she performed several times at the Houston Astrodome to sold out crowds of more than 60,000 people. And after her death time described her as the embodiment of young, smart, hip Mexican-American youth from a tight-knit family and a down-to-earth personality, a Madonna without the controversy.
Essentially, she was a huge Mexican-American star in her community and was poised to become a mainstream success. And that community was obsessed with her and proud of her and felt like she was one of their own.
own yeah and she was a big fucking deal yeah and she seemed like a very sweet person everyone in her band was her family except the guy the guitarist they hired who she ended up marrying like they were they seemed like good people there it's like a jackson five situation totally like super talented young kid yeah but not creepy and her dad was the
manager um so they were very more like a partridge family but there we go but actually or like a real family fuck um cut that out don't cut that out not sorry all right where am i cut to mid-1991,
Yolanda Saldivar,
she was, so you
see all these photos of her and videos of her she was when she got arrested she was 35 years old what that's quote unquote my age she's 35 she looks like a fucking grandma yeah okay so 91 yolanda saldivar was around 30 and she was an in-home nurse for patients with terminal cancer and just a fan of Tejano music. Just a fucking random woman.
She had a history of stealing money from her employers as well as trying to become intertwined with the lives of other performers. And she attended one of Selena's concerts and became a fucking psychotic fan.
With the intent of starting Selena's fan club, she started obsessively calling Selena's father, leaving almost 15 messages until he gave her permission in June of 1991 to be the president of the fan club, which sounds like, okay, you know what? Take this, run with it, do your thing, right? Right. Because you're harassing us.
Yeah. So I mean, that's,
it's,
it's your thing. Right.
Right.
Because you're harassing us.
Yeah.
So I mean,
that's,
it's,
it's the thing that they didn't know back then that people know nowadays,
which is don't engage.
Right.
Yeah.
15 calls to anybody at any time is too many.
Yeah.
I don't care if like you have a flat tire and you're calling.
It's too many calls.
And she wants to run this thing and make us more money. And it's a thing that we haven't started and maybe it'll help her with her like this is what i'm thinking was there you know what i mean i'm just saying that's three calls totally in a day totally totally also like you don't need to have contact with her after that okay so as president of the fam club she was responsible for membership benefits collecting money and promoting selena um all that kind of thing.
And she actually didn't meet Selena until December 91, but they became close friends and Yolanda became a trusted, trusted by her whole family. In 94, she became Selena's assistant and quit her job as a nurse.
Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah.
I did not know that. I thought she was just the fan club.
No, she became her assistant. She quit her job as a nurse, even though she was making more money as a nurse than she was doing this.
Like she was just so obsessed and had posters all over her house and people come over. She would just make them watch Selena videos, talked about nothing else and was just like, kind of like crazy about Selena.
Wow. Yeah.
I was kind of that way about kids in the hall for a little while, but it was a dark period of my life. Yeah, I was just, I had flunked out of college and I was just weirdly obsessed.
It was when they were running them on Comedy Central and I just, it was the only thing that made me happy. That laugh was the creepiest.
That was, I've never heard that laugh before. I just realized, I mean, every, we all have the potential everybody likes a thing sure like crazy and wants them like has this feeling of like ownership and like yeah and like I no one understands it the way I understand it it's almost made for me kind of a thing yes but have you met them and told them that see my thing is that and maybe it's just from working in tv I I really don't like celebrities like there's nothing more disappointing and i think most people know it these days from reality tv and stuff celebrities are very disappointing in real life except for us i'm just kidding uh yeah no they're just i mean the most they'll be is slightly pleasant yeah for the most part you will you will have regretted trying to be like, hey, can I get a picture? I'm a big fan or whatever.
You're not going to get the thing. I loved you in and it's some obscure thing.
They don't care. They don't care.
It's super weird. It's like, you know, it ruins it almost.
So good luck, everybody. Good luck in life with your fucking cute little fantasies.
All right. Well then, so in 94, Selena starts opening fashion boutiques.
She has two of them opening up. It's called Selena, et cetera.
I didn't know that. Yeah, I didn't either.
Cause she has this crazy style. It's very nineties and very like on point, like, you know, almost Madonna-y, more hip it's cute it's those cute well from what i remember in the movie there's like a lot of ruffles yeah and a lot of like you know shimmery velvety pants and stuff like that hoop earrings and red lipstick and yeah it's totally pretty fucking sweet um so so she she's opening these fashion stores and asks Sal Devar to become the manager of the boutiques.
