The Irish Heiress: Ep. 6, The Family
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Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, the host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday. Each week, you'll hear brand new stories, firsthand accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Molly Conger, host of Weird Little Guys, a new podcast from Cool Zone Media on iHeartRadio. I've spent almost a decade researching right-wing extremism, digging into the lives of people you wouldn't be wrong to call monsters. But if Scooby-Doo taught us one thing, it's that there's a guy under that monster mask. The monsters in our political closets aren't some unfathomable evil. They're just some weird guy. So join me every Thursday for a look under the mask at the weird little guys trying to destroy America.

Listen to Weird Little Guys on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey y'all, Dr. Joy here. I invite you to join me every Wednesday on the Therapy for Black Girls podcast, a weekly chat about mental health and personal development, where my expert guests and I discuss the unique challenges and triumphs faced by Black women through the lens of self-care, pop culture, and building the best version of you. So if you're looking for more ways to incorporate wellness into your life, listen to the Therapy for Black Girls podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hello and welcome to Haunting, Purgatory's premiere podcast. I'm your host, Teresa. We'll be bringing you different ghost stories each week straight from the person who experienced it firsthand. Some will be unsettling, some unnerving, some even downright terrifying. But all of them will be totally true.

Listen to Haunting on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Meet the real woman behind the tabloid headlines in a personal podcast that delves into the life of the notorious Tori Spelling as she takes us through the ups and downs of her sometimes glamorous, sometimes chaotic life in marriage. I just filed for divorce. Whoa. I said the words that I've said like in my head for like 16 years.

Listen to Misspelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Certain portions of what you're about to hear have been dramatized based on real-life events, eyewitness accounts, and court records. Mayor Smith's trail of cons circles far and wide.

She was a brilliant woman. From witchcraft... She would use a lot of dragon's blood. She would do love spells. She would do binding spells. To blackmailing married men. I want you to send the money! End of argument! Even shaking down a Los Angeles politician. She wanted me to put a bug in his office and she was going to buy the bug.

And Mare's knack for drafting unwitting accomplices is epic. And I was holding the cash in my hand, helping her deposit it in the machine. More and more of Mare's victims keep finding my blog and calling me up from all over the country and from all over the world.

I got a call from a detective in Northern Ireland, found my blog. He'd been looking for Marianne Smith for 10 years. 10 years? That's a long time to be looking for someone. So she must have really, like, did some damage. I did not see this one coming at all. She lived in Northern Ireland. I had no idea. I thought the whole Irish thing was a lie. I'm Jonathan Walton, and this is Queen of the Con, Episode 6, The Family. ♪

Just when I think I'm close to solving the Rubik's Cube of mayor's cons, I uncover a whole other level. So was there any truth to the Irish thing? Was Mayor Irish at all or was it all just bullshit? Like at all? My buddy Evan Goldstein is having trouble keeping up.

So that's what gave her, like, you know, these little phrases, these words, the things that would make it feel credible. Yes.

To find out how Mayor Smith, a.k.a. Marianne Smith, a.k.a. Marianne Andel, Marianne Welch, Marianne Clark, Marianne O'Clary, and Mayor Ellis wound up living in Northern Ireland for almost 10 years, I go straight to the source. Telling people that, you know, she's Irish royalty when there's no Irish royal family, it's bizarre.

Or rather, the source's daughter, 30-year-old Chelsea Welch. Today, she's a bright and hardworking teacher in Tennessee. But her childhood was marked by chaotic instability, growing up a victim of her mother's many scams. Up until we moved overseas, she just bounced from job to job. I remember she worked at a pet store for a while.

She worked at like a recovery center. She worked at Denso, which is a huge manufacturing company in Tennessee that works with Japan. Just any job. She usually worked with temp agencies, but she could never hold a job down. And I remember one time she actually got fired from a job. And I would love to this day to know what the real reason was because I remember she told me that it was my fault.

Being raised by a con artist, always on the move, takes a heavy toll on Chelsea. I mean, now she's a beautiful and kind young woman who looks nothing like her mother and is nothing like her mother. Things have really turned a corner for Chelsea. She's getting married next month. She's ambitious and unflinchingly honest. But she's also super suspicious of people, especially strangers. I don't believe anything anyone says.

