December 29, 2025 • 21 mins
This week’s hometowns include a 12-year-old driving drunk parents on New Year’s and family superstitions.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Hello and welcome. I'm my favorite murder the mini.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
So do you read you your stories?
Speaker 1 (00:22):
It's incredible how you send them to us.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
You just keep doing it, you do go for sure?
Okay o. Yeah, we're gonna do a special New Year's
one guys.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Twenty twenty five. Wrapping up, how do you feel you
got your presence? You've eating a bunch of food. Hopefully
you're grateful for some things.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Hopefully you have hope.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Hopefully there's stuff to work toward.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Right or I'll try him here. Yeah, it's all you
can do.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Let's start with a fucking horrible one, shall we? A
snow covered churchyard and a hometown that changed the law.
All right, ladies, I'm from a sleepy little town on
the outskirts of Birmingham, England. It's as crime free as
anywhere can be, and generally consider very safe. And then
it says in parentheses, I mean apart from the garden
down the road that was recently dug up to discover
(01:06):
a body and potentially solve a thirty two year old
cold case. And a fantastic I survived story about a
woman eight months pregnant who was stabbed twenty four times
in our town center by her ex partner and survived
to testify and jail that motherfucker. But all those are
stories for another day. What so crime free?
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Except for that's so British of that person to just
dangle all of those unbelievable They better write it, not survive.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Yesry, well, this is a good one too. I was
thirteen when on New Year's Day, the local news exploded
with the discovery of the body of a seventeen year
old girl from my school, Nicola Dixon. Nikola had been
due to go away with family free New Years, but
stayed home. She had a driving test scheduled. She went
to the local social club on New Year's Eve and
left at about ten pm to meet friends in the
(01:51):
town center, a ten minute walk tops. She never made
it to her friends. Instead, on New Year's Day in
nineteen ninety seven, her body was found in the snow
covered grounds of the local church. From the analysis of
the scene, police concluded that Nikola had almost escaped over
a fence, but it had been dragged back by her attacker.
She had been alive when he fled the scene, and
bruises on her knuckles indicated that Nicola put up what
(02:13):
hell of a fight, but eventually died from the devastating
had injuries inflicted on her. The police conducted what was
called by Nichola's father a snowflake to snowflake search of
the scene and launched what became a nationwide manhunt. They
interviewed over eleven thousand people during the investigation and took
six thousand statements, and featured the case on a British
TV show, I'd imagine you guys would have loved had
(02:34):
you grown up in the UK Crime Watch.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Oh we've heard a crime watch. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Despite their best efforts, they were unsuccessful in their attempts
to find her killer until six years later, when a
local man, Colin Waite, was arrested after a road rage
incident in Birmingham and routinely DNA tested. He was a
perfect match with the hair and bodily fluids left at
the scene of Nikola's murder. He protested his innocence, but
it took the jury thirty minutes to send call in
(03:00):
to life imprisonment. Turns out Colin had been in prison
since Nikola's murder for assaulting his partner, but due to
a clerical error, his DNA was not able to be processed,
and it was just incredibly lucky that he'd gotten all
ragy that night that led to his arrest and the
police were able to test him again. Wow, just a
fucking fluke.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Well, but also a person that can't control themselves, so
it's like it's going to happen again.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Clearly he and Nikola were complete strangers. She was just
in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nicola's lasting
legacy is that, due to her case, her parents fought
for a change in the law that means DNA is
taken from prisoners as standard practice and will hopefully prevent
other families from going through the same agonizing way they
had to. It's been over twenty years, but it's still
all they can think about when passing that church. I'd
(03:47):
like to get sentimental, but let's face it, it just
makes us all uncomfortable. So I'll simply say thank you
Karen and Georgia. You've helped me in so many ways
and never failed to make me laugh, even during the
horror show that is this pandemic. Oh man, only shit SSDGM.
Ellie Wow, yeah, Ellie, real true crime one there.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Yeah, you know what's weird? I started mine with a
real true crime one too.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Shit.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Love that people still send these in and that that
connection is the connection that people have with true crime stories.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Right.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
I passed this yard and I think about this girl
who was all by herself going through this horrible thing,
and that's how people do it. Yeah, could be any
of us or sometimes their mom's involved. Oh shit, Okay,
so this says hometown story dateline hometown. Hey kids, this
is a longish one, but hang in there with me.
Most of this story occurs in Muskegem County, Ohio. On
(04:40):
New Year's Day, twenty twelve. My mom was taking the
deposit to the bank for the clothing store she worked at.
She pulled her car up to the curb and was
waiting for her coworker to come out and get in
the car when she saw a guy in a ski
mask start jogging up to the car. He struck her
coworker with his gun and pointed it at her. She
hit the gas and pulled away. She took the deposit
(05:00):
bag and jumped a fence and was gone. Hell of
a way to start the new year. Don't worry, the
year got better when I birthed twin granddaughters for her.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Holy shit, let me help you out here, my God.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
I'll bring two human beings from the world, and maybe
that'll make things better. Fast forward to twenty fourteen, a
twenty five year old mom, Brandy Daniels, is murdered in
her parents rural driveway on her way home from work
late at night. She was in the midst of divorcing
her abusive husband, who was in Alaska at the time.