So Sal Devar, because of doing this, is authorized to write and cash checks, had access to the bank accounts associated with the fan club and the boutiques. And Selena gave her an American Express card for the purpose of conducting company business.
So she put her stalker, she made her stalker the CEO of the company. Doesn't know that she's the stalker though.
Oh, right. Oh yeah.
Selena has no idea that she's the stalker. She just thinks she's a good friend of hers.
That's like willing to do all this hard work. Yeah.
That's like, you know, Selena's in this bubble of becoming famous and touring and all these things and this person is becoming a trusted confidant has and and is a huge fan and clearly is an intelligent woman if she's a nurse yeah that other yeah totally okay yeah and everyone said she was very manipulative and good at you know being manipulative yeah um 15 calls that's all I have to say. Yeah.
15 calls. It worked somehow.
So within a year, Saldivar had mismanaged the boutiques and they were failing. And then upon investigation, the family finds out that Saldivar had embezzled more than, I saw 60,000, but I also saw a hundred thousand dollars and forged checks from both the fan club and the boutiques.
But Selena refused to believe it. She was like, no way.
That's my friend. Like even her father who was a manager and her husband and brother were like, dude, they were like, dude, probably not like that.
Um, but eventually Selena kind of sees some shit going on and believes it. And the family fires her, tells her not to come near Selena.
But Selena still wanted to become friends, stay friends.
She was like, you don't work for me anymore, but let's stay friends.
So at this time, Saldovar purchases a snub-nosed .38 caliber revolver.
And here's what I think is the fucked up thing.
It's .38 caliber hollow point bullets. Then the bullets were thing is a is 38 caliber hollow point bullets.
Then the bullets were designed to cause more extensive injuries than normal bullets, which like throws out later.
We'll talk about it.
So on March 31st in 1995, she convinces Selena to meet.
You'll not her alone in a days in motel room, promising to restore just return financial documents that she had stolen and selena that she had to come alone and that she had that yolanda had been raped and needed someone to talk to no and this she has to make up this lie because three other times in the past like couple weeks yolanda had tried to get her alone and it had been foiled every time and her husband had come or did they had met in a parking lot or something like that so she's so Yolanda was trying to get her alone yeah so in the hotel room they kind of they kind of fight over um the the documents and as they're doing that the gun comes out and Selena turns to run and out the door and Saldivar shoots her in the back as she's running out severing an artery leading from her heart and it came out the front of her chest on the other side so it's kind of like a shoulder shot and selena's running towards the motel lobby as she's bleeding and saldovar comes there was a witness said that she chased after her,
pointing the gun at her
and calling her a bitch.
Selena ran 130 yards
to the motel's lobby
and collapsed on the floor.
And meanwhile,
Yolanda's now trying to escape
in her car.
And it was theorized
that she's heading
to the recording studio
where the rest of Selena's family
is to kill them too.
That's what they thought.
But a police officer
who was around the corner
I'm sorry. And it was theorized that she's heading to the recording studio where the rest of Selena's family is to kill them, too.
That's what they thought. But a police officer who was around the corner responded, stopped her.
And instead of getting out of the car, she pulls the car into a parking space and gets kind of blocked in in this parking spot. So she's in her car in a parking spot with a gun, won't come out.
In the meantime, the motel staff is trying to help Selena. An ambulance comes in less than two minutes, but Selena's pronounced dead at 105 from loss of blood and cardiac arrest.
Her last words were, this fucking makes me want to cry. Her last words, Yolanda Saldivar, room 158.
Those were her last words.
Like, not tell my family I love them.
She was just trying to make sure they knew who did it.
Yeah, which makes me so sad. It's just like, the last words out of your mouth are about your killer's name.
Well, yeah.
I mean, I know, like, I know, like, you should get them out.
But then I just wish it could
then be like something sweeter she was only 23 years old oh no i know baby well an autopsy's performed and this is what i thought when i heard about her running after getting shot she died of heart failure wait no we realized selena's heart fueled by adrenaline and i think from running pumped all the blood out of her circulatory system. So I feel like if she hadn't run, she either might've gotten shot again by Yolanda, but she, but, or the blood might not have.
It's those hollow point bullets. Yeah.
I mean, I don't think you can get shot and it comes out the other side and you can survive that. Right? No, because isn't that part of it is like they explode inside you and so when they come out they just instead of a bullet hole size coming out it like rips out i mean those things are evil yeah well that's the thing is so event so salzava is trying to say i was trying to say that it was an accident that she was going to kill herself but it's like well why did you buy those bullets then? Like you clearly had a motive.