And growing up with Mayor Smith as a mother wasn't just hard. It was torture. I was being severely abused. I tried to report that she was violent, but my mom, she's not an idiot. Like, my mom didn't do things like punch me in the face and, you know, give me black eyes or break bones. She would, like, kick me in the head and, like,

kick me like in other places and it you could not tell by looking at me that I was being physically abused like she was not ever doing anything that would have left any traces or signs she would selectively choose a place that bruise it like on your head with a full head of hair you can't tell I did always think it was weird I'm like how am I always getting the crap beat out of me but you have nothing to show for it mm-hmm

Chelsea's mother is not born in Ireland. Marianne Elizabeth Andal is born in Bangor, Maine on July 28th, 1969. She left the state of Maine when she was 18, but my grandparents lived there until like the late 80s.

Mayer joins the military at that point as a Navy corpsman, which is like an entry-level hospital assistant, and lives briefly in Sarasota, Florida, where she's charged with forgery and grand theft. Then, Knoxville, Tennessee, where she's charged with fraud, passing bad checks, and shoplifting. She also lives for a short time in Washington State, Virginia, Illinois, and Michigan.

My mom seemed really young and immature to me. I thought that she was just odd compared to other adults. I thought that she dressed weird. Her demeanor was weird because she had that still needing to be a teenager mentality. Chelsea, though, is not Mare's first child. Mare has Courtney Lynn Welch in August of 1989. Her husband at the time is Jeff Welch, a man she meets while stationed in Michigan.

Two years later, Chelsea enters the fray. I was born in Illinois, but that's the only time I've ever been to Illinois. And shortly after Chelsea is born, Jeff Welch files for divorce because he says Mare is a pathological liar and she cheated on him. You see, Chelsea is not his biological daughter. In fact, to this day, Mare refuses to tell Chelsea who her real father is.

What were some of the stories you got when you would ask, "Who's my father?" Oh, God. Well, first of all, the logical train of thought would have been that my sister and I had the same dad, because when I was born, she was still married to his dad. She gave me her married last name. Like, I still have that last name. But my mom... So they were all in the Navy.

So my mom told my grandparents that, like, my dad died in the military, which wouldn't be a far-off example because I was born during Desert Storm. So there were, like, actual deployments and violence. So that wouldn't be a total crazy lie. One time she did tell my grandparents that he was African-American. I look like I could have come from Sweden.

Yes, you're very fair-skinned, blonde. And then apart from that, she's just kind of danced around it and refused to tell me. I think that either my sister's dad knows and doesn't want to tell me or my mom just like had an affair or one night stand. One of the two.

A Michigan court quickly declares Mayer an unfit mother and awards full custody of Chelsea's sister, Courtney, to Mayer's soon-to-be ex-husband, Jeff Welch, which is rare in family court and very telling because most judges bend over backwards to give custody to the mother unless something is really wrong with her.

I suffer from CPTSD and I have really severe anxiety. And so one of the main ways that my anxiety manifests itself is I get really angry. And when I get really angry, I used to like have to have a physical response to that anger. Whether it was like punching a hole in a wall or just like breaking something. Like I did not know how to release anger in a non-physical way.

And until I just decided to go to therapy and anger management, it really scared me because I was out of control when I would get mad. And it wasn't, I wasn't getting mad at big normal things. It was little everyday life things that adults should know how to deal with competently and calmly. But because my mom was always at a level 10,

I did not know how to regulate my emotions. So I would say that her influence hurt me more on the personality side because I had no coping skills and it heavily influenced all of my relationships, my ability to succeed. I mean, it was a lot.

After your entire world is flipped upside down,

From unbelievable romantic betrayals... The love that was so real for me was always just a game for him. To betrayals in your own family... When I think about my dad, oh, well, he is a sociopath. Financial betrayal...

This is not even the part where he steals millions of dollars. And life or death deceptions. She's practicing how she's going to cry when the police calls her after they kill me. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Molly Conger, host of Weird Little Guys, a new podcast from Cool Zone Media on iHeartRadio.