That husband, Josh Daniels, was my mom's coworker that was
(05:33):
hit with the gun when she got robbed. Holy shit,
a lot of police work phone records and a couple
battered ex girlfriends willing to talk to police, and the
connections between a string of robberies and four suspects became clearer.
Sirius Underwood, one of the men who helped with the robberies,
offered to murder Brandy. Brandy and Josh were having a
(05:53):
contentious divorce and custody of their five year old daughter
was part of it. Daniels gave Underwood Brandy's movements after
communicating with her under the guise of when she would
be home to have a phone call with their daughter.
Underwood shot Brandy three times in her parents' driveway got Brandy.
Daniel's murder was covered on season two, episode twenty four
of Dateline. The episodes entitled out There in the Dark.
(06:17):
My Mom had several polygraphs and quite a stressful go
of the robbery. When she was asked to be a
grand jury witness, she went, she is a badass. Also,
we saw your show with the lyric in Baltimore and
really wished we could have told her hometown, but we
didn't want to break the rules. Stay sexy and don't
let the bastards get you down. Julia, Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
So the coworker was the ex husband, meaning he staged
the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Yeah, that robbery and him getting hit and everything. It
was like he knew the guy that robbed them. He
was in on that. Yeah, he was a criminal, and
he was also an abusive husband that had his wife
like murder for higher murdered. Awful Jesus, Well, this is
the way to celebrate.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
New Year's if we've gone and done it.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Listen, it's how we do it.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Here is kind of another true crime ish one. I'm
not going to do the subject. It just starts alrighty,
I wanted to write in for a while, but my
severe dyslexia and crippling anxiety had kept me from doing so.
Here I go. I live in a quiet, upper middle
class neighborhood in the heart of Toronto, the type of
place where yoga moms walk their labradoodles with wine at night.
(07:30):
That changed in January twenty ten, just before New Year's
I was outside hanging decorations on my front porch when
one flew away. I went to chase it across the road,
and just so happened that a car was coming straight
for me. But I was too focused on catching the
dollar store decorations than a four thousand pound car coming
my way. And later they'll say that they were eight
years old in this. Before I knew it, my neighbor
(07:52):
scooped me up in the middle of the road. If
you didn't, I would have been flattened like a pancake.
I thought nothing of it, said thank you, and when
on with my decorating. I know. Fast forward to New
Year's Day and over twelve police cards were outside that
same neighbor's house. He had reported his girlfriend missing two
days prior. The police searched his house and found the girlfriend,
(08:15):
Lisa Lebitka wrapped in a rug underneath her own child's bed.
In this trial, it came out that he had smothered
her with a pillow. This took place on the very
same day that my decoration flew across the road. What
that's right, My neighbor, Paul Hindle, saved my life the
exact same day he took another.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
That doesn't make any sign.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
I know, being an oblivious eight year old at the time,
I watched him get handcuffed and loaded into the police
car from my front window. I remember asking my mom
why he was handcuffed, and she replied, oh, honey, everyone
has to get handcuffed to go in the back of
a police car. Just trying to make it so a
nice cover, And then she says, I guess she's not lying.
Before the end of my Christmas break, my older brother
(08:59):
explained to me that my neighbor was in fact charged
with murder and not just going for a ride along
with the police while being handcuffed. Still not grasping the concept,
I remember going back to grade four after winter break,
and when going around in a circle as a class, saying,
the most exciting thing you did over the break, I said,
my neighbor got murdered. I believe this is what got
me into true crime at such a young age. It
(09:21):
will always give me chills thinking about my neighbor picking
me up, saving me from oncoming traffic with the same
hands that he took life with. Soon after, every kid
on my street got therapy after this, except me, probably
because my parents thought I was too young to care
about what happened. Oh if only they knew of the
little murdering. Know I was good thing. I just started
seeing a therapist last week.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Just in time.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
It's never too late, stay sexy and always looked both
ways before crossing the road.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Love e she her.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
God, it's like unfathomable.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
You want to believe that you know the full constitution
of a person who's going to murder their girlfriend, and like,
that's a sociopath, that's a psychoplath, that's a person that
doesn't have feelings. Yes they do, right, It.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
Just doesn't make any sense to us because we could
never goaden that.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Wow, Okay, this is still crime based, but we're going
to take a little turn into the normal minisod comedy
that I enjoy so much. This is an incredible email.
I'm not going to read you. The subject line it says,
I use I was raised in a very magical way,
and then in parentheses it says not for commercials. I
don't know what that means. However, there is one experience
(10:34):
that I have engraved in my mind that I think
it takes a lot of your requests. Drunk parents, crime,
and holidays. Here we go. When I was twelve years old,
my big Latino family had our usual New Year's party
at my grandma's which normally starts in New Year's Eve
and ends around seven or eight am New Year's Day.