So meanwhile, there's a nine hour standoff with Yolanda in which she is in her car with the gun to her head, hysterically on the phone with the hostage or with the negotiator trying to say that she didn't mean to kill her. She was an accident.
She was trying to kill herself. And all these other excuses.
But ultimately, let's see. She gave herself in and she got arrested.
She's tried for first degree murder and claimed that the gun, quote, accidentally went off and all these other excuses. But ultimately, it didn't work.
And the jurors deliberated for less than three hours. And on October 23rd, 1995, they found Saldovara guilty.
She's sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole in 30 years, which is going to be March 2025. But everyone's like, she is so incredibly hated in Texas.
She will be murdered. And she has to be in solitary confinement because of that because the rest of everybody wants to kill her in jail everyone in jail who was huge selena fans her whole life wants to fucking murder her yeah that's i mean yeah yeah so she's she spends every day 23 hours a day alone in a nine by six foot cell um let's see So the case has been described as the most important trial for the Latino population and it was compared to the OJ Simpson murder trial.
It was one of the most publicly followed trials in the history of Texas. Wow.
Her posthumous 1995 crossover album Dreaming of You debuted at number one on the Billboard charts and became triple platinum. That just gave me chills.
I know. She was the first Hispanic artist to have a predominantly Spanish language album debut and peak at number one.
That's so fucking cool. I know.
I mean, terribly sad, but also, because I remember that being in the movie where it's like, it's a tragedy anyway tragedy anyway, but this was someone who was poised on the verge of crossing over at a time before that was like before JLo, before any of those things were happening. We remember like in the late you and I, and people are, I don't remember in the late nineties, like this huge, this huge Latin pop explosion.
and that was like the first time it became mainstream
so selena's doing this in the early 90s yeah so she's for ricky martin right for like any of that
where it was kind of like the sexy you know um shakira and that wasn't yeah that wasn't on um
on american pop radio yeah like that was not on there at all so she was kind of a trailblazer
I'm sorry. on American pop radio.
Yeah. Like that was not on there at all.
So she was kind of a trailblazer and seemed like a good person and this fucking psycho bitch fan. Like I didn't, I didn't know.
I always pictured it differently and it's just like, so fucking tragic. Well, it's also fascinating that thing of like when you can, it's like when you were saying, you know, she's just this random person, but you do trace those things of like a person who embezzles a person who like those kinds of smaller crimes.
That's how every story goes like this, where it's like they always have a background where they're trying to get anything they want at any price. And they have like gray area morals, too.
Yeah. Like, I don't like.
Yeah. Someone if I knew a friend embezzled money, I would not trust that person.
You're not allowed to steal money from other people. It's not your money.
No, no. You don't get to have to abide by certain rules in life and not screw other people over and you don't want to be that person like i remember there was a cafe i was working at when i was uh a teen and i had it in my mind i decided that i could take a 20 bill when i was closing at night so i could buy beer because they only paid me minimum wage right this whole rationalization.
Totally. And I did it two times, was racked with guilt about it.
And then the manager told me, did I tell you this already? The manager, who was also my friend, like someone I hung out with, he goes, I don't, something's going on. We're always short.
I think it might be the janitor. And then I was like, oh my, because that's what happened.
You steal, somebody else could go down for it. Or like, I mean, the idea that he even would suspect this person who has nothing to do with it.
Then I thought maybe he told me that because he knew it was me. Because it was always me.
He did. Or it was me the two times.
And that was just a manipulation, which God bless you, genius move. Yeah.
But also like, and then I like the next week I was talking to my dad on the phone and we
were talking about something else.
And then he goes, Karen, there's some people out there that just can't keep their hands
out of the till.
And then I almost threw up because I was like, I almost wanted to go, that's me.
My dad is my, my sweet dad is talking about bad people.
And I'm the bad person.
You don't want to be the bad person.
No.
You don't, you don't need whatever the thing is you think you need. You don't.
Get your own. Get your own.
Get your own. You can.
Yeah. Keep your hands out of the kitty.
That's super weird that I talked about that picture. It is so weird.
Sorry about that. No, I don't care.
It's super, like we've never talked about her before. No, not at all.
That is super weird. All right.
Wow. That was a big story to cover.
Do you have updates? Yeah, I do. So Selena's music and legacy, of course, continue to live on.
After her death in 1995, a wax statue of Selena was unveiled at Madame Tussauds Hollywood. And she was inducted into the Texas Women's Hall of Fame at Texas Women's University.