I've spent almost a decade researching right-wing extremism, digging into the lives of people you wouldn't be wrong to call monsters. But if Scooby-Doo taught us one thing, it's that there's a guy under that monster mask. I've collected the stories of hundreds of aspiring little Hitlers of the suburbs, from the Nazi cop who tried to join ISIS, to the National Guardsman plotting to assassinate the Supreme Court, to the Satanist soldier who tried to get his own unit blown up in Turkey. The monsters in our political closets aren't some unfathomable evil,

They're just some weird guy. And you can laugh. Honestly, I think you have to. Seeing these guys for what they are doesn't mean they're not a threat. It's a survival strategy. So join me every Thursday for a look under the mask at the weird little guys trying to destroy America. Listen to Weird Little Guys on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. ...schools and girls, and welcome to Haunting, Purgatory's premiere podcast for all things afterlife.

I'm your host, Teresa. We'll be bringing you different ghost stories each week, straight from the person who experienced it firsthand. Some will be unsettling. When she was with her imaginary friend, she would turn and look at you, and you felt like something else was looking at you too. Some unnerving. The more I looked at it, I realized that the thumb looked more like a claw, like a demon.

Some even downright terrifying. The things that I saw, heard, felt in that house were purely demonic. But all of them will be totally true. Listen to Haunting on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you live and get your podcasts.

Meet the real woman behind the tabloid headlines in a personal podcast that delves into the life of the notorious Tori Spelling as she takes us through the ups and downs of her sometimes glamorous, sometimes chaotic life and marriage. I don't think he knew how big it would be, how big the life I was given and live is.

I think he was like, oh, yeah, things come and go. But with me, it never came and went. Is she Donna Martin or a down-and-out divorcee? Is she living in Beverly Hills or a trailer park? In a town where the lines are blurred, Tori is finally going to clear the air in the podcast Misspelling. When a woman has nothing to lose, she has everything to gain. I just filed for divorce. Whoa. I said the words. Yeah.

That I've said like in my head for like 16 years. Wild. Listen to Miss Spelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session, 24 hours. BPM 110.

120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm.

In 1992, Chelsea is a defenseless baby, and Mayer abruptly leaves Michigan and her now-ex-husband Jeff Welch. She returns to Tennessee and gives Chelsea to her parents. Then she disappears.

She was totally absent for the first couple years of my life, and it was a situation where people didn't know where she was. So not only was she gone when I would say, you know, where is my mom? People would genuinely answer with, they didn't know.

Mayor eventually returns and tries to take Chelsea back. But courts order Mayor to share custody of Chelsea with her grandparents. Because a Tennessee judge has serious doubts about Mayor's mothering ability. But Mayor's not having it. She pulls every dirty trick in the book to get that decision reversed. She took my grandparents, who had been taking care of me for years, and

Wow. And how old were you at this point when that happened? I would have been about five or six.

She tried to get you to say you were molested. I mean, she never said, like, you have to say this, I know this isn't true, but, like, with all things with her, she would just kind of present something to you in such a confusing way, like gaslighting to the extreme. She could almost convince you that things...

things happened when you knew in your right frame of mind they never did. But she just knew how to get inside people's heads and just make you even just question yourself and your own reality. Thankfully, the courts don't believe Mayer's molestation lie, and she's forced to share custody of Chelsea with her parents, Chelsea's grandparents. Because obviously, since she had been out of my life for several years, they weren't just going to let her

take me home. They wanted to see her and see that she was well and okay, and they did not deny her access to me. They just said, you can't take her home full-time yet. So Chelsea is raised for the first part of her life in Merville, Tennessee. And even though Chelsea isn't living with Mare full-time, she still notices her mother's insatiable urge to invent stories. I mean, she was always a pathological liar. Just...

making things up constantly. The thing is, my mom is always far away from the place that she's lying about. So she grew up in Maine, but I grew up in Tennessee. So she's lying to a bunch of people in Tennessee about stuff that happened in Maine.

So she's always make sure that it's hard to dispute. But having me in the mix every day would have made it more difficult if I would have spoken up. But my favorite lie that I just could not stand the most, because I never understood how anyone believed it, she used to tell people that she was a figure skater growing up.

Which you would believe because she lived in one of the most northern states. But she couldn't leave it at that. She couldn't just say, oh, I figure skated. No, she was going to go Olympic. But my grandmother supposedly didn't allow her to do that because she was jealous. And first of all, that's crazy. Because what kind of parent would do that?

