Stay Sexy. Don't Get Murdered.
"Toxic masculinity ruins the party again."
— Upon reading another serial killer's tragic backstory
My Favorite Murder is a weekly true crime and comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff & Georgia Hardstark. They discuss murder cases, shows and documentaries featuring true crime, the criminal justice system, and feature local murder cases from listeners in a segment called Hometown Murders.
Regular episodes are released Thursdays and run roughly an hour and a half to two hours. Mini episodes are released on Mondays, running around half an hour to an hour, and feature stories sent in to them from listeners. Episodes were released by Feral Audio until September 2017 when they moved to Midroll Media. In November 2018, Karen and Georgia introduced their own podcast network, Exactly Right. In 2019, Karen and Georgia co-wrote a memoir/advice book entitled Stay Sexy and Don't Get Murdered: The Definitive How-to Guide
They interact with their fans on their Facebook page, Twitter
and Instagram, as well as on their official website.
This podcast contains examples of:
- Awesome McCoolname: In-show we have Paul Onions, the most beautiful man in the world (based solely on his name).
- Bittersweet Ending: While every case discussed is in some way tragic, sometimes the surviving victims will go on to fight for other victims, or the case will result in legislation to prevent further deaths.
- Catchphrase: Several.
- "Stay Sexy, Don't Get Murdered" is the most common one.
- "Look." "Listen." "Look and Listen".
- "Fuck politeness."
- "It goes all the way to the top!"
- "That's exactly right!" which was common enough to become the name of their own Podcast Network.
- Continuity Cavalcade: The animated music video "Stay Sexy and don't Get Murdered" is loaded with references to the podcast itself and Nick Terry's animated clips.
- Crossover: With Anna Faris's podcast Unqualified. Dave Anthony of The Dollop also guest starred in one of their live shows. Georgia and Karen have also appeared on The Last Podcast on the Left.
- Cute, but Cacophonic: Georgia's cat Elvis.Georgia: Elvis, want a cookie?
Elvis: *yowls* - Death of a Child: Several episodes discuss both high and low profile cases of children going missing or murdered.
- Developing Doomed Characters: The podcast often attempts to avert this, with Karen and Georgia talking about the lives of various victims in order to remind the audience that they were people with full lives before their untimely deaths. However this does occasionally crop up—the story of the "Denver Spiderman" starts with Karen describing Philip Peters in a way that makes Georgia think he was the killer, before revealing shortly into the recap that he was actually the first victim.
- Disposable Sex Worker: Frequently discussed and criticized in-show.
- Disposable Vagrant: Criticized in "Three Small Hot Dogs" when they discuss The Boxcar Killer, who killed 28 people in 15 years, who were initially ignored for being homeless nomads.
- Don't Go in the Woods: "Get a job. Buy your own shit. Stay out of the forest."
- Downer Ending: Kind of inevitable when you're talking about murder. Karen and Georgia began ending main shows with a brief segment about something that makes them happy to help avert this, subsequently named “Fucking Hooray” with input from listeners.
- A big one in individual stories is the Grim Sleeper episode: The killer is caught, but only after three decades and the murder of dozens of women. Not to mention that trust between the LAPD and the city is eroded due to the racism, classism and apathy that messed up the investigation. And hundreds of photos of women who were possibly victims have yet to be identified. And finally, the authorities were unable to connect the murder of a man who was killed during the first round of deaths to the Grim Sleeper, meaning that his killer may still be out there.
- Do Wrong, Right: Sometimes comes up. For example, when talking about the Eyeball Killer, who had a noted creepy fixation with eyeballs in his personal life, they joke that if you're obsessed with something and you want to murder people, you should murder them in relation to a different thing.Karen: People tell on themselves. I don't want to educate criminals, or make them better...but how about just shut up for two weeks? Could you?
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Early on, there weren't separate minisodes, so hometown murders would just come at the end of regular episodes. There was also no Fucking Hooray segment (which itself took a little bit to get a name).
- Formula-Breaking Episode:
- The crossover with Unqualified, which combined the segments of both shows across two episodes.
- The Halloween 2017 episode featured primarily listener-submitted ghost or supernatural stories.
- The minisodes in general can vary in content, and will sometimes feature local true crime stories that don't involve murder. First responder stories are also popular, and have been specifically requested by the hosts in the past. These days the topics run a very large gamut of hometown murders, crimes, first-responder stories, strange encounters, ghost stories, things found in walls, and deathbed confessions.
- They also devoted two episodes to the then-recent developments in the Golden State Killer case.