Netflix, of course, released Selena, the series. And in 2023, Rolling Stone ranks Selena at number 89 on its list of 200 greatest singers of all time, which is incredible.
Also, Mac released a limited edition Selena makeup line. And it's been 30 years since Selena was murdered, which is crazy that it's been so long.
And that means that Yolanda Saldivar is eligible for parole this year.
Her file will be reviewed, including letters of support and protest, and a case summary will be prepared for the board voting panel.
Her parole review date is March 30th of this year, 2025.
So that's something to keep an eye on. It's such a high profile case.
You know, I can't imagine she's going to be paroled. Not that that's what it's about, but.
No, but I mean, that was such a, that story of like a person so inside turning on her is such a nightmare story. It's like, it's not, this woman was not a serial killer.
She was not like this hardened criminal in this way. Something horrible happened and it doesn't feel the same as the story of the usual stories that we tell of, you know, a man being out there trying to kill every woman that he sees.
Right. But she took advantage of this vulnerable person in a way that was so ugly and then killed her when that person found out about it.
It's just so cold-blooded to me and just horrible.
Yeah, let's keep an eye on that. And so this is another kind of epic story that you've done that
gets brought up a lot. And so let's hear Karen's story about the Zankou chicken murders.
Hey, Karen, I want you to picture yourself going for a drive. What comes to mind? Not ever being able to merge on any freeway in Los Angeles and potholes and crying.
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Oh my God.
Once detected, it sounds alerts and visual cues to help bring your focus back to the road. Oh my God.
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Did I talk about your murder yet? What's interesting it. No.
All right, Karen, but you've lived near it. I'm sure you've heard about it.
Okay. Because it's the Zanku chicken murders and there's one uh on my way from work driving here there's one here i'm not i drove by one let's tell everyone let's give everyone directions from zanku chicken to my apartment that's why i got real vague yeah um but this so my mouth is watering um zanku chicken is so good zanku chicken is legendary in los angeles if you've ever visited here if you have friends that live here and you're not wealthy you've probably eaten here because zanko chicken is the best food that you can get for a decent price um and everybody knows it and everybody talks about it it's up there with roscoe's chicken and waffles um in that way of like if you're here you have to go try this definitely and pinks pinks hot dogs that kind of thing pinks is shit it's so shit but it's fun to stand in line drunk so go there not gonna lie i have fucking chomps some chili dogs my day but i've for 20 years i've driven by pinks and watched people standing in line at three in the morning to get those hot dogs so the first time i went there i was like this is gonna be crazy and it was just hot dogs it's just hot dogs but yeah they're gross in a good way yeah it's like greasy drunken food total totally okay so um there i got most of my information from this awesome article from los angeles magazine that was written by a guy named Mark Arax.
And it's from April 1st, 2008. There's way more information than I could even entertain.
So if this interests you at all, look at that. You can Google it and it'll come up right away.
And I remember reading this probably five years ago because when this murder happened, everybody knew about it all of a sudden and everybody was crazy freaked out about it. It'd be like your local mom and pop cafe, like some terrible thing happening there.
But the story behind it is kind of fascinating because it's like, so in Los Angeles, there's a, there's a city that's right behind the hill that says Hollywood on it. Right behind that city is both Burbank and Glendale.
I mean, right behind that mountain is Burbank and Glendale. And Glendale has the single largest population of Armenian people that isn't Armenia in the world.
Wow. It's huge.
And Armenians came there was the turkish genocide which there we see parades about and and flags about and it's like it's weird because i never heard of anybody being armenian until i moved to la and now i feel like i know a ton of stuff about the armenian culture simply because like i live in burbank i live close to glendale. So anyway, this restaurant, Zanku Chicken,
was started originally in Beirut, Lebanon
by a man named Vart.
And the pronunciation on this is going to,
if you're Armenian or if you're just not a valley girl,
it's going to offend you.
Vartkis Iskandarian and his family started the first Zanku chicken in Beirut in 1962. And, um, then they brought it over here in 1983.
Um, and, and it was the, the chain actually was opened by Marderos, who is the son. And, um, his parents were not interested in having a restaurant in America.
They wanted to do dry cleaning, maybe go into the suit business. They looked into all these other businesses that were more kind of reliable than a restaurant.
