The Irish Heiress: Ep. 8, The Trial
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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. 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. 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.

Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. 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. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister, or is history repeating itself? 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. Certain portions of what you're about to hear have been dramatized based on real-life events, eyewitness accounts, and court records.

I didn't ever know if she was scamming people, but when she did things like that, I was like, you're not donating money to cystic fibrosis. Con artist Marianne Elizabeth Smith is shameless.

She used a picture of her dead daughter. I mean, that's another level. That is another level. She scams hundreds of thousands from dozens of victims in Northern Ireland. And some of them don't take it lying down. It was literally Irish gangsters, mobsters, looking for blood. She even scams the mentally ill while hiding out from the law in a Los Angeles area group home, pretending to be mentally ill herself.

I think just the promise of sex was what was doing it for those guys. The more I uncover, the more I become obsessed with bringing her to justice. And it's taking a toll on me and on the people I love. You were going down this rabbit hole and I couldn't help but be worried. I was to the point where I was like, I don't know if we can be friends. But I just keep pushing harder and harder until eventually...

But not surprisingly, she still has a few tricks up her sleeve. When Marion Smith showed up at LA's criminal courthouse today, she was sporting a pair of crutches. And she pulls her most outrageous and impressive con one month before trial.

And this time, she's determined to make me pay to save her own ass. If a judge grants this restraining order, you won't be allowed in a courtroom to testify against her during the criminal trial. I'm Jonathan Walton, and this is Queen of the Con, Episode 8, The Trial. It has been three years since you prosecuted Mary Ann Smith. Have you ever forgotten it? I've never forgotten it, no.

Los Angeles Deputy DA Jessica Plasek handles the preliminary hearing for the People v. Mary Ann Smith in May of 2018. What do you remember most about this case? Remember most, I think, that day in court when you said, I have some other people here.

And I turned around to the gallery and there were about two rows of people there, just very invested, wanted to make sure that justice was in fact served. And then I think I realized just then how important the case was to you and everyone. I knew how important it was speaking with you, but to see everyone there and to see

how the support group came about. There was a legitimate support group and all of you needed to lean on each other as much as you may have needed to lean on them. And that stuck with me. Not anything about the case, the legal workup, just... So that is not typical. I can't speak for anyone else. But for me, I realized how important that case was to you and everyone else there. So that was one of the most profound things, I think, for me.

Deputy D.A. Plasek does an incredible job during the preliminary hearing and successfully convinces a judge that a jury trial is warranted. You were amazing. You were like a bulldog. Like, you were so diligent about everything. Thank you. You're welcome.

But a jury trial now raises the stakes of everything, because convincing 12 jurors that Mary Ann Smith is a con artist is not going to be easy. All one juror needs is reasonable doubt about me or my testimony for Mare to get away. And the restraining order she files against me can easily do the trick.

She files a bogus restraining order against me. She says I'm threatening her life. This is like one month before trial. And the only reason I found out about it, A, because there's a God, and B, I got a lawyer's advertisement in the mail like, do you need help with your domestic violence restraint? I'm like, what? So I log on and with the case number, I'm like, oh my God. So I hire a civil attorney and the civil attorney explains

if a judge grants this restraining order, you might not be allowed to testify against her in the criminal trial because you won't be allowed near her. And I'm like, oh my God. Now, if you're a juror and Big Bad Wolf Jonathan Walton is not allowed in the courtroom because he's so damed, like that's not good for our case. That's not going to look too well. Right? This was her checkmate move.

This was her checkmate move. And somebody would really have to prove that that civil restraining order was false, which is a whole separate ballgame a month before trial. Yes, because so I had to pay $1,500 to hire this lawyer. And he says to me, how believable is she? And I'm like, she's very believable. Like she scammed a bunch of, like she's believable. He's like, well, you don't want this. You don't want this before a judge then because the judge could believe her. Because in these cases, the judge believes the woman. Like I'm the man. I'm harming her.