They party all night long. These parties are incredibly lively,
(10:55):
with a lot of dancing and eating and drinking, and
usually we have a designated driver in our family that
would drive everyone home, all sixty seven of us. Holy shit,
and then a parenthesis that says, no one likes that job. No,
that's so crazy. This particular year, after waiting for the
designated driver for an hour or so, I felt old
enough to suggest myself to drive us back home, and
(11:18):
my parents were drunk enough to agree with me.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Twelve years old, Oh, no, twelve, twelve years old.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
After my dad stole the last two bottles of whiskey,
one cheap and one all caps fancy. We left my
grandma's place to our home. We live on the outskirts
of our city, on a farm. So I think it
needs to be said here as a farm child, not
really not the child of farmers, but I grew up
in a rural area. Kids start driving when they're like
(11:46):
eight years old. Really, yeah, you.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Have to regular cars or regular cars and like around
the land.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Exactly, so you jump in a truck to go feed
the cows.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Like from suburbia, like I never know.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Yeah, I think that's that the whole thing of like this,
this is the way things have to work on this farm, right.
It's like the kids are farm workers like everybody else.
So like we collected the eggs, we fed the chicken
and the chickens and the geese.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
And writing from your house to the thing on the
same land isn't a big.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
Deal, no, And usually I mean like we didn't do
it as much. It's more like cattle ranchers kids who
if they had to get up at five in the
morning to go feed one hundred cows, they're going to
take a truck to do it, and they'll be fine
doing that and if they are there with their brother
who's twelve and they're eighty all of that kind of stress.
First of all, there's nothing to hit you or whatever.
(12:34):
You can't hit cows. They're easy to miss, and then
you just kind of start getting used to it. Anyway,
I just want to put that out there.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
It's really fascinating to me because I had never I
have never experienced that coming from the suburbs, you know.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
So after leaving the city and entering the County Highway,
I see a few transit police checkpoints. To be super clear,
I don't have a driver's license. My family is cheap
and they don't pay car insurance, and our registration is expired.
So I'm panicking within reason. I asked my mom what
to do, and she was in her drunk, sleepy place
where no one can read.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Sure I have one of those.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
I turned to my dad and he was in an
incoherently loud state, hugging his whiskey bottles. It was too
late to go back, so now I was driving through
the checkpoint, praying not to be randomly picked to be
asked for my papers. Oh my god, well I was
definitely picked. Of course, when the officer came to the car.
I was actually very relaxed, and then in parentheses, it
(13:33):
says my upbringing prepared me for this. I had my
window already down, and I start to notice that the
officers in parentheses, all of them were very drunk themselves.
What I asked what I could help them with? I
help you after, Well, it's crater.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
I'm sitting on a fucking phone book. How can I
help you?
Speaker 1 (13:53):
Like? You have your wrist on the roofs on the drug.
What can I help you with?
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Yeah, it's the problem officer.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
So I asked what I could open with and he
asked for my age, and I said, I'm twelve, but sober,
and I've been driving for four years. Okay, fucking legend.
He asked for the car's papers. I pass them to him,
hoping he doesn't pay attention to the expiration dates. He doesn't,
gives me the papers back and finally asks who I
was driving. I say, my parents. They're in no condition
(14:20):
to drive, so we all thought we'd be safer with
me driving. He looks at me and says, we might
not take your car. What we could call child services.
You're too young to be responsible for your parents, which
is true. Yes, in general, yes, if she had to
do that all the time, right, that's when that's true. Sure,
Christmas come on, okay, New Year's, New Year's come on Christmas.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Or New Year's? Which one?
Speaker 1 (14:44):
It's New Year's. Sorry, okay, So it says I'm freaking out.
This possibility never crossed my mind. However, I did say
I was prepared for this. I said, I can help
you continue your party with your fellow officer friends with
this whiskey bottle. And how are you so brilliant fucking
and handling shit? Yeah, I think oldest daughter I would guess, yeah,
(15:07):
and I pull up the cheap whiskey bottle. The officer
laughs and says, I'd be more inclined to let you
leave if you give me that Johnny Walker blue label.
Your dad is hugging.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Oooh.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
I turned around, looked at my dad in the back seat,
hugging his bottle like he was holding his life, and
grab it.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Oh okay, he holds on.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Titan shouts mine. Oh my god. So I smoothly switch
it with the cheap one, quickly give it to the
officer and say thank you and happy New Year, and
drive away as fast as possible. We arrive safely home,
I open the windows of the car to let my
parents sleep in it until they are well enough to
come inside.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Shit, like Chris is, we're laughing so hard, but this
feels like childhood trauma a little bit.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
It's trauma except for what a success.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Yeah, it's funny. It's either trauma or it's the funny
story that you tell the holidays.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
The fine line, Yes, of it's.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Only happened once. It's a funny story.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
But it's like she didn't get home and then start
getting yelled at by those same parents or like beaten.
But I mean, what do I know? But here's the assumption.
The reason she was able to handle it the way
she was is because her parents are smart and cool
and treat her like a real person and empowered her
to do it. Okay, let's let's go with that. Let's
believe what we want to believe. Okay, until they're well
(16:27):
enough to come inside on their own, I'm not going
to carry them. Sorry for the length of the story.