But Mardiros believed that this, he looked around and he saw how few Middle middle eastern restaurants there were with so with such huge populations of people that would appreciate the food there was almost no food to feed them that was like from their home totally um so they opened their first restaurant um at the corner of sunset and normandy um in east uh east la hello hey and um it the LA Times said it's the best roast chicken in town at any price, which is kind of really saying something for the all those shishi restaurants they have here. Certainly.
The Zagat Guide would say that Zanku was one of America's best meal deals. Oh my goodness.
America, not just LA, which is cool. Jonathan Gold, who's a very famous food writer,
he adores Zanku Chicken, reviewed it and said
the chicken was superb and nothing in heaven
or on earth compares with the garlic paste.
Oh my God, that garlic paste.
The garlic paste is what everybody talks about
and it was invented by Marduros' grandmother. grandmother shut up and his mother makes it made it all by hand so it was a secret recipe people still don't know what's in it it's this white paste that you get with your chicken and your rice and your hummus and your pita this little tub it's like a side on the side and it is tangy and pungent and garlicky but there's something else going on it's kind of like butter like you can't figure out all you want to do is eat it and put everything that you eat into it then for the next day you're belching garlic yes it's like filled with garlic you reek of it's it's quite an experience yes um so that was kind of their secret weapon aside from the fact that they figured out that other rotisserie chicken places, they realized you have to move the chicken itself and you have to play with the temperatures.
You can't just keep it on one temperature all the time. So they basically kind of went in there and tried to figure out how to give people who wanted to eat authentic Middle Eastern food, best version of that food and not just go like here.
Yeah. Here's whatever.
Which is amazing. Apparently, one time on Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David referred to it as chicken so good it could end the rift in the Middle East.
So like everybody in L.A. knows about this food.
It was also in a Beck song. That's right.
That's right. There was a, there's a list on Wikipedia of all the popular culture things.
There was somebody on Buffy the Vampire Slayer also liked to eat there. So they started as this hole in the wall chicken place.
And after I would think like over two years, they were making $2 million a year. Holy shit.
And half of that was pure profit oh my god so they um they were doing obviously great so there were rumors oh so in this article this is one of my favorite things in this article um this guy mark the writer talks starts out by talking about the armenian um culture and everything he says, there's a saying that little old Armenian ladies say in Armenian, which is let's sit crooked and talk straight, which totally made me think of us. Isn't that the best? Let's sit crooked and talk straight.
That's basically let's gossip. That is us to a T and I'm fucking in love with it.
It's the best. So of course in the Armenian, I keep saying culture, but what I mean is community.
They, this family rose to prominence obviously, because they're all of a sudden started making this tons of money and their food was crazy popular, but they also were huge philanthropists and gave so much back. So they were kind of famous within that community because they were a huge part of it.
So there was gossip. It was never confirmed that Pepsi was offering the company $30 million for the chain and the trademark.
Holy shit. and this was when it was kind of like peaking
in in its popularity um and at that same time even though uh maduros's uh parents did not want to expand they just wanted to keep that one the first shop so cute um he was like we he kept fighting to expand he's like we have to do it we have to do it so finally they agreed to split and And what they agreed to do was, I think it's Marderos.
Sorry. band he's like we have to do it we have to do it so finally they agreed to split and what they agreed to do was um i think it's mardiros i sorry if i'm i know i'm pronouncing his name wrong but they agreed that that he would take the concept and he would build the chain and any stores that he opened um doing that whether they failed or succeeded would be on him.
Okay. Um, cause that's basically
what the family was afraid. Don't, don't let's not lose all our money.
We got a good thing. Let's just keep this good thing going.
And in return, he would sign over his stake of the original in Hollywood to his parents and his two sisters, but they weren't splitting. It wasn't, they weren't, they weren't, you know, it was, they were still completely together as a family.
The garlic paste was still made by his mother at all the Zancuse, which I just can't get over as this woman who was probably at the time in her, I would say probably late 60s, early 70s. And they say in this article, they talk about how this mother, I think her name is Margaretgaret um spelled with r-i-t um she worked she got up at 7 30 every morning and went into work and worked till seven o'clock at night and when she was done cooking for the restaurant she would start to cook for the people that worked at the restaurant oh my goodness like cook people their homemade you know food from home that they liked take a break honey no she couldn't do it she was like obsessive which i love oops sorry that's uh that reminds me of my grandma like my grandmother's index fingers were both bent at almost like right angles because of how much she cleaned oh my god she was she came over here from ireland when she was 17 and she was a maid for most of her life until she met my grandfather so it's like those old country are just like, we're here to earn it.
We're here to fucking get our shit. You're able to do it.
Yeah, that's right. And also if you start a business, you got to put, give it your all.