And part of that restraining order, she has a picture of a bald fat guy in her church, three pews ahead of her, that she says is me. This is him stalking me in my church. If someone three pews ahead of you is not stalking you, they'd be behind you. You don't stalk someone by sitting in front of them and looking back at them, right?

But again, this was all part of her thing. This was her master plan. That's scary. Did you know about that? No, I did not. Brilliant, right? To accuse somebody of stalking you in a place of worship by manipulating photographs of not even the right person. Yeah. That's...

And here's what's even funnier or sadder or both is I was working on, I was producing on that show on Discovery, American Chopper. Motorcycles. Yes, they build motorcycles. So I'm with my other producer people and when I find all this out and I have the picture and we try to duplicate the picture where I sit sideways and pose and all my friends start laughing. They're like, he kind of does look like me. Like me.

That's like the worst thing they could say. You need their honesty though. Well, no, I do because I was going to make a case to the judge. I'm like, this is not me, Your Honor. Clearly it's not me. But they're like, kind of looks like you. Because a bald, overweight guy, side profile, looking down, praying. But my buddy Evan disagrees, if only to spare my feelings.

I laughed when you sent it to me because it's not your face. It's like, you know, side. It might as well be like of the Loch Ness Monster or Bigfoot. You can't make out any details, but the vague shape and you got a bald head. And it was funny that she's passing whoever that I'm sure very nice bald fat man, whoever that was off as you. What else can she do? At the end of the day, no one wants to go to jail.

And you will do anything to get out of jail. The one advantage I have going for me, though, is that Mayer has not actually paid a process server to deliver her restraining order to me or serve the restraining order, as it's known in the court system. It essentially doesn't exist until it's served. I only find out about it after receiving a lawyer's advertisement in the mail, which prompts me to hire a lawyer.

So luckily the lawyer told me, he's like, "Have you been served yet?" I'm like, "No." He's like, "Well, just don't get served." I'm like, "What does that mean?" "Don't answer your door." "Do you have a back way in?" I'm like, "I'm a gay guy. Of course I got a back way in." He laughed too. So she tried to serve me like 20 times and I just didn't answer the door. Is that a crime?

No. You have to prove you're avoiding service. Right. Well, I'm in LA. I'm not answering the door. If I don't know you're coming, I'm not answering the door. Right? I don't like answering the door for anyone. This ain't Idaho. Right? But really, in a big city, you know who's coming to visit you. If you have a strange knock on your door, my advice, don't answer.

Yeah, I wouldn't answer it either. That's how home invasions happen. Especially with all these impersonations. Yes. Come on, look how we got here in the first place. Exactly. So a week before the trial, knocking on my door trying to serve me this bogus restraining order and the trial starting. And luckily the trial started without me ever getting served, so it was never a problem. And a civil court judge ends up dismissing Mayer's bogus restraining order altogether, clearing the way for me to be in the same courtroom as her for the trial.

People versus Mary Ann Smith, page number BA465903. There are a total of 17 court appearances over a 10-month period before the trial actually begins in January of 2019, which is almost two years after I first go to police. You settled this today? Yes.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Craig Veals wants Mayer to settle, meaning he wants Deputy D.A. Jeff McGee, who's prosecuting Mayer, to offer her a plea deal so the city of Los Angeles can spare the expense and the uncertainty of a trial. The offer that I've conveyed from Axis five years, I would strike the L.A. mail allegation.

50% of two years is one year.

I failed college algebra five times, but that much I know. So the DA is offering Mayer one year in jail if she just pleads guilty to scamming me, as opposed to the maximum five-year sentence she'll get if she's convicted at trial. But Mayer quickly rejects the plea offer. So the judge asks her attorney... And how her offer is? We don't have a counteroffer here on it.

Apparently, Mayor Smith is confident she can convince a jury to find her not guilty. That seems crazy, but if you know one thing about con artists, it's that they love to take chances. Why? Because the phrase,

con artist is actually short for confidence artist. They use their victim's confidence in them to scam them. And they're also audaciously confident themselves in how they walk, how they talk, and how they lie. You can never know what they're really thinking as Mayer freely admits to one of the victims she's scamming on that life coaching session. A poker face.