I do hope you enjoy it. Also, thank you for
walking with me to and from university. I'm in my
last year of my PhD in chemical engineering.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
And they did a great job.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
And she's a job. That's amazing, and for making me
laugh every single time. Tat's off for now, and stay
sexy and always have a good bottle of liquor to
bribe the officers.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Cammy, Cammy, Yeah, Timmy's a legendary Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Twelve year old. That's like, how can I help you tonight? Office?
Speaker 2 (17:00):
How about this? How about I bargain with this? No,
and like she starts low and goes high like so smart.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
But also there's a tacit threat in her bargain, which is.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Right, you're fucking drinking.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
I know you're drunk. I'm the only one in this
whole group that isn't fucking drunk. How about you don't
fuck with me?
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Right? It's brilliant, It's so good, it's brilliant. My last
one is family superstitions. Hello, MFM gang. My name is Hannah.
She her pronouns, Yes, you can use my name, Okay, Hannah?
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Great?
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Heard it? I just listened to miney SOO three or
four asking for superstitions. I have two family superstitions slash traditions. One,
my grandmother and mother have always told me never to
wash clothes on new Year's Eve or day.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
I've heard that.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
One we have says washing your clothes is equivalent to
washing away a loved one. I've never heard that before. Yeah.
And then number two the New Year's Day meal tradition.
Your meal should include collared greens for money, black eyed
peas for luck, and poor for prosperity.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
That sounds like a Southern tradition.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
These are two Southern superstitions, and it might be more common
than I thought. I'm from Georgia. I've binged to the
podcast from the beginning and have finally caught up. Thanks
for making me laugh when I really need it. Stays
ex and please don't wash your clothes on New Year's Hannah.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
That's a good one, Hannah.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
I didn't know that washing clothes thing.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Yeah, I heard about that. Well, it's a TikTok thing.
When you're addicted to TikTok, you learn about all the traditions.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
I mean, it's not like I would have a like
I would be threatening to wash my clothes on New
Years because I'm hungover, and I wouldn't have done it anyways.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
But yeah, that could be a thing where like a
mom was like, no, no, we can't, no, we can't
do laundry today, or it's yeah and no yelling.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Yeah, that's a TikTok thing.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Okay. The subject line of this email is that time
it actually was a mannequin, which kind of gives it away. Yeah.
Hi Karen and Georgia, longtime listener here, love you both,
love the show, et cetera, et cetera. This is the
story of the time it actually was a mannequin. Back
in twenty eighteen or maybe twenty nineteen, my friends and
I traveled to New Orleans for New Year's I was
the only one who lived there, so I was being
(19:01):
kind of obnoxious about knowing my way around.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Of course you gotta.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
Oh, here's where the bagel shop used to be.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
This one is better than that one.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
This is a bar I don't recognize, but I'm picking
this one instead. One night, we were walking through the
French Quarter when I saw out of the corner of
my eye a naked woman's body half hidden in a
shop window. She was totally naked, covered in bruises, fully
visible from the street. The shop door was propped open
and the lights were on. I know what's going to happen, right,
Fueled by a lot of liquid confidence. I broke away
(19:31):
from my friends to investigate. Did I think to call
the cops? Of course not. I was clearly the hero
of this story. I stepped inside an inch toward the body.
She was sprawled on, checkered vinyl tiles, limbs all wrong,
hair falling across her face in a way that was
too perfect, too shiny, too something. It very slowly dawned
on me it was a mannequin. I looked up and
(19:53):
saw two very confused employees staring at me. What the fuck, y'all?
I demanded, Why would you have in your window? It's terrifying.
They looked bewildered. One of them sighed and said, ma'am,
this is a fucking halloween store. A sure enough, rows
of costumes bagged in cellophane, fake cobwebs, plastered plastic, severed limbs.
(20:16):
I drunkenly stumbled into a year round halloween store, convinced
I was about to solve a murder. Anyway, that's the
time it actually was a mannequin. Love ya all, Emma
from Maine.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Emma from main Oh. Being a no at all When
it fucking hits you right in.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
The you're being a know it all to people who
are from there, right and who aren't drunk right, all.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
The drunk people. Send us your drunk stories at my
Favorite Murder at gmail. We love them, we hate them.
Send us your parents ones, the ones that are funny,
the ones that traumatized you, yes, and that hilariously traumatized you.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
And hey, congratulations, because this year is almost over, God,
and the freshness of it won't be your laundry that's fresh,
but the year will be fresh and things will start again.
And here's to twenty twenty six. That's right, Stay sexy.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
And don't get murdered. Goodbye, Elvis, Do you want a cookie?
Speaker 1 (21:14):
This has been an exactly right production.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Our senior producer is Molly Smith and our associate producer
is Tessa Hughes.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
Our editor is Aristotle Ascevedo.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
This episode was mixed by Leona Squalocci.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Email your hometowns to My Favorite Murder at gmail dot com.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Follow the show on Instagram at My Favorite Murder.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple
Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Or watch us on YouTube. Search for My Favorite Murder
and then like and subscribe. Goodbye,
Hello and welcome. I'm my favorite murder the mini.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
So do you read you your stories?
