The Irish Heiress: Ep. 1, The Best Friend
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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. 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'm a happily married gay man, but here I am, parked out front of this woman's place at 5 o'clock in the morning, just trying to catch a glimpse of her. I need to know she's there. I need to know she's there.

I haven't seen her in months, and as hard as I try, I just can't get her out of my mind. Dude, this is crazy already, man. You've got to let her go. My buddy Evan thinks I'm obsessed. Hold on, Jonathan. All right, whatever, dude. She's all you talk about. Like, this is not normal to be outside her place. Like, I'm worried about you. You're letting her dull your shine.

I just couldn't help it. This woman was now threatening my marriage, coming between me and my husband. How the hell did I get here? How the hell did I let this happen? She seemed so nice when we first met. So kind. So sweet.

But she's the devil. She's the fucking devil. I regret ever meeting her. We all do. I'm Jonathan Walton, and this is Queen of the Con, Episode 1, The Best Friend.

I'm a reality TV producer. I've worked on 27 different series over the past 14 years, but the most spectacular reality show I've ever been a part of had no cameras shooting it and no network airing it and no viewers watching it. Just a devious con artist secretly plying her craft in the shadows and dozens of unsuspecting victims like myself quietly falling prey.

It started so innocently a few years ago. Vampires have to be invited in to exert their power over you. She was a vampire, alright. She offered to help me and, not knowing any better, I invited her in. I had just finished working on season 4 of Shark Tank in April of 2013. "Okay, 50,000 for 20%. Stop listening to these guys." I've been producing reality television for about five years at that point.

I move out to Los Angeles in 2007 after getting fired from my job as a TV news reporter in Houston. My good friend and colleague Jonathan Walton is here, and let's take a peek over there, and he's going to check in with one of the donors right now. Jonathan, take it away. I am here with a donor. Okay, so I wasn't exactly a news reporter. I was the morning news feature reporter. Top of the morning to you, Houston. I'm Jonathan Walton.

A welcomed respite of good news, sandwiched between all the murders, car wrecks, and calamity, a staple of local news. I am an Oompa Loompa! But no, I'm actually Darth Vader. Alternative lifestyle Darth Vader. See? I got the heels and everything. Ah, that hurt.

But the station I worked for suddenly had a regime change, and I got a new boss who didn't think my brand of, uh, journalism belonged on the morning news. The Mission. Visit four of the most popular ice cream parlors in Houston to see how many free samples we can get before they cut us off. So I get fired from my TV gig, and strangely enough, I'm actually excited about it, because soon after getting fired, Comedy Central—

Comedy freakin' Central is interested in a new show I pitched them called... "Some Stupid Show!" "It's like a funny version of 60 Minutes done in 30!" "A young Swedish couple gets evicted from their apartment 'cause they have sex too loud!" "That's a five minute piece screaming to be watched on..." "Some Stupid Show!"

So I move out to Los Angeles in late 2007 to make the Comedy Central thing happen. And then, bam, the Rider Strike thing happens instead. On strike, show's down. Hollywood's a union town. That strike put the kibosh on my Comedy Central opportunity. Some stupid show. And it also screws thousands of other producers and show creators out of their deals at networks and production companies. A really shitty time for the entertainment industry.

But you know the old cliche, when one door closes, another one opens? It was goodbye some stupid show and hello reality television. Which I guess some people would say is the same thing. I produce on shows like UFO Hunters for the History Channel, Professional Grade for HGTV, American Ninja Warrior for NBC, Shark Tank for ABC. I am having a blast. Until she comes along. Ready?

It's the summer of 2013 and it's shaping up to be a hot one. Another day of triple digits on the way. Current temperature is already 93 downtown. The problem is our downtown Los Angeles apartment building has a gigantic Club Med style swimming pool that's suddenly taken away from us.

Because of some stupid legal spat with the neighboring condo building. So the pool is actually owned by the condo building and the apartments had an easement to use the pool. And part of the contract was that the apartments were responsible for 60% of the cost of maintenance and repairs. That brilliant, succinct explanation will demonstrate to anyone listening that you are an attorney.

I hope so. And yes, yes, I've been practicing for almost 10 years.