She would say that to people all the time and I would want so badly to be like, you don't know how to ice skate, much less do anything. That is one of those weird cons because some of the victims in Los Angeles told me that story that she was an Olympic skater. She was Olympic hopeful. No, I mean hopeful for a ticket to the Olympics maybe. But that's about it.

Mare may not have made it to the Olympics, but that doesn't mean she isn't going places. She absolutely is. She's just biding her time. How did your mother end up in Northern Ireland? We got a computer for the first time when I was like eight years old.

And she dated a man and he was from Northern Ireland and she met him. And I don't remember, they talked for quite a while. Online. So she's in Tennessee at this point. She meets Stephen Smith online, a guy living in Northern Ireland. And did she let you know what her plans are at that point? I mean, is it just going to be long distance forever? What was she saying about it? So at my 11th birthday party...

She hands me an envelope and there's plane tickets in it and it said where we were going and I was just like, oh, are we going to go visit Stephen? And in front of all my friends, she says, no, we're going to move there. And honestly, I don't know that I would have cared about moving. But what happened is she told me that I was not allowed to tell my grandparents.

So we went there at the beginning of the summer, and I knew we were moving. I wasn't allowed to say anything. And then she made me call them at the end of the summer and say, hey, we're staying here, and I'm going to go to school. And my grandparents were really upset. I can imagine. But they didn't protest because my mom made me call and make it seem like something that I was, like, okay with. And I was not okay.

She kind of like kidnapped you. Pretty much. I mean, technically she broke the custody agreement, but also that's a jurisdiction issue and the kind of money that you would have to spend to fight that. I mean, that she just kind of had my grandparents hands tied behind their back because for years she had been single. So now she had found a guy who was nice. So now that I'm older, I'm thinking they're probably thinking maybe this would be more stable. Yeah.

But for Chelsea, living in Northern Ireland with Mare is anything but stable. And Mare starts blaming Chelsea for everything wrong in her life. Even her own obesity. Your mom used to weigh like almost 300 pounds. Yeah. When she left to go to Northern Ireland to meet Stephen Smith, was she heavy then? Yes. Oh.

I didn't know that. Now, my mom told me that the reason that she gained weight was because of being on hormone replacement therapy after she had me. Because she had to have a hysterectomy after having me because I ruined the world, you know, everything. The day that I was born, the sky fell for her, I think.

I'm so sorry that happened to you. That's so messed up on so many levels. Yeah, it makes me mad. You know, mad not even for my situation, just God, you're a little girl to be told something like that. It's fucked up. I mean, it was bad. How did your mom get so thin then? Well, she had gastric bypass surgery. She went to Prague, I believe, and paid cash.

How many years into Northern Ireland did she leave to go to Prague for gastric bypass surgery? It would have been like six years. I mean, she didn't get really thin up until like my junior, senior year of high school. And that was the worst time ever because the worst thing you can give a narcissist is good looks. And it's like she became even worse after that.

And that attitude helps Mare con dozens of new victims.

Remember that recently unearthed audio recording? I play a piece of it for Chelsea to get her reaction, because this particular part of the recording is actually about Chelsea and her sister, Courtney, who was taken from Mare as a baby. But that's not the story Mare tells people in Los Angeles about her daughters. This is. There was a Christmas when my kids were young.

I think they were in first and second grade, in primary school no matter what. We were living in Belfast. And my family and I had a huge fight, and I decided that Christmas I didn't want to go to Galway. I was just going to spend me and Chelsea in Belfast because Courtney had to go home, and my family were telling me not to send her on the plane. And I knew if I didn't send her on the plane, I would be arrested.

if I came back to America, my ex-husband would have me arrested. I knew that. And I keep my word. If I tell you I'm gonna do something, I'm gonna do it no matter... I'm gonna cry. No matter what the sacrifice to me is, I'm going to do it at all costs. So, like, I was very upset. And my family were boycotting me because they were pissed they never got to spend Christmas with Courtney. And my gran said no one talked to Mary for Christmas.