So you make it into something. And they really did.
They were this amazing family success story. And Marderos, well, he would constantly say to the whole family, success means nothing if we don't stay as one.
Greed must never rear its head. There's plenty for all of us.
And so he had a sister and she had two sons and they loved all of each other. They were cousins, but they were, they felt more like they were each other's, you know, he had four boys, she had two sons.
They were sons they were all you know very very close um in fact his wife was quoted as saying uh before we married he told me i'm going to live with my parents my whole life i will never leave my mother um uh she was queen of the house not me next to god it was his mother holy shit so just to give you a sense of that uh so medeiros is diagnosed uh sorry i'm i don't have the date on this but i believe it was in like 2001 i think or so um he gets diagnosed with inoperable bladder and brain cancer. Holy shit.
Um, so he basically felt like he knew something was wrong. He had pains in places, but he didn't go to the doctor.
He avoided it. And so by the time he went in, it had spread.
Um, so he holds a family meeting and he tells his mother and his sister, his wife that he's dying and that when he dies, he wants the Zancou business to go to his four sons.
Oh my goodness.
Now the problem there is that his four sons were at the time and had been for a couple years, fuck ups.
And in ways where the oldest son had been caught um trying to cheat on a law school entrance exam and so was had been a top student at i think it was woodbridge university and so he basically got kicked out and was like barred from ever taking the test because he was going to cheat wow uh so after that he became an evangelical christian He was like one of those guys that stands on the street, like with a bullhorn. The second oldest son was tried for attempted murder when the pimp of the sex worker that he had just visited stole money from him.
And he ended up chasing him up the freeway and shooting at his car. And he, he ended up getting, uh, tried for attempted murder.
Wow. And it turned out to be a mistrial.
Um, so he never had to go to jail, but of course that Mark, and, and of course, you know, if this is the richest family in the community and shit like this starts popping off everyone's talking about it um then the two younger were basically just on drugs but when i was reading this article it sounded so harsh but it's like that's that thing of like i i feel like you can't get rich quick like that and have things just go great yeah because once you start getting all the money you want and you can buy all the things you want and you start wanting the things you can't have. Yeah.
And it gets a little nuts like that. Oh, I got it.
I'm going to look at my riches. I just, please watch your behaviors.
What I'm saying. Okay.
So when he makes this announcement, the room goes silent because that's, he's saying they're the ones that should get it and his sister and his mother are both just staring at him and um let's see it says his mother sat stone-faced she didn't ask what kind of cancer he had or what the prognosis that the doctors gave him instead she blurted out in armenian your sons the shadow they cast is not yours. And then she got up and she walked up the stairs and shut the door.
Holy shit. Now she lived with him, as he had said, him and his wife Rita.
She wouldn't speak to him. So she would get up at 7.30 every morning, go to work, come home come home they'd be standing in the kitchen she'd get a glass of water and go upstairs and shut the door your son's dying yes and as he was getting chemotherapy as he was losing his hair he ended up losing 60 pounds he was he was dying of cancer silent treatment that's so sad it's really fucked up and it's um it's very old country i mean it's it's it's how some people are it's hard um and obviously i think knowing at least based on what the wife says the relationship that he had with his mother this was breaking him it was It was terrible.
So after a year of the silent treatment,
he went into his mother's room and he took down,
there was a picture of him as a child in Beirut with her
when he was like four years old
that she had kept up on her dresser.
He took it down, he took out the picture,
he ripped it in half, he burned the half with her on it and he crumpled up the half with him on it and threw it away and then put the frame back up. And two days later, their house catches on fire.
No. Yeah.
Yeah. And their house, him and his wife almost get caught in the house.
They have to get rescued by firemen. The house burns the mother takes you know her stuff or whatever i don't know how much she had left and moves in with the sister so she's gone and that's the last house catch on fire we don't know no but he as he's going into his sickness and on you know i'm sure tons of painkillers and in a weird place,
he's telling his son,
Steve,
that the fire is his mother's doing that. She knew based on what he did to the picture that that's, that was her.
And I can't stop doing that. Okay.
Steven, we need a new setup. Um, sorry.