Tina Mensch is not only a Los Angeles attorney, but she's also a neighbor of mine back in 2013 when our apartment building loses access to the pool over a repair dispute. The condos had initially said that the cost to the apartments was going to be like $2,000 or something like that. And when the bill actually came, it was like $240,000. And the apartment said, we're not paying this.

And then the condos locked us out. Yep. We're locked out of our pool during one of the hottest summers in Los Angeles.

I know, yuppie problems, right? But we're not talking about just any pool. It's heated. It's heated, yeah. We could go swimming at night. It's warm. You see the steam come up. And it's not a chlorine pool. It's a saltwater pool, which makes it so much better. Yeah. I did not know it was a saltwater pool. That just, yeah, that makes me miss it more. And it has Olympic swimming lanes. Yes. Yes.

And it's shaped like, what would you describe that shape? It's like a giant circle, but with like nooks and crannies on the side so you can hang out with friends. And then it's got like this 20 person jacuzzi beside it. Yes. It's an amazing part of living in this complex. Yeah. So losing it was a tragedy, it felt like.

And the 400 plus residents in our building are mad as hell. I'm not paying $3,300 a month for no pool. Why does the other building have access and we don't? We should all stop paying rent until we get the pool back. So I pull a Norma Rae and I start organizing.

I stick flyers up everywhere, all around our building, that read, Miss the pool? Want it back? Email me. Let's band together and do something about it. I think you might have left it on my door. I did. I put it in everyone's door. Eh.

444 units and I put it on anyone's door. And at the end of the day, my legs were killing me just from bending down and sticking it under people's doors. But it was, that's how we organized. That's how we met.

And Tina isn't the only one. Did you get a flyer? I think it was a flyer, wasn't it? Sherry Cooper is another neighbor of mine during our pool imbroglio. I was like, well, I was pissed off about the pool. So I was like, you know what, let's go and contribute. Let's go and see what we can do. More than 100 neighbors respond to my flyers. And a bunch of them show up to a wine and cheese at my apartment the following Saturday night to come up with a plan of action for getting our pool back.

And out of all the neighbors there that night, there's one in particular who quickly stands out from the rest. She made quite a splash, didn't she, at the meeting? She did. And she was sitting there and she was in a very expensive dress and expensive shoes. And I remember I was drawn to her. She was so majestic. Royal. She was. She was.

She was royal. And I like strong women. She was strong and she was opinionated. And I was immediately drawn to her. Like immediately. She has shorn, jet black hair, alabaster skin, sparkling blue eyes, and an exotic accent.

Tina notices that right away. I mean, it sounded Irish. It did, didn't it? It did sound Irish. Sherry thinks so too. She had an accent. Oh, yeah. What did it sound like to you? Irish. Sounded Irish. Oh, yeah. Gaelic. She introduces herself to the crowd as Mayor Smith, a recent transplant from the Republic of Ireland. She spent a lot of time talking about her boyfriend, who was a lawyer, who was...

a big shot that he could do anything and everything and all we had to do was ask. And he was a politician? Yes. I remember her telling the crowd that he had sued this building twice already and won big and they're scared of him and shaking in their boots so if they get wind that he's involved we'll get the pool back like that. Yes, yes, I remember that and there was

There was something else, something like that all he had to do was send something on his letterhead with his name on it and they'd cave.

Yeah, and we were super excited about that. She's very charismatic. Yeah. And she knew how to keep everybody's attention on her. She was immediately connected and throwing her connections around, and her confidence made you believe it. She had just such a big sense of confidence. Yeah, and I remember thinking that night, wow, we solved our problem. Mayor's going to fix everything, right? Right, right. We felt good. Right? Yeah. We accomplished something.

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. ...ghoules 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 some 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. Yeah.

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.

Mayor tells us all her politician boyfriend can get the pool back, no problem. And the crowd eats it up. Admittedly, I eat more than most. I fall in love with her that night because more than her charisma, more than her sparkling conversation and her sophistication and worldliness, she was so kind. She was just so kind.