- "Fake Snow in Glendale" is partly devoted to the history of Lobotomy.
- Freaky Is Cool: Karen, Georgia and their fans bond over their fascination with murder. Sometimes dips into Freakiness Shame and then is validated by each other or the community, especially in the live shows.
- Good Victims, Bad Victims: Discussed; Karen and Georgia will not hesitate to point out when this mentality is at play, and the negative effect it can have on the case (i.e. serial killers getting away with their crimes because the victims were assumed to be runaways or part of a minority population).
- Hypercompetent Sidekick: Steven Ray Morris, their producer.
- Insistent Terminology: As the show progressed, they became more careful about saying "sex worker" vs. "prostitute."
- Irishman and a Jew: Karen and Georgia are a female example, as they discuss in the intro to Episode 52.Georgia: That Irish person is Karen Kilgariff.Karen: And that Jewish person is Georgia Yael Hardstark.*
- Kindhearted Cat Lover: Steven, who has his own podcast about cats, The Purrrcast.
- Malaproper: Georgia, occasionally. For example, she's combined "proclivity" and "propensity" into "proclensity," and "entangled" and "intertwined" into "intertwangled."
- Missing White Woman Syndrome: Discussed and averted in-podcast; cases involving non-white/young/female victims have been used.
- The trope is discussed at length in the Grim Sleeper episode: Most of his victims were black women who were in sex work or lived in low income parts of Los Angeles, and it’s clear that racism and classism by the LAPD screwed up the investigation. Karen and Georgia point out that if his targets were white women from wealthy neighborhoods, the Grim Sleeper would have been caught decades ago.
- They also discuss this at the end of an episode about the murder of Laci Peterson: A year before her death, another pregnant woman named Elena Hernandez went missing and was found dead, along with her five year old son, who has never been found dead or alive. But in contrast to Peterson (a middle class white woman), Elena was a Hispanic working class woman who has came to the US as a teenager. Her death became a cold case despite her boyfriend being a likely suspect and was essentially a blip in the local news cycle, while Laci received national attention and a vigil. Karen and Georgia admit that they didn’t even know about Elena until they were researching Laci’s case.
- "No. Just… No" Reaction: Karen has this to a listener story about a family discovering their house was built on top of a massive snake den, particularly the part where the snakes had somehow gotten into the walls and the water supply.That is... that is a n-- that is... This is the most fucked-up thing. How is it possible. I hate its guts.
- Not Now, Kiddo: Karen once described a time from her childhood where she was playing with matches and lit her bed on fire, but her mom was on the phone when she tried to tell her so she got waved off until it was about a three-foot radius.
- Police Are Useless: Everywhere. Major examples include the Grim Sleeper episode and the episode discussing the disappearance of Johnny Gosch.
- Pun-Based Title: Early episodes were titled using puns based on the episode number. Eventually they switched to naming episodes after particularly memorable quotes or moments from the show.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: Elvis.
- Running Gag: At live shows: "And here he is now!"
- "STEVEN! CUT THAT!"
- "Why, there hasn't been an [X] in these parts for twenty-five years!"
- Suddenly singing about any given joke.
- Karen's fake drunk voice.
- When any amount of money comes up in a story from several decades earlier, they'll ask how much that is in today's money and often come up with a ridiculously high value. Later on this expanded to inflating time as well.
- Whenever a university or college is mentioned, they'll try to create their sports team. It always starts with "the fighting..." and is finished off by either a reference from earlier in the episode or simply whatever noun they can think of.
- Scam Religion: On Scientology: "You're in a cult, call your dad."
- Serial Killer: Both high and low profile ones are covered.
- Signing-Off Catchphrase: Stay sexy. And don't get murdered! GOODBYE!
- "Elvis, you want a cookie?" "MEOWWOWWLLRRL."
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: Both Karen and Georgia, leading one listener's dad to call MFM the "Fuck Word Murder Mystery Show."
- Sympathetic Murder Backstory: Downplayed; while Karen and Georgia will discuss any abuse, mental illness, or head trauma the killer has been through, they never use it to excuse their actions or
woobify them. - Team Pet: Georgia's cats, Elvis, Mimi and Dot (but especially Elvis).
- Vitriolic Best Buds: While Karen and Georgia do bully Steven, it's all in good jest and they are just as quick to say that they appreciate the hard work he does for them.
- Wham Episode: “Little Bandit & Pirate George”: Georgia reveals that Elvis passed away from illness on December 10th, 2020.
- Byeeeeeeeee!