So they sent all the Christmas presents to Chelsea and not one Christmas present for me that year And it was the hardest Christmas ever because of one present under the tree was from my girls and they had made like a milk carton candle and it was a ugly fucking candle I've ever seen in my life it really affected me because I was alone and

It was really hard for me to swallow that I was upset for getting a shitty present. But it was from the heart. I had to acknowledge to my daughters that they gave me the most beautiful present in the world, even though I was fucking furious. Furious! It honestly, like, it's making me have, like, a physical anger response. Like, I just want to hurt her. I have never been to Galway. God, I...

she is oh i hate her first of all i don't know how if if that story was true who the fuck cares that you as an adult didn't get a christmas present oh your kids got all the good like what the fuck some people go through that real life situation and like a family doesn't even send the kids presents and let me tell you this woman is like just the greediest

person ever like she would get mad when she didn't get like mother's day presents and things so there was never first of all this couldn't have happened because my sister and i weren't around each other

We were around each other when we were little babies. And then we didn't see each other again until I was 16. So we were certainly not together at a Christmas in the first and second grade. But it's just, even in her fake life, she's, if you really listen, she's still a terrible person. It was the worst candle ever, and I had to lie. Like,

What kind of mother says that? Like, ugh. Even her fake persona is a piece of shit if you pay enough attention.

Chelsea's real life with Mare, living in that part of the world, is not good. She sees things no child should ever see and does things no child should ever have to do. So the day that I got a call from a police detective in Northern Ireland saying that they've been looking for her for 10 years, I was shocked. What would have been your reaction if you got that call?

Not shocked at all. I knew for sure there was something fishy going on there, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday. Each week, you'll hear brand new stories, firsthand accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind.

Stories about regaining a sense of safety, a handle on reality after your entire world is flipped upside down. From unbelievable romantic betrayals. The love that was so real for me was always just a game for him. To betrayals in your own family. When I think about my dad, oh, well, he is a sociopath. Financial betrayal.

This is not even the part where he steals millions of dollars. And life or death deceptions. She's practicing how she's going to cry when the police calls her after they kill me. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Molly Conger, host of Weird Little Guys, a new podcast from Cool Zone Media on iHeartRadio.

I've spent almost a decade researching right-wing extremism, digging into the lives of people you wouldn't be wrong to call monsters. But if Scooby-Doo taught us one thing, it's that there's a guy under that monster mask. I've collected the stories of hundreds of aspiring little Hitlers of the suburbs, from the Nazi cop who tried to join ISIS, to the National Guardsman plotting to assassinate the Supreme Court, to the Satanist soldier who tried to get his own unit blown up in Turkey. The monsters in our political closets aren't some unfathomable evil,

They're just some weird guy. And you can laugh. Honestly, I think you have to. Seeing these guys for what they are doesn't mean they're not a threat. It's a survival strategy. So join me every Thursday for a look under the mask at the weird little guys trying to destroy America. Listen to Weird Little Guys on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. ...schools and girls, and welcome to Haunting, Purgatory's premiere podcast for all things afterlife.

I'm your host, Teresa. We'll be bringing you different ghost stories each week, straight from the person who experienced it firsthand. Some will be unsettling. When she was with her imaginary friend, she would turn and look at you, and you felt like something else was looking at you too. Some unnerving. The more I looked at it, I realized that the thumb looked more like a claw, like a demon.

Some even downright terrifying. The things that I saw, heard, felt in that house were purely demonic. But all of them will be totally true. Listen to Haunting on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you live and get your podcasts.

I don't think he knew how big it would be, how big the life I was given and live is.

I think he was like, oh, yeah, things come and go. But with me, it never came and went. Is she Donna Martin or a down-and-out divorcee? Is she living in Beverly Hills or a trailer park? In a town where the lines are blurred, Tori is finally going to clear the air in the podcast Misspelling. When a woman has nothing to lose, she has everything to gain. I just filed for divorce. Whoa, I said the words.

That I've said like in my head for like 16 years. Wild. Listen to Miss Spelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session, 24 hours. BPM 110.

120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm.

Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In early 2002, Mare arrives in Northern Ireland with Chelsea and moves in with Stephen Smith. What was Stephen Smith like? Totally not someone I would have ever pictured her with. They were like night and day. And I always thought that was weird. But obviously it's because she just pretended to be. She's really great at reading people.

