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Small Town Murder

#583 - Charming Serial Killer - Kirkland, Washington

Thu, 03 Apr 2025

Description

This week, in Kirkland, Washington, what first appears to be a simple, yet horrifying murder, turns into a serial killer, stalking the area, and leaving women posed in terrible & suggestive positions. This posing makes everyone sure that they're dealing with one killer. This killer is known as "charming & likable", with many friends, and even connections to the police. But he's also a ruthless murderer, who would never stop, unless he was caught!!Along the way, we find out that Costco's signature brand comes from an actual place, that charm, and likability can only go so far when you turn into a serial killer, and that you definitely never want to be labeled as a "sadistic necrophile"!!New episodes every Thursday!Donate at: patreon.com/crimeinsports or go to paypal.com and use our email: crimeinsports@gmail.comGo to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things Small Town Murder & Crime In Sports!Follow us on...twitter.com/@murdersmallfacebook.com/smalltownpodinstagram.com/smalltownmurderAlso, check out James & Jimmie's other show, Crime In Sports! On Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Wondery, Wondery+, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Transcription

Chapter 1: What is the main topic of this episode on Small Town Murder?

00:48 - 01:27 James Petrigallo

This week in Kirkland, Washington, what seems like one horrifying but simple murder quickly turns into a serial killer stalking the area and escalating his horrible acts to a Ted Bundy level of brutality. Welcome to Small Town Murder. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder. Yay! Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed. My name is James Petrigallo. I'm here with my co-host.

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01:27 - 01:50 James Petrigallo

I'm Jimmy Wissman. Thank you, folks, so much for joining us today on another absolutely insane, brutal, and awful and hilarious episode of Small Town Murder. We have a crazy episode for you today, another serial killer in our midst, and a really strange one, too. Just an odd guy, and lucky he was caught when he did. Put it that way. We'll get into all of that and more.

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01:51 - 02:08 James Petrigallo

But first, head over to ShutUpAndGiveMeMurder.com. Get your tickets not only for regular live shows. which in May we're in Chicago at the Riviera. Get your tickets right now. St. Louis is sold out in May. Also, the virtual live show, April the 19th. It's the 420 virtual live show.

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02:08 - 02:23 James Petrigallo

It takes place Saturday, April 19th, and you can buy it, watch it, do whatever you want with it for two weeks after that. So you can watch it over and over, do anything you want anywhere in the world. With internet, you can watch this just like a regular live show, except you're wherever the hell you want to be.

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00:00 - 00:00 Unknown Speaker

Wherever that is.

00:00 - 00:00 James Petrigallo

We're going to have the screen, the pictures, the costumes. I'm going to force Jimmy to smoke out of crazy contraptions. It'll be a wild time. Can't wait for that. And like I said, get your tickets also for the rest of the year because... They are going fast and a lot of the dates are sold out like after the summer. So get those right now. Shut up and give me murder dot com.

00:00 - 00:00 James Petrigallo

Also listen to our other two shows, which are crime in sports, which if you haven't heard, if you haven't listened to, you don't have to like sports, especially what we're doing now. It's like a 10 parter on Evil Knievel. So you don't need to like sports. You just need to like crazy people who do insane things and want to hear us make fun of them. So definitely check that out.

00:00 - 00:00 James Petrigallo

And also your stupid opinions. Which is absolutely hilarious when we go over one-star reviews and things like that from all over the internet. And then, if that's not enough, you need Patreon. There you go. Patreon.com slash Crime in Sports is where you get all of the bonus material. Anybody $5 a month or above, you're going to get tons of stuff. Tons.

00:00 - 00:00 James Petrigallo

You're going to get hundreds of episodes that you've never heard before immediately upon subscription of bonus stuff. And then you get new stuff every other week. One crime and sports, one small town murder. You get it all. This week, we're going to talk about for crime and sports, some cheating scandals and things like that.

Chapter 2: How does Kirkland, Washington relate to Costco's brand?

04:00 - 04:12 James Petrigallo

Long book, and it's the craziest story I've ever heard in my life, honestly. It's insane. Edge of your seat. You think it's a Sherry Papini fake kidnapping situation, then you don't, and then you do again. It's the craziest thing you ever want to hear.