Uh, so yeah, he's hallucinating basically and saying that uh that it was somehow her doing um he believed that his mother and her sisters and his sisters were plotting against him um they are to not give your fucking kids this goddamn business well yeah i mean i mean yeah yeah they were it's it's everybody's worst nightmare it's kind of like oh so this this is actually what it comes down to really at the end um so steve having to hear this and of course loving his grandmother and being in the middle of it said can't you ever forgive her and um mardyros was quoted as saying god will forgive the devil before i can forgive my mother holy shit um and then he said because this is a mother not a devil which is super sad it's like yeah ultimately your mother turned her back on you when you were in your worst place and also it's that thing of I'm sure after years and years of busting her ass to make this restaurant work, he was going to come in and be like, here's how it's going to happen. So it's like giving bad news and bad news.
She could also be like, you know how some people get mad at someone who's sick because it's easier than the sadness you can feel? Yes. So she might've been mad at him that she had to watch her son die.
Yes. And it's easier than...
It's a thousand percent easier. Yeah.
Yeah. It's a stage of grief.
Totally. But she...
Yeah, it's hard. Yeah, because when someone else has a disease, then it's all about them and how hard it is for them.
You can't be mad at them. I'm sure she had tons of guilt.
It was just this impacted problem.
Yeah.
So anyway, on January 14th, 2003,
Marderos, who had been bedridden and was dying,
gets out of bed, puts on a white silk suit that he hadn't worn in 20 years,
gets a nine millimeter handle. who had been bedridden and was dying, gets out of bed, puts on a white silk suit
that he hadn't worn in 20 years,
gets a nine millimeter handgun
and a 38 caliber revolver
and walks down the stairs of his house.
His wife, Rita,
couldn't believe what she was seeing.
Dude.
And she said,
in the way it's written in this article,
for a man so near death,
cancer everywhere, he looked beautiful. So he's having some weird last yeah later on in the article they went uh he does not have that outfit on okay so they think that she's remembering it because it's this yeah crazy moment and she's remembering him basically as his beautiful young self that she fell in love with because it's a really beautiful story but she they lived across the street from each other in beirut and she he was 19 and she was 12 and he was like no no no they did that that's not when it started that's when she first noticed him because he was like okay the high roller yeah don't be freaked out um it's actually very sweet and then when she got older like she was 18 and he was like the high roller.
Yeah. Don't be freaked out.
It's actually very sweet.
And then when she got older,
like she was 18 and he was like 26,
they started dating.
So it's very sweet.
Like she was in love with him all her life.
Oh my gosh.
So she said,
you're too weak to go anywhere.
Please get back in bed.
And he said,
I feel better.
Don't worry. I'm just going to go down to Zanku
and see my friends.
So she,
to see an old friend.
And so she,
you know,
Thank you. he said i feel better don't worry i'm just gonna go down to zanku and see my friends so she to see an old friend and so she you know was like all right i'll see you soon but he didn't go to zanku god damn it he didn't go to zanku he went to his sister's house um the housekeeper lets him in um she sits at the table housekeeper gives him lemonade his sister downstairs.
She was in the shower. They sit and have a pleasant conversation and share some lemonade.
Then Margaret, the mother comes home from work around 2 PM and she greets him. She says hello to the daughter first.
Then she says hello to him, puts her stuff down, sits at the table, and the housekeeper goes downstairs to her apartment because she knows that they need to talk to each other. So they talk for about five minutes and it's just normal chit-chat.
And then he reaches into his waistband for his gun and he shoots his sister across the table dead.
Shut the fuck. Like point blank.
And then his mother screams and runs for the door and he runs after her and he blocks the door.
He stands in front of her about like 15 feet away from the door, it said.
And he raises the gun in Armenia and she says, don't shoot me, please.
And he shoots her eight times.
He shoots her once.
She goes down on the ground and then he stands over her and shoots her seven more times.
Holy shit.
He looks around the room and sees his 23-year-old nephew is on the stairs.
No, no, no, no.
No, no.
And he just turns around, goes over into the living room, sits on the couch and shoots himself in the head.
Holy fuck. Are you serious so oh my god now rita the wife well at least at the time of this article um was had to be in charge
of all the Zankas.
No.
And it was this whole,
they were in court about the trademark
and,
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and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, was, had to be in charge of all the Zankas. No.
And it was this whole,
they were in court about,
um,
the trademark and,
and who owned the rights to,
it was,
it's this huge thing.
And,
uh,
I didn't even get into it because there's,
there's so much more to this article.
A poor woman after year,
maybe years or maybe however long taking care of her sick husband. that's fucking stressful as hell and raising four boys who are not doing who are fuck-ups who were rich kids you know who were like who were rich kids and she was a very traditional uh kind of old school wife where she didn't work she didn't go to the store she stayed home and was a housewife and took care of that family and suddenly just got
thrown into this.