If I don't want you to see what I'm feeling, you are not going to know that I'm mad or angry or happy or sad. But will the jury fall for Mir's poker face? We shall see. Ms. Smith is present. She is out of custody and is with counsel. People are present and represented. My buddy Evan Goldstein has watched me push this giant boulder of a case up the steep hill of the justice system from the very beginning. So you've gone...

Ultimately, what, a year or two now, like, trying to build a case against her. You do all this legwork. You talk to the victims. You make this case. You're sitting in court. How does it feel at that point? What's happening in your head? I was a basket case. I wasn't sleeping. And the trial was traumatizing for me. Thankfully, though, I'm not in this alone. You just normally say it's a testimony you may give and the cause and outcome before this court should be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So how do you do that? I do it.

Remember the Newport Beach engineer, Bob? He agrees to testify against Mayer. After swiping right on Tinder, how did you first interact with Ms. Mayer? First through texts that we would talk about hockey or shit. I remember her call. She had a Chicago Blackhawks jersey on. I'm a hockey fan, so I give her texts about hockey.

The whole reason Deputy DA Jeff McGee wants Bob on the stand is to show jurors a pattern, that Mayer used her Irish inheritance scam on a lot of other people, not just me. What, if anything, did Ms. Smith ever tell you about her financial situation? She said, trust one back in Ireland.

She said it was 25 million. At some point did the Irish inheritance that she mentioned become important in your interaction with her? It was. She was using that money to purchase a home. At the time it was listed at 15 million. She was working on a financial deal, buying that home. She was working on also part of that financial deal. She was going to pay off my two homes. There's talk about putting me on...

I just want to clarify, in exchange for you going on the title with the home that she was supposedly planning to purchase, she was asking you to put her as a co-owner of the houses that you already owned? Correct.

Mayer even writes up a detailed financial plan on a piece of paper showing Bob how she's going to spend her $25 million inheritance. Thank God Bob has the presence of mind to snap a picture of it before Mayer crumples it up and throws it away. That piece of paper is now projected on a big movie screen for the entire court to see. What is that document? This is the financial plan that we worked out in my kitchen. And who wrote this document? Mayer did.

And Mayer even uses Bob's own kids to strengthen her influence on him. The prosecutor zeroes in on that while going down Mayer's list of future expenditures. What was the plan for that $1,950,000? I've got a young son who likes Lamborghinis. She was going to buy a Lamborghini for $450,000. The entire courtroom is transfixed, except for Mayer,

Yeah, she's got her poker face on, can't tell what she's thinking. Her attorney, though, tries to discredit that financial plan, grasping at straws. Points for effort, right?

In a stunning turn of events, the next witness called to the stand is Mayer's own daughter, Chelsea Welch. 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.

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.

That I've said like in my head for like 16 years. Wild. Listen to Misspelling 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, 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. Prosecutors are putting Mare's daughter, Chelsea, on the stand to prove that Mare's Irish inheritance claim is a bald-faced lie.

does your family have access to any sort of trust fund inherited wealth any sort of source of finances related to a vast fortune coming from either Ireland or Northern Ireland? Absolutely not. Nothing further. You had nothing to gain by this. You live

cross country in Tennessee. The district attorney had to fly you out to LA. You got held up in Dallas for a day. It was a nightmare. You had to miss work. Why did you testify against your mother? Why did you go so far out of your way? Why did you do that? I feel like she has skated by just everything in her life. Like she is never going to receive any type of reprimand for this behavior. And it just, it disgusted me. And I knew that,

That just unfortunately, like based on my childhood of living with a person that's obsessed with like true crime, I wasn't convinced that she was going to get prosecuted if I didn't go. Because realistically, the things that she did, like they're obviously very morally wrong, but legally, the courts could have just been like, you know, you guys were silly, right?