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04:12 - 04:14 Jimmie Whisman

It's the deepest creek you've ever been in.

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04:14 - 04:36 James Petrigallo

It's so wild, man. We'll get into all that. Patreon.com slash crime in sports. And you get a shout out at the end of the regular show as well. That said, disclaimer time. It's a comedy show, everybody. We are comedians. Now, that doesn't mean anything in this show is not real. Every last little detail is real. Nothing's embellished for comic effect or any garbage like that.

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04:36 - 04:40 James Petrigallo

This is meticulously researched stuff. And we're going to find places for some humor.

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00:00 - 00:00 Unknown Speaker

Oh, for sure.

00:00 - 00:00 James Petrigallo

You might go, how does that happen? Very easily. There's a lot of dumb things to make fun of in this. Here's what we don't do, though. We don't make fun of the victims or the victims' families.

00:00 - 00:00 Jimmie Whisman

Why is that, James?

00:00 - 00:00 James Petrigallo

Because we're assholes. But? But we're not scumbags. See how that goes? That's how it works. But otherwise, there's plenty to make fun of. First of all, someone going, I think I can get away with murder. This seems pretty easy. When you have no experience doing that, probably a bad idea. That right there is going to get made fun of and a whole lot of other things like that.

00:00 - 00:00 James Petrigallo

But if you think that true crime and comedy should never, ever go together, then maybe we're not for you, but maybe we are. You should check it out. I think we're for everybody. We're for the children, damn it. Small town murders for the children. No, it's not. One thing it's not for is the children. It's to protect the children. It's to protect the children. Yeah, there you go.

Chapter 3: What are the demographics and crime rates like in Kirkland?

07:55 - 07:56 Jimmie Whisman

That's helpful.

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07:56 - 08:00 James Petrigallo

Now, Costco previously had its headquarters in Kirkland.

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08:02 - 08:02 Unknown Speaker

Oh.

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08:02 - 08:10 James Petrigallo

Headquarters are in a different place, but they kept the namesake of the Kirkland Signature store brand. That's because that's where they were based out of. That's the only reason why.

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00:00 - 00:00 Jimmie Whisman

Yeah, well, you've got to keep the name because otherwise people won't know that it's the same shop.

00:00 - 00:00 James Petrigallo

What the hell is that? Yeah, Walmart's got Great Value stuff at Kirkland. Is it Great Value? Yeah, Great Value. We've done several on your stupid opinions, like the Great Value pizza.

00:00 - 00:00 Unknown Speaker

Oh, right, right, right.

00:00 - 00:00 James Petrigallo

So reviews of this town. We've never been there. Let's find out what the people think. Here's five stars, and there's a lot of good reviews of this town, too. There's tons of good ones.

00:00 - 00:00 Jimmie Whisman

You're not a Costco shopper, are you?

Chapter 4: What is the gruesome discovery made in Kirkland?

18:28 - 18:58 James Petrigallo

So there's also a harvest festival and says save the date for Kirkland's fourth annual harvest festival. And it takes place at a beach. It features food trucks. We got live music by Roman, R-O-E-M-E-N, Roman.com. And yeah, they're really in favor of Roe versus Wade. They're just they're really the Roman. Yeah. And the whereabouts of the Roman and the whereabouts.

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18:58 - 19:23 James Petrigallo

That's a band and also a band called 24 Madison. All right. Don't get your dress out, guys. That's where we'll be practicing if you need to find us later. And activities for children at the Kids Corral with two Ks. It's a kid and then corral with a K. Luckily, it's not like the, you know, could have been a lot with the Kirkland Kids Corral. Could have gotten real ugly real fast, so I'm glad there.

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19:24 - 19:26 James Petrigallo

There's also a cornhole tournament, of course.

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19:27 - 19:27 Unknown Speaker

Sure.

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00:00 - 00:00 James Petrigallo

Register your team at, you go to KirklandParks.net and you search cornhole, it says. Just pop cornhole in your query search there and see what happens, everybody.