And her kindness moves me. And it moves Tina, too. She offered to help you get a job. Yeah, I passed the bar in December of 2011. So I wasn't with a firm at that time. And I was just starting out. And I remember this because that's one of the reasons I liked her so quickly. I saw her.

going around the room offering to help everyone and I'm like, "Wow, this woman's like an angel." Like, just help, help, help. I love that. Like Mother Teresa-like. She said, I remember her saying distinctly to you, "Send me your resume, I'll get it to the politician and his firm is hiring. Maybe they'll hire you. I can get them to hire you." She made a lot of offers. She said that her politician boyfriend could get me a job at the snap of his fingers. That all I had to do was ask.

that she really made it seem like all you have to do is ask and anything can happen. Yeah, it was kind of magical. Mare also offers to help my neighbor Sherry. So in 2013, what did you do for a living? Running nightclubs. I was running multiple nightclubs, strip clubs.

I remember you talking about your girls, the strippers, saying they have a lot of money and they don't know what to do with it. And she was saying, well, I can get them a group vacation in the Pacific Islands. And she gave you her card. Have them call me. Yeah. She was the hookup. Yeah. That's what I loved about her. She seemed so helpful. Right.

At that time, in 2013, Mayer is working for a luxury travel agency in Los Angeles called Pacific Islands, selling high-end vacations to exotic, far-flung places like Tahiti, Bora Bora, and Fiji,

She claims she's the number one seller of vacations to the Pacific Islands in the whole United States, and that the president of French Polynesia himself flies her out every couple months to inspect all their five-star hotels to make sure they're up to snuff. Did you get that story? Yes. Yes, I got that story.

Tina Mensch quickly forges a deep friendship with Mayor Smith shortly after the wine and cheese at my apartment that night. How did you and Mayor become good friends? It was convenient, really. I mean, she lived in the building and she had all this free time. And my schedule was fairly flexible and she always wanted to go and have hookah and drinks and whatever.

She was funny and clever and she always had good stories. She did have good stories. She did have good stories. Did you get the story about her Irish grandmother teaching her how to make Molotov cocktails and hurl them down on British soldiers? No, I did not get that story. But I got the story that her family came here from Ireland and got political asylum. Oh, I didn't know that.

The whole Irish political asylum thing, Mare tells that to a lot of people. Here's a recording she makes explaining it to someone. I can tell you my family came to America in the 80s under political asylum and it was overnight. And it wasn't overnight, but it was overnight. Does that make sense? It's like the death threat started coming to my mom and my stepdad.

and our family house got burnt where we were living. And one of my brothers got beaten, one of my uncles got murdered, my other uncle was on the run. It took them four weeks to get us political asylum, but us kids weren't told until the night we were told to pack a bag and leave.

I mean, she talked about Ireland a lot. And Tina is enthralled. She and Mare end up having a lot of adventures together during their friendship. Dangerous. Downtown Los Angeles adventures. So we were. We were at a bar and we were drinking. And she started talking to people sitting near us. And then I don't remember anything.

Well, I woke up at home with a giant bruise on my forearm. You don't remember how you got there? I don't remember how I got there. All my stuff was in disarray. Like, when you say your stuff was in disarray, as if someone had searched your apartment? No, like, I dumped my purse when I came in. I had a giant bruise on my forearm. I mean, it seemed like I had gotten into a...

I don't remember coming home. I didn't remember anything. And the next morning did not feel like a hangover. It was awful. So you remember being at the bar drinking, having a good time with Mare. And then the next thing you know, you're in your bed in your apartment. You've got bruises on your arm and you don't remember how you got there. Right. And then you called Mare. Yes. And she said that she had the exact same thing. Wow.

I did file a police report. I went to the bar with her. She and I went to the bar and I told them I wanted the surveillance video, that there's got to be surveillance video, that I believed I was drugged and they refused to give us anything. And I filed a police report and I don't think anything ever came of it.

I remember Mare saying she saw some guy acting weird and she was thinking he did it. Like Mare kind of led you along this path that you both were drugged by someone. Right. And she has no memory either. Right. And that she also felt awful the next day, like not like a hangover. Yeah. This has made you closer friends quicker. Yes. It's a trauma bond. At the same time Mare is trauma bonding with Tina, she's best friend bonding with me.

Let's get started. Mayor Smith is easily the most fascinating person I ever meet. She has a framed copy of the Irish Constitution hanging on her wall and says her great-great-uncle is one of Ireland's founders and points to his signature at the bottom.