You know, she knows what you're looking for, like not just romantically, but when she talks to people. I've seen it happen like at the flip of a dime. Like she knows how to be your best friend. She knows how to like intimidate and scare you very quickly. Like she just knows how to get in your head and under your skin. And she knows how to wrap Stephen Smith around her little finger because he quickly falls head over heels for Mare and marries her.

Chelsea says he's a good man, a postal worker, and he has a passion for racing greyhounds. By the time I was a senior in high school, we had about 15 to 17 dogs in our house.

Mare works a series of odd jobs in Northern Ireland and eventually gets stable employment as a broker at a British mortgage company. So I don't know how she did it or how she qualified because at this point I was still only about 13. But she worked for this big company out of England for what I think was a few years. I'm pretty sure that was the longest I had ever seen her have a job with like one place.

And then she started working with a smaller company that was kind of outside of Belfast. And that's when I think she started being able to do whatever she was doing. Yep. As usual, Mare is up to no good. And she actually uses Chelsea, her own daughter, to do some of her dirty work.

She did make friends with, like, a lot of her clients, like, personal friends. Like, she had one woman who, like, I babysat her kids. There was a couple people, like, I babysat for them. She would, like, hang out with them, and it was always...

I remember one of the, two of them were like moms whose husbands were like a little uninvolved. So it's always people that need saving. People that need help. Yes. That is the hallmark of every single con she's pulled. It's she offers to help. Yeah. Wow. Even from back then. So looking back, how does that make you feel? She essentially used you as bait in her con. Oh, she used me for all sorts of things.

I used to forge signatures on papers because, I mean, Northern Ireland is a small country, but it's very rural. So driving people live like way out there.

And so she would say, like, this paperwork has to be done by Monday and I don't have time to drive to this client's house. And if you don't sign this, they're not going to get their money because I am. Unfortunately, I can pretty much look at somebody's handwriting and copy it.

Did she teach you that skill? How do you learn something like that? It's weird. Whenever I was like a little kid, because I lived with like old people and I was an only child and I was trying to like learn cursive, I would like pick up things that my grandmother had written and like copied them.

And I liked handwriting and I was obsessed with the movie Harriet the Spy. So, I don't know, I had this, I had already had this weird thing about copying people's writing. And that sometimes makes me wonder if like the whole con artist thing is like a genetic trait. I had gotten grounded before for forging a note for school. And when she got the note back, she was like, I can't tell.

that this isn't my signature. She was impressed with your Harriet the Spy skills in mimicking other people's handwriting and signatures. Mm-hmm. And she drafted you. Yep.

And how old were you at this point? Do you recall when you were like forging signatures on documents? I mean, obviously, you don't know it's forging. Like your mother is explaining that this is OK. I just can't make the drive. We have to have these papers in. They're not going to get their money. You know, the fate of the world is in your hands. And you're a kid. It would have been like 14. Even when she worked for the bigger company, she would sometimes do that.

And sometimes I would think to myself, like, this is weird. And, like, I would have, like, worries that, you know, what if I get, like, I get in trouble and I get arrested. But when she asked me to do something, it was never an ask. It was...

It's not an option. Right. Do it or else. Wow. How many signatures do you think your mom made you forge? Is it like a couple, a dozen, a hundred? Was it a frequent occurrence? She would always have you signing stuff for her? At least once a week, I would be signing several papers.

And it was always like on a weekend or like a Sunday night because it was never, oh, just casually do this for me. It was always like an emergency scenario. And that's part of a scam too, because making things an emergency makes you want to help her.

Exactly. That's all part of the trick. And less apt to argue because if she wasn't talking about the person getting their money, you know, because in order for her to get paid, she would have made a commission. So she would say to me, like, if you don't get this, like, done, then I'm not going to get paid and, like, we'll lose this or that. I mean, she would just put...

like the weight of the world on my shoulders just to do something. And it wasn't that I thought we were scamming people. Like I believed her that I was just signing something that someone forgot to sign or a paper that she forgot. But I was worried about getting in trouble simply because I knew forging signatures was illegal.

It got to a point where I'm like, okay, I've done this a lot. Like, but for some reason, I never thought this person doesn't even know this paper exists. I just thought my mom was a total airheaded idiot. And that was honestly my opinion of her. So I believed that she was stupid enough to be so disorganized that she would just forget things.