You gave her this money, you shouldn't have believed her. Sorry. So I was like, they have to know this isn't like some new thing that's happening because that's definitely the picture they were going to try to paint. That it's just, you know, like she was struggling or they were going to pull some like mental thing out. And I was just thinking like, this is your only chance. The love and gratitude I feel towards Chelsea for doing this is immeasurable.

If you're a juror and you see the defendant's own daughter testifying against her, what would your takeaway be? The deputy DA knows exactly what to ask Chelsea on the stand. He's not allowed to ask about Mayer's criminal history or prior bad acts. That would be inadmissible. But there's more than one way to skin a cat, or a con artist in this case. As you sit here today, do you have strong feelings about your mother one way or the other? Yes.

And what are those feelings? My mother, my entire life, has been a compulsive liar and has often fabricated stories that no one else can corroborate. I think that she's a very troubled person who has used her intelligence malevolently.

And the things that she has been accused of, I'm absolutely disgusted by. While Chelsea is testifying, Mayer is whispering things into her attorney's ear. He then uses what Mayer tells him to try and discredit Chelsea on the stand. But Chelsea isn't having it. Is it safe to say that you are upset with your mother for pulling you out of school when you were in a regional environment?

It is safe to say I was upset at being 11 years old, having to lie to people about moving to meet someone that she barely knew. But I have no vendetta against her because of that.

The next witness to testify is one of Mayer's former psychic clients, who later becomes Mayer's life coaching client, and who she scams out of $10,000 by pretending to be a psychologist. She portrayed herself as being certified in psychology, and she had a degree in psychology. But the jury isn't allowed to hear how Mayer scammed this victim out of $10,000. No prior bad acts allowed, remember?

The DA does want her to corroborate Mayer's Irish inheritance story, though. Over the course of your relationship with her, did she say anything to you about her personal financial situation?

Yeah, on numerous occasions. I know that she came from Irish royalty and I saw in the house that she was supposed to inherit, her family lived in Cork, she was supposed to inherit $25 million. Did anything about the comments that she made ever around suspicion with you? Oh yes. How so? It just didn't make sense that someone has a psychic business but you're going to inherit $25 million and she was also

Nothing Mare says makes sense under the harsh fluorescent lights of a courtroom. I'm the last witness the prosecution puts on the stand.

Everything is riding on me. I'm a nervous wreck. And I'm scared. I've been working two years for this very moment. There's no turning back now.

I got under her attorney's skin almost immediately.

What sort of statements did she make to you about her financial situation at this beginning stage in your relationship? So early on, she told me she was from Ireland. She had this picture hanging in her apartment and it was, she said, the Irish Constitution. Now I don't know much about Ireland, so I just believed her. She said her uncle had signed the Irish Constitution that she had framed in her apartment.

And she presented herself as essentially Irish royalty. She told me about this 25 million dollar estate that's being dissolved and she's going to get a portion of it. And her cousin Fintan is fighting with her. You know, that's why she's in LA because she doesn't get along with family in Ireland. And she had a strange accent.

that I just, I guess that's an Irish American. So I just accepted everything at face value. And, you know, she was my friend. I didn't think she was lying. I explained to the court how Mare tricks me out of tens of thousands of dollars over the course of our four-year friendship using an elaborate series of confidence tricks, inventing an evil Irish family, inventing an inheritance, and making me believe all her bank accounts were frozen. How does this personally affect you? So...

If you've ever maxed out your credit cards, they raise your rate to like 24.9%, 25%. I was swimming like two, three grand a month in interest charges after I tried to stay above water, I tried to pay off what I could, I tried to call PayPal and I called the credit card companies, they're trying to explain what happened to me. I'm giving them the police report, I'm being interviewed by the LAPD. I had to file for bankruptcy. This financially ruined me. And what effect does filing for bankruptcy have?

My credit, I can't even buy a sofa. My credit's destroyed. Did you take any other steps? This has been a 22-month quest to bring her to justice. I took many steps. I hired six private investigators in every state she had penalties. 39 victims contacted me through the website I started. So, you created a website? Yes. What's the nature of the website? To warn people about her. She has 23 different aliases.