Speaker 1 (00:22):
It's incredible how you send them to us.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
You just keep doing it, you do go for sure?
Okay o. Yeah, we're gonna do a special New Year's
one guys.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Twenty twenty five. Wrapping up, how do you feel you
got your presence? You've eating a bunch of food. Hopefully
you're grateful for some things.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Hopefully you have hope.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Hopefully there's stuff to work toward.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Right or I'll try him here. Yeah, it's all you
can do.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Let's start with a fucking horrible one, shall we? A
snow covered churchyard and a hometown that changed the law.
All right, ladies, I'm from a sleepy little town on
the outskirts of Birmingham, England. It's as crime free as
anywhere can be, and generally consider very safe. And then
it says in parentheses, I mean apart from the garden
down the road that was recently dug up to discover
(01:06):
a body and potentially solve a thirty two year old
cold case. And a fantastic I survived story about a
woman eight months pregnant who was stabbed twenty four times
in our town center by her ex partner and survived
to testify and jail that motherfucker. But all those are
stories for another day. What so crime free?
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Except for that's so British of that person to just
dangle all of those unbelievable They better write it, not survive.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Yesry, well, this is a good one too. I was
thirteen when on New Year's Day, the local news exploded
with the discovery of the body of a seventeen year
old girl from my school, Nicola Dixon. Nikola had been
due to go away with family free New Years, but
stayed home. She had a driving test scheduled. She went
to the local social club on New Year's Eve and
left at about ten pm to meet friends in the
(01:51):
town center, a ten minute walk tops. She never made
it to her friends. Instead, on New Year's Day in
nineteen ninety seven, her body was found in the snow
covered grounds of the local church. From the analysis of
the scene, police concluded that Nikola had almost escaped over
a fence, but it had been dragged back by her attacker.
She had been alive when he fled the scene, and
bruises on her knuckles indicated that Nicola put up what
(02:13):
hell of a fight, but eventually died from the devastating
had injuries inflicted on her. The police conducted what was
called by Nichola's father a snowflake to snowflake search of
the scene and launched what became a nationwide manhunt. They
interviewed over eleven thousand people during the investigation and took
six thousand statements, and featured the case on a British
TV show, I'd imagine you guys would have loved had
(02:34):
you grown up in the UK Crime Watch.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Oh we've heard a crime watch. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Despite their best efforts, they were unsuccessful in their attempts
to find her killer until six years later, when a
local man, Colin Waite, was arrested after a road rage
incident in Birmingham and routinely DNA tested. He was a
perfect match with the hair and bodily fluids left at
the scene of Nikola's murder. He protested his innocence, but
it took the jury thirty minutes to send call in
(03:00):
to life imprisonment. Turns out Colin had been in prison
since Nikola's murder for assaulting his partner, but due to
a clerical error, his DNA was not able to be processed,
and it was just incredibly lucky that he'd gotten all
ragy that night that led to his arrest and the
police were able to test him again. Wow, just a
fucking fluke.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Well, but also a person that can't control themselves, so
it's like it's going to happen again.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Clearly he and Nikola were complete strangers. She was just
in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nicola's lasting
legacy is that, due to her case, her parents fought
for a change in the law that means DNA is
taken from prisoners as standard practice and will hopefully prevent
other families from going through the same agonizing way they
had to. It's been over twenty years, but it's still
all they can think about when passing that church. I'd
(03:47):
like to get sentimental, but let's face it, it just
makes us all uncomfortable. So I'll simply say thank you
Karen and Georgia. You've helped me in so many ways
and never failed to make me laugh, even during the
horror show that is this pandemic. Oh man, only shit SSDGM.
Ellie Wow, yeah, Ellie, real true crime one there.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Yeah, you know what's weird? I started mine with a
real true crime one too.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Shit.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Love that people still send these in and that that
connection is the connection that people have with true crime stories.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Right.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
I passed this yard and I think about this girl
who was all by herself going through this horrible thing,
and that's how people do it. Yeah, could be any
of us or sometimes their mom's involved. Oh shit, Okay,
so this says hometown story dateline hometown. Hey kids, this
is a longish one, but hang in there with me.
Most of this story occurs in Muskegem County, Ohio. On
(04:40):
New Year's Day, twenty twelve. My mom was taking the
deposit to the bank for the clothing store she worked at.
She pulled her car up to the curb and was
waiting for her coworker to come out and get in
the car when she saw a guy in a ski
mask start jogging up to the car. He struck her
coworker with his gun and pointed it at her. She
hit the gas and pulled away. She took the deposit
(05:00):
bag and jumped a fence and was gone. Hell of
a way to start the new year. Don't worry, the
year got better when I birthed twin granddaughters for her.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Holy shit, let me help you out here, my God.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
I'll bring two human beings from the world, and maybe
that'll make things better. Fast forward to twenty fourteen, a
twenty five year old mom, Brandy Daniels, is murdered in
her parents rural driveway on her way home from work
late at night. She was in the midst of divorcing
her abusive husband, who was in Alaska at the time.