But Mare, the mortgage broker, is in fact using Chelsea's Harriet the Spy-like signature spoofing skills to scam a bunch of her clients. Because the Northern Ireland police detective who finds my blog and calls me up in 2017... Hello, I'm trying to reach Mr. Jonathan Walton. ...provides the other half of that story, the facts and the figures part.

He says Mair, who was known as Mary Ann Smith, stole hundreds of thousands from dozens of victims in Northern Ireland, using her job as a mortgage broker and also impersonating a financial advisor. And now that Northern Ireland police know where she is, thanks to my blog, they're going to try and extradite her. The detective emails me days later, saying...

I have prepared a file for the prosecutors and just want to check what the situation is with your cases. I have spoken to my injured parties who are all still trying to recover financially and emotionally from their experience.

I didn't really get the sense that she was scamming people, but I knew like something was up because there would be times when my mom would be like rolling in money where we would get like whatever. I would just get handed a lot of cash to like go into town and spend money just

Just wads of cash. And she would just hand my friends wads of money sometimes. But now I just wonder, was that money? Like, was she scamming people? I have no idea what was going on. But all I know is that she would have either so much money she didn't know what to do with or nothing. There was never a steady middle.

And there never ever could be, because right before Mare leaves Northern Ireland in 2009, she disappears with a down payment of six people's homes. And she cons 20 other victims using multiple investment scams. One of those victims is an elderly woman who finds my blog and emails me. I too was a victim of Marianne Andel Smith as I knew her.

After reading your blog, I telephoned police. They confirmed they are reopening the case. I would like to see this woman brought to justice as she robbed me of my trust in people, which affected my whole being. She put me in a prison without bars and I feel she should be stopped so as not to do this to anyone else. I, like everybody else, need to know that justice is available to me in a world of corruption.

I am 66 years old and living in financial stress due to her deceit. And what's really upsetting is in 2009, before Mayor flees Northern Ireland, someone somehow tips her off and tells her that police are investigating her. She panics and she gets the hell out of Dodge, taking Chelsea and her husband, Stephen, with her. And in her mad dash to escape,

Mare does the unthinkable. Remember Stephen Smith's greyhounds? We had about 15 to 17 dogs in our house. My mom made my stepdad put all the dogs down. Oh, like kill them? Put them down. Oh my God. Because there wasn't time to rehome them. I don't know what happened, but I'm guessing that she probably told him a number of days that they had to be gone.

And so he had to do that. And then we packed what we could in suitcases and everything else got left in our house. The house just got completely abandoned. So she did not communicate with me about what was really going on. But I mean, obviously, you don't put all your animals down and just flee your home. Wow. I didn't know that. Jesus. That's just like that's I mean, that's just fucking evil.

I'll never forget that day because those dogs, I mean, they were his life. And he had already been through so much of just being married to her and just dealing with her lies. And he had to come too. And like, why would you want to be with her? This disturbing, no, no. This sickening revelation that Mare ordered Stephen to kill 17 of their dogs for no reason whatsoever.

stays with me for a long time. As a dog owner, I can't even imagine. It's obvious to me now. Mayor Smith was born without a soul. What does the rest of the family think about your mother, your uncles, your aunts? I mean, she's kind of been a persona non grata since I was a kid. She's came in and out of everybody's lives because of me. But once I turned 18 and we moved back here,

My stepdad actually ended up leaving her and living with my grandparents until he went back home. So obviously there's no love or loyalty to her. You should be like a drug addict, criminal, con artist. That's what you were raised to be. That wouldn't be surprising. But you turned out to be the opposite. You're this rule follower, law-abiding, talented, smart, hardworking, honest, kind person.

friendly person. How did you pull that off? I just think that for me, because I grew up with her in my face, I was like, gosh, I need to be anything but this.

When Mayor Smith, on the run from authorities in Northern Ireland, touches down on Tennessee soil in 2009, she's flush with cash. She had scammed close to $500,000 from 26 victims there. And her first plan of action stateside is to get her daughter, Courtney, back into her life the only way she knows how.

Randomly, one day, Mary Ann asked for Courtney's banking information. So Courtney gave it to her because she said, well, I haven't been in your life for the past 18 years. I want to do things to try to make things right. So she started sending money to Courtney's account. Joshua Askavish is married to Mare's first daughter, Courtney. At the time, Courtney is 18 and has only recently connected with her biological mother, Mare.