00:00 - 00:00 Jimmie Whisman

Throw cornhole in your search engine.

00:00 - 00:00 James Petrigallo

i love that so much do it with your pants off you're gonna need it you are gonna need it for sure holy shit crime rate in this town uh what we're interested in here property crime now this is a very expensive area so i would yeah i would assume zero it should be low but that's kind of where the riffraff goes to steal shit too

00:00 - 00:00 James Petrigallo

But like I would I would assume in like a neighborhood like that, like remember when we went to we went to do some shit in L.A. We went and found O.J. 's house. We were driving around Brentwood at some every turn we made. You just expected three cops to pull up on us and tell us to get the fuck out of there because we're scumbags and don't belong here. Right.

00:00 - 00:00 Unknown Speaker

Yeah.

Chapter 5: Who is George Waterfield Russell Jr., and what is his background?

43:49 - 43:49 Jimmie Whisman

Thank you.

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47:42 - 48:04 James Petrigallo

So it was well hidden in the woods above the old Islander Tavern behind that, concealed with blackberry bushes, vine maples, and a prickly aggravation called Devil's Club. That's from a book that we'll mention later on. George said that Boris would be his first and only visitor. He said this fort was off limits to the world, quote unquote. That's what George said. This is my private area.

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48:05 - 48:19 James Petrigallo

So he's got that. He's got his own little lair. Now, in school, he became a real loud, boisterous kid, very funny, kind of class clown kind of a kid. But very charming, too. Even the teachers liked him, even though he was a class clown.

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48:19 - 48:19 Unknown Speaker

Really?

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00:00 - 00:00 James Petrigallo

Yeah. Very high IQ, very shitty grades.

00:00 - 00:00 Unknown Speaker

Hmm.

00:00 - 00:00 James Petrigallo

Way more concise. Sounds like a comedian. Very... Smart guy, but not here. Not here. Not in this place. So he had the... Like this book says, he had the vocabulary of an English teacher's son because mom's an English teacher, but couldn't really make that into a coherent paper or a thought or a report or an essay.

00:00 - 00:00 James Petrigallo

His teachers liked him, though, and Mercer Island also is a very good school system because... Very rich up there. Eighth grade science teacher described him as, quote, bright, but immature, small for his age and see hyper all over the place. You couldn't get mad at him, though. He wasn't the least bit malicious. He kept us all laughing, but he just wasn't interested in schoolwork.

00:00 - 00:00 James Petrigallo

He wanted to play. As long as I knew him, he was a playful little boy.

Chapter 6: What early behaviors did George exhibit that hint at his criminal future?

67:20 - 67:29 James Petrigallo

But they said that they also called him Chicken George or The Mouth because he chattered a lot and he would always, when he's playing basketball, would always say he got fouled on every play.

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67:29 - 67:30 Unknown Speaker

Oh, okay.

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67:31 - 67:53 James Petrigallo

So they said he was a game player, but it wasn't basketball. It was chess, backgammon, checkers, poker, things like that. Thoughts, cerebral things, cerebral things. They said that he was so skilled that he would complain to friends that he had to play beneath his skill to get a game with these fucking people. He his friend Tom Hagar loved hanging out with him.

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67:53 - 68:11 James Petrigallo

He said, quote, He was so bright, so entertaining. He had an incredible memory. He wanted to be a writer and kept an ongoing list of our dead schoolmates. What? There's a whole, I'm not going to go through it because it's like four pages, but it's all of these kids have died from like weird accidents that happened to rich kids. You know what I mean?

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00:00 - 00:00 James Petrigallo

Like fucking skiing accidents and like kids killing themselves and.

00:00 - 00:00 Jimmie Whisman

Horse collision and polo.

00:00 - 00:00 James Petrigallo

Yeah, tried a dressage accident. You know how things go when you're rich. Kids doing shit like that, crashing their parents' Porsches. One kid actually, this is a fucking thing that happened, he cranked up his parents' very expensive car, him and his girlfriend did it, popped Freebird on the 8-track, cranked it up and ran into a wall as hard as they could and killed themselves. Oh, my. Suicide.