That husband, Josh Daniels, was my mom's coworker that was
(05:33):
hit with the gun when she got robbed. Holy shit,
a lot of police work phone records and a couple
battered ex girlfriends willing to talk to police, and the
connections between a string of robberies and four suspects became clearer.
Sirius Underwood, one of the men who helped with the robberies,
offered to murder Brandy. Brandy and Josh were having a
(05:53):
contentious divorce and custody of their five year old daughter
was part of it. Daniels gave Underwood Brandy's movements after
communicating with her under the guise of when she would
be home to have a phone call with their daughter.
Underwood shot Brandy three times in her parents' driveway got Brandy.
Daniel's murder was covered on season two, episode twenty four
of Dateline. The episodes entitled out There in the Dark.
(06:17):
My Mom had several polygraphs and quite a stressful go
of the robbery. When she was asked to be a
grand jury witness, she went, she is a badass. Also,
we saw your show with the lyric in Baltimore and
really wished we could have told her hometown, but we
didn't want to break the rules. Stay sexy and don't
let the bastards get you down. Julia, Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
So the coworker was the ex husband, meaning he staged
the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Yeah, that robbery and him getting hit and everything. It
was like he knew the guy that robbed them. He
was in on that. Yeah, he was a criminal, and
he was also an abusive husband that had his wife
like murder for higher murdered. Awful Jesus, Well, this is
the way to celebrate.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
New Year's if we've gone and done it.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Listen, it's how we do it.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Here is kind of another true crime ish one. I'm
not going to do the subject. It just starts alrighty,
I wanted to write in for a while, but my
severe dyslexia and crippling anxiety had kept me from doing so.
Here I go. I live in a quiet, upper middle
class neighborhood in the heart of Toronto, the type of
place where yoga moms walk their labradoodles with wine at night.
(07:30):
That changed in January twenty ten, just before New Year's
I was outside hanging decorations on my front porch when
one flew away. I went to chase it across the road,
and just so happened that a car was coming straight
for me. But I was too focused on catching the
dollar store decorations than a four thousand pound car coming
my way. And later they'll say that they were eight
years old in this. Before I knew it, my neighbor
(07:52):
scooped me up in the middle of the road. If
you didn't, I would have been flattened like a pancake.
I thought nothing of it, said thank you, and when
on with my decorating. I know. Fast forward to New
Year's Day and over twelve police cards were outside that
same neighbor's house. He had reported his girlfriend missing two
days prior. The police searched his house and found the girlfriend,
(08:15):
Lisa Lebitka wrapped in a rug underneath her own child's bed.
In this trial, it came out that he had smothered
her with a pillow. This took place on the very
same day that my decoration flew across the road. What
that's right, My neighbor, Paul Hindle, saved my life the
exact same day he took another.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
That doesn't make any sign.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
I know, being an oblivious eight year old at the time,
I watched him get handcuffed and loaded into the police
car from my front window. I remember asking my mom
why he was handcuffed, and she replied, oh, honey, everyone
has to get handcuffed to go in the back of
a police car. Just trying to make it so a
nice cover, And then she says, I guess she's not lying.
Before the end of my Christmas break, my older brother
(08:59):
explained to me that my neighbor was in fact charged
with murder and not just going for a ride along
with the police while being handcuffed. Still not grasping the concept,
I remember going back to grade four after winter break,
and when going around in a circle as a class, saying,
the most exciting thing you did over the break, I said,
my neighbor got murdered. I believe this is what got
me into true crime at such a young age. It
(09:21):
will always give me chills thinking about my neighbor picking
me up, saving me from oncoming traffic with the same
hands that he took life with. Soon after, every kid
on my street got therapy after this, except me, probably
because my parents thought I was too young to care
about what happened. Oh if only they knew of the
little murdering. Know I was good thing. I just started
seeing a therapist last week.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Just in time.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
It's never too late, stay sexy and always looked both
ways before crossing the road.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Love e she her.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
God, it's like unfathomable.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
You want to believe that you know the full constitution
of a person who's going to murder their girlfriend, and like,
that's a sociopath, that's a psychoplath, that's a person that
doesn't have feelings. Yes they do, right, It.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
Just doesn't make any sense to us because we could
never goaden that.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Wow, Okay, this is still crime based, but we're going
to take a little turn into the normal minisod comedy
that I enjoy so much. This is an incredible email.
I'm not going to read you. The subject line it says,
I use I was raised in a very magical way,
and then in parentheses it says not for commercials. I
don't know what that means. However, there is one experience
(10:34):
that I have engraved in my mind that I think
it takes a lot of your requests. Drunk parents, crime,
and holidays. Here we go. When I was twelve years old,
my big Latino family had our usual New Year's party
at my grandma's which normally starts in New Year's Eve
and ends around seven or eight am New Year's Day.
