MFM Minisode 502

**Karen Kilgariff** (0:06)
My Favorite Murder Hello and welcome to My Favorite Murder.

**Georgia Hardstark** (0:19)
That's Georgia Hardstark.

**Karen Kilgariff** (0:20)
That's, nope, that's Karen Kilgariff. And guess what?

**Georgia Hardstark** (0:23)
That's the other introduction.

**Karen Kilgariff** (0:24)
And this is the mini-sode.

**Georgia Hardstark** (0:25)
And this is, you're the one that doesn't understand. This is the mini-sode.

**Karen Kilgariff** (0:29)
From your letters to our mouths. To God's ears. And God, then to God's ears. We're the filter. We're your filter.

**Georgia Hardstark** (0:35)
God is waiting to hear what we have to tell him.

**Karen Kilgariff** (0:38)
But we're waiting to hear what you have to tell us. It's complicated.

**Georgia Hardstark** (0:41)
Do you understand why you have to pay us $29.99?

**Karen Kilgariff** (0:46)
You go.

**Georgia Hardstark** (0:47)
Okay. Oh, good. Cause this is a nice kickoff.
The subject line of this email is Grandma's Spilling Family Secrets.

**Karen Kilgariff** (0:54)
Yes.

**Georgia Hardstark** (0:55)
Hot Goss.
Hi, y'all. My parents and I live in the rural town of Barr, Massachusetts on a 50-acre plot of land that was bought about 80 years ago by my great-grandmother's older brother. When he died, he gave the land to my great-grandmother and she split it up between her three children. They split it up to their children, one of them being my father, Capital S.

**Karen Kilgariff** (1:18)
I was like, who is it? Jeffrey Dahmer?
It's just going to be some, who's going to end up?

**Georgia Hardstark** (1:24)
None other than my father. The plot of Land Stealer himself. Okay, since I was a baby, I've always had my grandmother and grandfather living next door to me and family and cousins and second cousins always around. It's very fun. I would often walk next door and spend time with my grandma during the day. What a dream. We would have a few cups of tea and talk about just everything from her childhood, political views, the birds, the drama of our small town, parentheses less than 5,000 people and anything you could think of. One day, I brought up our family history. Before my grandpa passed in 2018, he was huge on genealogy and creating our family tree. One of the facts that he was most proud of was tracing his side of the family's history back to the Mayflower and becoming a member of the Mayflower Society. They love that shit. They do. The Blue Bloods love it.
He made so many binders of our family tree and put together chart after chart of different families and connected it to ours. On this fateful day, grandma had my grandpa's binders out and was moving them around. And me being a murderino asked her if we had any family secrets or murderers in those books. And she instantly said, Oh, yes, no one ever told you about how we're related to Bathsheba Ruggles Spooner.
Me having no idea who she was talking about was instantly interested. Does that sound familiar at all?

**Karen Kilgariff** (2:42)
Yeah, you covered her?

**Georgia Hardstark** (2:44)
We then proceed to find her father in grandpa's genealogy binder, General Timothy Ruggles, the loyalist in the Revolutionary War, and one of the most hated generals in the area. Remember that? He was like a British loyalist?

**Karen Kilgariff** (2:57)
Yes.

**Georgia Hardstark** (2:58)
He lived only a town away from Barr in Hardwick, Mass. From that point, we found Bathsheba and grandma told me her story. You covered it in MFM 539, it keeps getting ruined.

**Karen Kilgariff** (3:08)
Oh, with the 16-year-old fuckboy? Yes.

**Georgia Hardstark** (3:13)
Bathsheba was the first woman to be executed in America following the murder of her husband, Joshua Spooner.

**Karen Kilgariff** (3:20)
Yeah, neckbeard.

**Georgia Hardstark** (3:21)
Yes, neckbeard stuff. Bathsheba was five months pregnant by her 16-year-old lover, Ezra Ross, at the time of her death. After telling me, grandma pulled out a signed copy of a book she'd gotten about Bathsheba called Murdered By His Wife, written by Deborah Navas, an AVAS.
The fact that I can bond even more with my grandma over true crime is an amazing thing. She's such a strong woman who married the love of her life at 18
Grandpa was in the Air Force for over 20 years, and she traveled and lived wherever he got stationed. She also raised and cared for four boys, almost all on her own at times, because my grandpa would be off around the world. She's truly an amazing woman, and I'm so glad I still have her in my life.

**Karen Kilgariff** (4:02)
Oh, lucky.

**Georgia Hardstark** (4:03)
Stay sexy and don't get murdered, Julia.

**Karen Kilgariff** (4:05)
Julia. So it was her, what, great grandma or what was the connection?