Mayor's defense attorney begins his cross-examination hitting back hard with this false narrative to the jury that I'm just making everything up. Now, this blog that you created, this is the only place you were able to find on the internet where she supposedly is an Irish actress. Is that correct? I don't understand what you're talking about. He's really pissing me off.

You're asking the witness if he has seen any documentation of anywhere else in the area other than things that he's put out there. Okay. That it's a scam or that it's legitimate? That it's what happened. There's a big difference, dude. I'm sorry if the truth is a sticking point for you. First of all, I'm not a dude, okay? We're in a corp. I realize that, but I'm not as familiar as you or your client with a corp.

Isn't it true, Mr. Walton, that when you lent my client the money, you lent her the money because she was your best friend? That is partially true. I wouldn't have loaned her the money if she didn't make up all the lies to get the money. So you're missing a huge part of that, so it's not that simple. I'm sorry. Is it also true that you are working on a documentary? That I'm currently working on a documentary? About this kid. Oh, absolutely. I'm trying to warn the world about her and do public service. God knows I wish someone made a documentary when I was friends with her.

By making that documentary, you have to sort of spice it up a bit. Is that right? No. Is it true that you're sort of a sensational journalist? No, that's not true at all. But you were a reporter. I was. And the people who you had write stories are your friends. No, that is completely false. The only reporters I know are in Houston, Texas, where I used to work. During the trial, when you were on the stand, did you get emotional at all?

The trial was hard for me because her defense attorney made up a whole ulterior reality. And he was just so confident that I'm making everything up to make a documentary, that I got all these other witnesses to lie. That's what he's telling the jury in his questioning to me, that I'm getting all these witnesses to lie, that I have my friends at newspapers and TV stations doing stories about

He paints me as this movie-making Svengali with all this power to get all these things done. And as he's doing this, I'm livid. I'm like, what the... It's like abuse. Like, I'm the victim here.

As far as you know, wherever she was living, she was paying her bills, she was paying them on time. So she had an income. Is that correct? Yeah. And that income was from her psychic business. And you knew about that all along? The psychic thing? Yeah. Well, I didn't know until she got fired from the travel agency. I didn't know she was psychic. Okay, well, thank you. I'll go wherever you want to go. I've got the truth on my side.

I remember on the stand, like, he would say something and you could literally hear it in your voice. Yeah. Like, just how you'd respond to him, like...

Fuck you.

So it was while she was doing the 30 days in jail, I discovered I was scammed. Everything she told me about the case was a lie. So I got scared and I went through her property. I took pictures of everything and I submitted those pictures and an explanation in my police report. And when I saw her in front of her, I handed her back her property and I had the audio recording to prove it on my phone if you want to hear it now. Your Honor, could we take a break right now if that's okay?

What terrified me was all they needed was one juror not to believe me. Right. And then you have a hung jury, you have a mistrial, then you have to do it all again. Right. And I guarantee you, Bob wouldn't testify again. Chelsea would not testify again. Like, no one wants to go through that again. I sure as fuck didn't want to have to testify again. It was traumatic. But that's all you need is one juror to think, maybe Jonathan is making everything up for a movie. And that's exactly what Mayer's defense attorney stresses to the jury during closing arguments.

And thank God we do.

The trial comes to an end after four days of testimony. Mayer refuses to testify in her own defense, and she wasn't even able to find a single solitary witness to testify on her behalf. But jurors are instructed not to hold that against her as they begin deliberations.

I remember glancing at the jury while I was being questioned and I remember all the times I skipped out on jury duty or made up excuses not to be in a jury. Everyone, you know, fights jury duty. And I swore to God, I'm like, "God, if you get me a conviction, I will be a juror." Because I was hoping the jury was smart enough and paying attention and could see through the lies that her defense attorney was saying. And I made a vow to God that if he just lets them see the truth,

The next time I'm called for a jury duty, I will serve happily and I'll apply myself and I'll be the jury foreman and we'll try for justice. Serving on a jury is so important because their lives hanging in the balance, you know, like mine was. And they need smart people, not just people who can't talk themselves out of jury duty.