They party all night long. These parties are incredibly lively,
(10:55):
with a lot of dancing and eating and drinking, and
usually we have a designated driver in our family that
would drive everyone home, all sixty seven of us. Holy shit,
and then a parenthesis that says, no one likes that job. No,
that's so crazy. This particular year, after waiting for the
designated driver for an hour or so, I felt old
enough to suggest myself to drive us back home, and
(11:18):
my parents were drunk enough to agree with me.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Twelve years old, Oh, no, twelve, twelve years old.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
After my dad stole the last two bottles of whiskey,
one cheap and one all caps fancy. We left my
grandma's place to our home. We live on the outskirts
of our city, on a farm. So I think it
needs to be said here as a farm child, not
really not the child of farmers, but I grew up
in a rural area. Kids start driving when they're like
(11:46):
eight years old. Really, yeah, you.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Have to regular cars or regular cars and like around
the land.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Exactly, so you jump in a truck to go feed
the cows.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Like from suburbia, like I never know.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Yeah, I think that's that the whole thing of like this,
this is the way things have to work on this farm, right.
It's like the kids are farm workers like everybody else.
So like we collected the eggs, we fed the chicken
and the chickens and the geese.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
And writing from your house to the thing on the
same land isn't a big.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
Deal, no, And usually I mean like we didn't do
it as much. It's more like cattle ranchers kids who
if they had to get up at five in the
morning to go feed one hundred cows, they're going to
take a truck to do it, and they'll be fine
doing that and if they are there with their brother
who's twelve and they're eighty all of that kind of stress.
First of all, there's nothing to hit you or whatever.
(12:34):
You can't hit cows. They're easy to miss, and then
you just kind of start getting used to it. Anyway,
I just want to put that out there.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
It's really fascinating to me because I had never I
have never experienced that coming from the suburbs, you know.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
So after leaving the city and entering the County Highway,
I see a few transit police checkpoints. To be super clear,
I don't have a driver's license. My family is cheap
and they don't pay car insurance, and our registration is expired.
So I'm panicking within reason. I asked my mom what
to do, and she was in her drunk, sleepy place
where no one can read.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Sure I have one of those.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
I turned to my dad and he was in an
incoherently loud state, hugging his whiskey bottles. It was too
late to go back, so now I was driving through
the checkpoint, praying not to be randomly picked to be
asked for my papers. Oh my god, well I was
definitely picked. Of course, when the officer came to the car.
I was actually very relaxed, and then in parentheses, it
(13:33):
says my upbringing prepared me for this. I had my
window already down, and I start to notice that the
officers in parentheses, all of them were very drunk themselves.
What I asked what I could help them with? I
help you after, Well, it's crater.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
I'm sitting on a fucking phone book. How can I
help you?
Speaker 1 (13:53):
Like? You have your wrist on the roofs on the drug.
What can I help you with?
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Yeah, it's the problem officer.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
So I asked what I could open with and he
asked for my age, and I said, I'm twelve, but sober,
and I've been driving for four years. Okay, fucking legend.
He asked for the car's papers. I pass them to him,
hoping he doesn't pay attention to the expiration dates. He doesn't,
gives me the papers back and finally asks who I
was driving. I say, my parents. They're in no condition
(14:20):
to drive, so we all thought we'd be safer with
me driving. He looks at me and says, we might
not take your car. What we could call child services.
You're too young to be responsible for your parents, which
is true. Yes, in general, yes, if she had to
do that all the time, right, that's when that's true. Sure,
Christmas come on, okay, New Year's, New Year's come on Christmas.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Or New Year's? Which one?
Speaker 1 (14:44):
It's New Year's. Sorry, okay, So it says I'm freaking out.
This possibility never crossed my mind. However, I did say
I was prepared for this. I said, I can help
you continue your party with your fellow officer friends with
this whiskey bottle. And how are you so brilliant fucking
and handling shit? Yeah, I think oldest daughter I would guess, yeah,
(15:07):
and I pull up the cheap whiskey bottle. The officer
laughs and says, I'd be more inclined to let you
leave if you give me that Johnny Walker blue label.
Your dad is hugging.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Oooh.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
I turned around, looked at my dad in the back seat,
hugging his bottle like he was holding his life, and
grab it.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Oh okay, he holds on.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Titan shouts mine. Oh my god. So I smoothly switch
it with the cheap one, quickly give it to the
officer and say thank you and happy New Year, and
drive away as fast as possible. We arrive safely home,
I open the windows of the car to let my
parents sleep in it until they are well enough to
come inside.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Shit, like Chris is, we're laughing so hard, but this
feels like childhood trauma a little bit.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
It's trauma except for what a success.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Yeah, it's funny. It's either trauma or it's the funny
story that you tell the holidays.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
The fine line, Yes, of it's.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Only happened once. It's a funny story.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
But it's like she didn't get home and then start
getting yelled at by those same parents or like beaten.
But I mean, what do I know? But here's the assumption.
The reason she was able to handle it the way
she was is because her parents are smart and cool
and treat her like a real person and empowered her
to do it. Okay, let's let's go with that. Let's
believe what we want to believe. Okay, until they're well
(16:27):
enough to come inside on their own, I'm not going
to carry them. Sorry for the length of the story.