I would never want to raise rich kids, you know?
No.
Well, but also because that's not anything you have experience with.
So like they're having a whole life that you don't even understand.
They can do whatever they want.
Yeah.
So then, then after taking care of her sick, dying husband, then this happens and she has to be in charge of so much shit. She didn't expect to be in charge of that poor woman.
Yeah. So I don't know.
That's, um, that's that rough story behind the best restaurant in LA. Who owns it now? Is it still in the family? I think they still do, but I'm not sure I didn't get, like once the murder part was over, that article goes on forever talking about all that part.
Yeah. So I figure if people are super interested in who owns the rice to Zanku chicken, you can go for it, but I don't give a fuck.
A, my stomach is growling. I know.
Are you hungry now? Oh, that's I want to eat four chickens. I do, too.
I'm like already thinking about what I'm going to order tomorrow when I go there. Okay, we're back.
Karen, do you have any updates? There are a couple. And I've actually thought about this a lot because the line that journalist Mark Arax used when he wrote this article for Los Angeles Magazine about the Zancou chicken murders that sit crooked and talk straight, which is an Armenian saying, as I learned from Mark Arax in that article, has basically people love that line and they love it for this podcast.
So it's been brought up in relation to this podcast. So just want to be very clear that we didn't make it up mark arax actually didn't but he did he found it and he you know that's that like beautiful long form journalistic work that someone does where they're like building out this world not just like you know the hard and fast true crime journalism, but like this beautiful story of fully fleshed out of what this family is all about and where they come from.
So I thought about that a lot afterwards because it was just like, man, that one part of an article got so kind of popular. It's stuck.
It totally stuck. So thank any older Armenian lady you see the next time you see them if you like that saying, because that's who probably her mother said it first.
Anyway, in 2006, a court ruled that the trademark that they were basically all fighting over for Zanku chicken, something I eat literally twice a week minimum, just have to. It's so good.
The trademark for that belonged to both sides of the family. That's what the court ruled.
So Rita Iskandarian and her four sons own the Zancus that Medeiros opened. The surviving nephews inherited their mother's share, the first Zancu, the one in Hollywood, and they still co-own it with their aunt.
Though they all still battle over the trademark, both sides have continued to basically expand the franchise. Yeah.
One thing I love about this podcast is I think a lot of people who listen ended up, when they come to LA for a vacation, go to Zancou now And Del Taco. And I'm fucking proud of that.
Hell yes. You know, if we've given anyone any, like, good tips, that's one of the best, I think.
Go to Zanku. Yes.
And go to Zanku because the Armenian culture in Los Angeles is huge. Definitely.
It's the second largest, densest population of Armenians outside of this country of Armenia. Yeah.
Actually, that photo that we took is taken. My first apartment in Hollywood was in Little Armenia.
And it was such a pleasant neighborhood and the shops and I just, I loved it. Yeah.
And that's Little Armenia. And then Big Armenia is Glendale.
It's called Glendale. Get over there with the Kardashians over at the Carousel Restaurant.
But I think it's kind of cool because it's like this story, this restaurant is such a huge part of the city. And the background of the restaurant is just as much a part of Los Angeles as movies and anything else.
It's like, if you're going to Zancou on your trip out
here, you're doing yourself right. And you're really getting a true taste of LA, I think.
Yeah, absolutely.
All right. This episode was originally titled Just the 32 of Us.
I mean, it's classic.
So good.
But just to humor us, let's see what we would name it these days based on something we said
in the episode. So I like this one.
Consider me wrong again, which I said during Corrections Corner. Like, you know, that could be tattooed on my fucking gravestone.
It's a real exercise in humility. Yeah.
Corrections Corner as a practice. I think we've set ourselves up really nicely to just do that inner work every week.
How do we fuck up?
How do we fuck up?
In public.
Yeah, for sure.
Also, there's Skippers Come On Home,
which is us joking that Skippers should come back,
listen to the episode after they finish the intro.
Yeah, start now.
Press play now, Skippers. Right.
Well, thank you for not skipping.
We appreciate you guys sticking with it.
Even if you did skip in the beginning and maybe don't skip now. Like, cool.
feel like people listening to rewind are the opposite of skippers they're just like we want to hear every dirty fucked up thing you've ever done we're gonna be here for all of it yeah we're gonna hear every story we're gonna hear every horrible thing every anecdote every corrections corner corrections corner. Yeah.
All right. Thanks, you guys.
Stay sexy. And don't get murdered.
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