Jurors reach a verdict in just three hours, which could be good or could be really bad. I'm on pins and needles right up to the moment the verdict is read aloud in court.

This is Perry of Fort California, County of Los Angeles. The people of the state of California, versus Mary Ann Smith. We, the jury, in the above entitled action, five independent, Mary Ann Smith, guilty of the crime of grand theft in violation of penal code section 47, subsection A, a felony as charged in capital of the information, dated this 9th of January, 2019. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is this your true and correct verdict of so saying law and so saying law?

- Yes, yes, open. - Thank you. Mr. Patterson, would you like to have the jurors call? - The jury comes back, guilty verdict. Like, how do you feel? - It was like a huge weight had lifted. It was just relief and joy and satisfaction and just a swirl of emotions, but all of them good, all of them happy, all of them, I was thrilled. It's like that moment where everything you worked for, it paid off. She got convicted. You know, it wasn't in vain.

I was relieved. 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. Thanks ghouls 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'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.

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.

that I've said like in my head for like 16 years. Wild. Listen to Misspelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. By the time a Los Angeles jury convicts Mayer of grand theft by false pretense, I'm out $91,784 total. Most of it is what Mayer scammed from me. The rest I had to spend on lawyers, private investigators, and paying credit card interest.

During sentencing, Mayer's attorney goes long for a Hail Mary pass. Instead of jail time? I'm going to ask the court to consider putting Mrs. Smith on probation, despite what the court's heard. I understand. Can't blame a guy for trying, right? The judge sentences Mayer to the maximum five years in jail. But she'll only actually have to serve two and a half.

To stem jail overcrowding and to incentivize inmates to behave while locked up, Los Angeles County only requires them to serve half their time. If Mayer had taken the plea deal of one year in jail before the trial, she would have been out in six months. And while the jury wasn't allowed to hear the full history of all of Mayer's cons, the judge was.

And he unloads on her during sentencing because he realizes now what I've known for the past two years. She is really an inveterate thief and someone who is, I think, classically referred to as a sociopath. She showed no remorse, no sense of contrition whatsoever.

of any sort whatsoever, while we were hearing testimony about how it previously impacted the victim in this case. Mr. Walton was, by virtue of her behavior. I have people who, without any apparent justification or thought, take the lives of other people. You didn't do that here in the strictest sense, but you've damaged someone considerably. And even as I look at you now, you just seem unaffected by it.

So Mayor goes to jail in January of 2019. Watching her led out of the courtroom in handcuffs, crestfallen and haggard almost makes me feel sorry for her. Almost.

She's supposed to be released from jail in two and a half years, in June of 2021. Northern Ireland is ready to extradite her as soon as she is. But then... Our top story, we're learning more about the state's plan to release inmates from jails and prisons across California in an effort to stop the spread of COVID-19. In December of 2020, seven months before she's scheduled to be released, Mayer gets sprung.

She's out of jail right now, right? Because of COVID, she got out early because they were releasing a lot of nonviolent criminals early. Right. And COVID has helped her in another way. She was supposed to be extradited to Northern Ireland when she was released from jail here in Los Angeles. But because of COVID, Northern Ireland's on lockdown.

because they're surging in cases. So they're not putting any importance on extraditing a nonviolent criminal, you know. So I went on LinkedIn and I found some LA County parole officers. I reached out to like a dozen of them. A couple of them got back to me. I just wanted information how the parole system works. So I got one on the phone, talked to her for like an hour and she told me point blank. So if she stopped showing up for parole every month, we won't know she's missing at least for like a year.

Because every parole officer has 400 cases they're dealing with. 400 parolees they got to check in with every month. And it takes months before they realize that one's missing. So she could very well escape into the ether and never be heard from again. You know? I like how your eyes lit up like that. That was a good line, though. I liked it. As the producer in me, I liked it. If it was me, like my first inclination... Would be to run away and hide.