I do hope you enjoy it. Also, thank you for
walking with me to and from university. I'm in my
last year of my PhD in chemical engineering.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
And they did a great job.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
And she's a job. That's amazing, and for making me
laugh every single time. Tat's off for now, and stay
sexy and always have a good bottle of liquor to
bribe the officers.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Cammy, Cammy, Yeah, Timmy's a legendary Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Twelve year old. That's like, how can I help you tonight? Office?
Speaker 2 (17:00):
How about this? How about I bargain with this? No,
and like she starts low and goes high like so smart.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
But also there's a tacit threat in her bargain, which is.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Right, you're fucking drinking.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
I know you're drunk. I'm the only one in this
whole group that isn't fucking drunk. How about you don't
fuck with me?
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Right? It's brilliant, It's so good, it's brilliant. My last
one is family superstitions. Hello, MFM gang. My name is Hannah.
She her pronouns, Yes, you can use my name, Okay, Hannah?
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Great?
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Heard it? I just listened to miney SOO three or
four asking for superstitions. I have two family superstitions slash traditions. One,
my grandmother and mother have always told me never to
wash clothes on new Year's Eve or day.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
I've heard that.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
One we have says washing your clothes is equivalent to
washing away a loved one. I've never heard that before. Yeah.
And then number two the New Year's Day meal tradition.
Your meal should include collared greens for money, black eyed
peas for luck, and poor for prosperity.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
That sounds like a Southern tradition.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
These are two Southern superstitions, and it might be more common
than I thought. I'm from Georgia. I've binged to the
podcast from the beginning and have finally caught up. Thanks
for making me laugh when I really need it. Stays
ex and please don't wash your clothes on New Year's Hannah.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
That's a good one, Hannah.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
I didn't know that washing clothes thing.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Yeah, I heard about that. Well, it's a TikTok thing.
When you're addicted to TikTok, you learn about all the traditions.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
I mean, it's not like I would have a like
I would be threatening to wash my clothes on New
Years because I'm hungover, and I wouldn't have done it anyways.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
But yeah, that could be a thing where like a
mom was like, no, no, we can't, no, we can't
do laundry today, or it's yeah and no yelling.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Yeah, that's a TikTok thing.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Okay. The subject line of this email is that time
it actually was a mannequin, which kind of gives it away. Yeah.
Hi Karen and Georgia, longtime listener here, love you both,
love the show, et cetera, et cetera. This is the
story of the time it actually was a mannequin. Back
in twenty eighteen or maybe twenty nineteen, my friends and
I traveled to New Orleans for New Year's I was
the only one who lived there, so I was being
(19:01):
kind of obnoxious about knowing my way around.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Of course you gotta.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
Oh, here's where the bagel shop used to be.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
This one is better than that one.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
This is a bar I don't recognize, but I'm picking
this one instead. One night, we were walking through the
French Quarter when I saw out of the corner of
my eye a naked woman's body half hidden in a
shop window. She was totally naked, covered in bruises, fully
visible from the street. The shop door was propped open
and the lights were on. I know what's going to happen, right,
Fueled by a lot of liquid confidence. I broke away
(19:31):
from my friends to investigate. Did I think to call
the cops? Of course not. I was clearly the hero
of this story. I stepped inside an inch toward the body.
She was sprawled on, checkered vinyl tiles, limbs all wrong,
hair falling across her face in a way that was
too perfect, too shiny, too something. It very slowly dawned
on me it was a mannequin. I looked up and
(19:53):
saw two very confused employees staring at me. What the fuck, y'all?
I demanded, Why would you have in your window? It's terrifying.
They looked bewildered. One of them sighed and said, ma'am,
this is a fucking halloween store. A sure enough, rows
of costumes bagged in cellophane, fake cobwebs, plastered plastic, severed limbs.
(20:16):
I drunkenly stumbled into a year round halloween store, convinced
I was about to solve a murder. Anyway, that's the
time it actually was a mannequin. Love ya all, Emma
from Maine.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Emma from main Oh. Being a no at all When
it fucking hits you right in.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
The you're being a know it all to people who
are from there, right and who aren't drunk right, all.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
The drunk people. Send us your drunk stories at my
Favorite Murder at gmail. We love them, we hate them.
Send us your parents ones, the ones that are funny,
the ones that traumatized you, yes, and that hilariously traumatized you.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
And hey, congratulations, because this year is almost over, God,
and the freshness of it won't be your laundry that's fresh,
but the year will be fresh and things will start again.
And here's to twenty twenty six. That's right, Stay sexy.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
And don't get murdered. Goodbye, Elvis, Do you want a cookie?
Speaker 1 (21:14):
This has been an exactly right production.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Our senior producer is Molly Smith and our associate producer
is Tessa Hughes.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
Our editor is Aristotle Ascevedo.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
This episode was mixed by Leona Squalocci.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Email your hometowns to My Favorite Murder at gmail dot com.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Follow the show on Instagram at My Favorite Murder.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple
Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Or watch us on YouTube. Search for My Favorite Murder
and then like and subscribe. Goodbye,
Hosts And Creators
Georgia Hardstark
Karen Kilgariff
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My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
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 of 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. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that 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 historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, 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.