She hasn't seen her mother since she was a baby back in Michigan. What was Courtney's reaction to getting this money? What did she think it was for? Just basically Marianne's way of saying, I'm sorry, and let me buy my way back into your life. Yeah, that's what it sounds like, right? So, I mean, literally just literally trying to buy her. To that end, Mayer invites Courtney and Joshua, who live in Michigan, on an all-expense paid vacation to the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee. ♪

And what did Mare look like when you first met her? Honestly, she had kind of a slightly brownish red hair, curly. See, she was, you know, medium build, but

about five foot five, five foot six, something like that. I mean, honestly, you could tell she had a little bit of work done in the face because she didn't look like her age at all. - Really? She looked young. - Oh yes. I mean, she was just all buddy, buddy. We went to the local Walmart as soon as they picked us up from the airport. Went right to Walmart and they're buying all kinds of stuff.

Steven and I, which Steven was Marianne's husband at the time, we went back to the electronics section and he's asking me about game systems. He's like, "Oh, what kind of game system do you prefer?" I was like, "Well, me personally, I prefer the Xbox 360." So he calls the clerk over and he's like, "We'll take that one right there and a bunch of these games."

- Oh wow, so he just bought you an Xbox 360. - Yes, literally I wasn't asking for anything of the sorts. - Right. - And I thought maybe it was just something they were getting for the weekend or the week that we were staying down there. We're walking out in the parking lot and Steven picks the bag up, hands it to me, goes, "Here you go, Josh." And, "This is yours." I'm like just blown away, I was dumbfounded. - Wow.

So, I mean, right from the get-go, they were just, they were trying to flaunt money, you know? Yeah. And then we go to Gatlinburg.

We spent a week in the mountains of Gatlinburg in this giant mansion of a cabin. Wow. And a game room, a sauna, hot tub, you name it. Wow. And according to Marianne, it was like a thousand dollars a night. We were there for, it was either five or seven nights. She really wanted you guys to like her or love her. Oh, absolutely. It was definitely a pain for our forgiveness. Yeah.

And it works. For a little while, anyway. Mare transfers thousands of dollars every month to Courtney's bank account for an entire year. And then suddenly, the transfers stop. And Mare? She's nowhere to be found. About a month later, it's 8 o'clock at night, and there's a knock at the door of the Michigan home where Courtney and Joshua are living with their newborn daughter, Avery. Well, I was sitting in the living room watching TV, heard the knock.

I went and peeped through the peephole and it just looked like some average Joe out there. So I opened the door and here's four Irish-speaking mobsters standing there with automatic assault rifles.

Oh, my God. And looking for Marianne. And what did they tell you exactly? Well, they threatened that if we didn't tell them where Marianne was or if she was staying there or whatever the case was, if we didn't tell them where we could find her, they were going to kill Chelsea. They were going to kill Stephen. They were going to kill myself. They were going to kill Courtney and her newborn daughter, Avery. Oh, my God.

Next time on Queen of the Con. My fugitives unit ended up getting Miss Marianne Smythe in custody today. Mayor's victims start fighting back. I finger gunned at her. I was like, and then her attorney's like, I'm going to tell the judge you did that. And Mayor starts scamming a whole new cross section of society, the mentally ill. I still haven't recovered from her to tell the truth. I never met a woman that did that to me.

For exclusive photos and other bonus material, follow at Queen of the Con on Instagram. And if you're enjoying Queen of the Con, tell your friends about it and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Queen of the Con, the Irish heiress, is a production of AYR Media and iHeart Radio, hosted by me, Jonathan Walton. Executive Producers, Jonathan Walton for Jonathan Walton Productions and Elisa Rosen for AYR Media. Written by Jonathan Walton.

Consulting Producer: Evan Goldstein Senior Associate Producer: Eric Newman Sound Design by Baked ZD Media Mixed and mastered by Elliot Herman Audio Engineering by Elliot Herman Studio Engineering by Chris McMasters Voice Acting performed by Tim Cunningham and Carmel O'Reilly Legal Counsel for AYR Media: Gianni Douglas Executive Producer for iHeartRadio: Chandler Mays

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