Like if I got took for all that money, like I would feel ashamed, you know? Like I'd feel like I'd question myself. Because you talk to people and immediately like, oh yeah, she stole money. But a lot of these, you found out a lot of these people didn't come forward. Why do you think that is? Well, everyone is so ashamed and...

And I've learned everyone is so embarrassed and shackled by the thought of what will people think. But as an openly gay man, and I think any openly gay person has that advantage that the others don't have, regular people. No way.

Because when you're open, when you come out of the closet, the world is not anxious to greet you with hugs and kisses and acceptance. I made peace with not giving a fuck what people think when I was 30, you know, 16 years ago when I came out. Because you can't. As an openly gay person, you can't care what people think or you'll die. Because most people don't approve

There are parts of the world gay people are still being put to death. Even in the United States of America in 2021, gay people are being kicked out of their families, kicked out of their apartments, fired from their jobs for being gay. So to come out, you already have to divorce yourself from caring what people think. So I didn't have that. And that helped me. Never for a second did it occur to me, well, what are people going to think? I was so angry and I wanted justice. It didn't even occur to me to care what people think. And that was an advantage. Do you hate her now?

I did hate her for a long time, but I have made peace. I don't hate her. And in a weird way, I'm grateful. I'm grateful she scammed me. Why? Because it revealed in me a person I didn't know existed. Someone I didn't know I could be, I've become. And I like that person. I'm like a private investigator. I'm helping victims of other cons get justice. I'm, you know, I like who it turned me into. It's like you with your, you know, train wreck of a marriage. Aren't you glad?

Yeah. Aren't you glad it was a train wreck? Yeah. Because look at you now. You have a beautiful wife. You have a beautiful kid. Look at the amazing life you have. Yeah. Only because you went through that train wreck of a divorce. I guess sometimes you got to just go through hell to come out the other end. And I'll ask you the same question. Do you hate your ex-wife? No, not at all. Give him after what she did. You don't hate her. No, not at all. I wish her the best.

I can't say I wish Mare the best because to wish her the best means she's going to scam more people. But I don't wish her ill, even though I'll say I hope she gets help and becomes a better person. I don't think she's capable because I don't think she has a soul.

Which sounds harsh. I don't take it personally that she scammed me, I was just in her way. It's like if you get attacked by a shark, you can't hate the shark. The shark is just doing what sharks do. There's no pre-thought or planning. You're just in their way. They're gonna attack you. She's a con artist, she's gonna con whoever's around her. She's always been conning since she was a girl. And now she's 52, she's not gonna change.

Mare's daughter Chelsea has known that for 30 years now. At this point, nothing surprises her. So your mom got released early because of COVID. That's what I was figuring. How does that make you feel? Are you worried she's going to come after you?

Oh, I'm not worried. If she is really that idiot, like, I'm just hoping that she knows now, in this situation, like, I am the alpha, and I'm not scared. She will never touch me again. She will never harm me again. She will never have power over my emotional state. But because she knows I basically put her in jail, I will always...

have power over her and I have no trouble asserting that now until the day I take my last breath. Or she does, whatever happens first. Wow, I know how she feels. I'm trying to keep tabs on Mare's whereabouts in Los Angeles. Now I'm parked out front of the last place I saw her 18 months ago. But she's not there. And I have no idea where she is. Neither does the private detective I hired to track her down.

Which is troubling because Marianne Elizabeth Smith is a master of disguise. She's also had a bunch of plastic surgery. Google her. The way she looks in Northern Ireland pulling cons as a blonde is completely different from the way she looks in Tennessee pulling cons as a brunette, which is completely different from the way she looks in Los Angeles pulling cons with jet black hair. Keep your eyes peeled and your ears open.

The next time a kind and friendly stranger offers to help you with something, it could very well be Marianne Smith. But that won't be the name she's using, I assure you. So pay close attention. You've all been warned.

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 Neil Goldstein Legal Counsel for AYR Media: Gianni Douglas Executive Producer for iHeartRadio: Chandler Mays

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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. 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. Hey, y'all. Danke.

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.