00:00 - 00:00 James Petrigallo

Suicide with Freebird fucking blaring through the A-track.

00:00 - 00:00 Jimmie Whisman

That's a crazy suicide.

Chapter 7: How did George's relationships and behaviors evolve during his teenage years?

104:01 - 104:04 Jimmie Whisman

Oh, he's not light-skinned?

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104:04 - 104:04 James Petrigallo

No.

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104:04 - 104:05 Jimmie Whisman

It's the behavior.

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104:05 - 104:28 James Petrigallo

You act, yep. Wow. So they said that he had a few flare-ups. He didn't like them either. He thought they were beneath him, the jail guys there. One of the prisoners said when George acted like a brother, quote unquote, he was doing an impression of a black guy, basically. Yeah, it's weird. He's basically like Carlton from Fresh Prince.

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00:00 - 00:00 Jimmie Whisman

It's almost racist, yeah.

00:00 - 00:00 James Petrigallo

Yeah, so they said that they called him Oreo all the time. They called him House N-Word. They called him Tom, which is short for Uncle Tom. And they called him a snitch, too.

00:00 - 00:00 Jimmie Whisman

Oh, no.

00:00 - 00:00 James Petrigallo

So, yeah, they said if guys that didn't know him came up and talked to him in, like, slang and street shit, he would look at them because he didn't understand. He was like, I don't know what you're talking about, which they were like, all right, Oreo, and then that would be that. Jesus. So, yeah, he said he enunciated and things he said, he would say that this didn't happen. It transpired.

00:00 - 00:00 James Petrigallo

It transpired. That transpired. He didn't say I graduated. He said I was graduated. You know, proper English. You know, I'm not in jail. I'm incarcerated. I don't talk to people. I interact with them. Uses words like consensus of opinion and shit like that, which. It doesn't get a lot of shit thrown around jail, probably, I would think. So he 1978 ish. He's out of jail.

Chapter 8: What illegal activities did George engage in as he grew older?

110:55 - 111:14 James Petrigallo

Very weird. Very, very weird. Also, they said he had a unique way of using his police connections to gain women's trust. That's why a lot of times these serial killers pose as cops. They pull women over like Ted Bundy did that. Other people did it. It's terrifying. They said it worked a lot of the times.

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111:14 - 111:33 James Petrigallo

But if his advances fell flat, he'd take the rejection personally and get really angry and be like all heated for like 10 minutes before he'd calm down and then go to the next check. He couldn't just be like, oh, well. So they said his temper was starting to worry his friends. He couldn't hold a legitimate job.

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111:33 - 111:56 James Petrigallo

He carried all his possessions, including his collection of porn mags in a duffel bag and in paper bags. And his daytime home was the apartment of whoever the fuck he could was his friend at the time, basically. And then he told everybody he worked as an undercover cop at night. Wow. So people liked him still because he showed that good side of him. It's great.

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111:57 - 112:17 James Petrigallo

But people said he showed no emotion, no guilt, growing hostility toward women. He was a growing obsession with sex. They said he'd hit on anybody. Didn't matter. A bartender started calling him the schizo because his personality changed so profoundly after drinks. He's also one of these guys. You get booze in the system.

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00:00 - 00:00 Unknown Speaker

Angry drunk?

00:00 - 00:00 James Petrigallo

Different guy. They said cool, lovable George annoyed women and barely avoided fights with their boyfriends. He seemed to revel in baiting females, then slipping away to stir up trouble somewhere else. A friend said George tried to surround himself with girls, but they never really liked him. You only had to watch him for five minutes to see it. Nobody knew why.

00:00 - 00:00 James Petrigallo

Probably because he's like 5'1", I would assume.

00:00 - 00:00 Jimmie Whisman

Boost probably has a crazy effect on that guy.

00:00 - 00:00 James Petrigallo

Oh, my God. Yeah, he comes up. He's like a tiny, he's like a drunken dwarf. Nobody wants to fucking, who wants to bang that guy? You know what I mean? Vern Troyer was the only one that could pull that off.

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