I'm blown away. Here she is, an immigrant from the Republic of Ireland, with her finger on the pulse of Los Angeles politics and crazy connections to powerful people everywhere. And then there's her family. What did Mare tell you about her family? So she said that she had a huge inheritance coming at some point. I think it was like to the tune of like $5 million. Yeah.

But her family in Ireland was trying to take it from her and was trying to make sure that she never got a penny of it. Every time she would go to Ireland, she would stay in some castle that they had like all these properties all over the country. The family owned the properties. I mean, the woman showed me a picture of somebody and said, this person is my cousin and lives in Ireland.

Sherry Cooper gets a very similar backstory. What did she tell you about her family? That they were royal, that they come from her grandfather was somebody special in Ireland, that her dad's inheritance was to come to her. And it was a lot of money. I don't remember the exact amount, but it was a lot of money was coming to her.

but that she had basically some evil people that were trying to block her from her some Finnegan or Finn. Fintan. Fintan, yes. She was constantly using that name and that they were just trying to really mess her up and that the politician was handling the accounts. Did she ever show you any text messages or emails from any members of her family?

I think there was some crazy email thread with the cousin. She said his name was Fenton, I think. Fenton, yes. So at this point, me and my two neighbors, Sherry and Tina, know that Mayor Smith is a wealthy Irish heiress with millions of dollars in inheritance coming to her. But her Irish cousins seem to hate her and don't want her to get a dime. And boy, the stuff they pull is just insane.

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'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.

Subtle variations of Mayor Smith's Irish backstory are quickly spreading around Hollywood. The first story ever would be that she was, you know, this royalty from Ireland and she was waiting on her inheritance. That was the first thing she would tell everybody. Fran Lozano is a Los Angeles filmmaker. She meets Mayor Smith back in 2013 at a dinner party. What did you like about her?

I think she was fun to be around, you know, for St. Paddy's. She would organize like a fun St. Paddy's and, "Hey, we were with an actual Irish!" Or so we thought. But that was fun, you know, and I love wine. She loves wine, so we would go drinking and have a good time. She has been around in the sense of traveling. She's been to different places. She had nice stories to tell. She was fun. And she is smart. She's a smart person.

Did Mare ever treat you for dinners and things? Mare did not treat me for dinners. She did treat me for two trips to Palm Springs. So, yeah, in many ways, she was very fun to be with and to spend time with her. She was really pleasant. Could do a lot of fun things. So the time that she took you to that game where you saw Kobe Bryant play. I have pictures. You know, I saw that one.

What was that like? That's pretty impressive. Not everyone can see. You were like five feet away from Kobe Bryant. And were you impressed? Does she seem like a woman with a lot of connections? Of course. Oh yeah, she would always tell you that. As the months pass, Mayor Smith and I get close. Really close. And she meets my circle of friends. She was a very well-heeled, successful woman.

She had a wicked sense of humor, kind of borderline inappropriate at times, which, you know, kind of just made you like her. She would kind of say things that maybe everyone wouldn't have the balls to say. Evan Goldstein and I go back 14 years. He's also a reality TV producer living here in L.A. We've produced a bunch of shows together over the years. How is it you came to be Mare's neighbor? I was going through...

separation and ultimately a divorce. I was having a really hard time. I didn't have anywhere to go. And you said, well, why don't you just come here and stay with Pablo and I?

And how long did I stay with you guys? Gosh, months. Months. But it was fun. Yeah. In our guest room. We have a guest room and a guest bathroom. So it wasn't too much of an imposition. Right. So I'm staying with you. I'm going through this divorce and it's time I have to look for my own place. And you kind of said, well, hey, man, why don't you move into the same apartment building? And I'm like, great idea. One thing leads to another and I'm moving in. And Mayor lives a couple floors up from me. And so...

We'd see each other in passing. There's like this big courtyard. And she just became part of my social circle based on proximity and being friends with you. And what I found fascinating is, unbeknownst to me, she would invite you to her place to drink. Oh yeah. Just you and her. She knew I was a fan of whiskey.

She would like, oh, you know, like I keep getting these really expensive bottles of whiskey that I just don't touch. I'm not going to drink it. You want to have some? Try it out. I'm like, well, you know, a little dab will do me, you know. I'll drink your whiskey.

You know, I'd take the elevator, I'd go to her apartment, and I'd drink whiskey and we'd just talk about stuff. And this was extremely expensive booze. This wasn't just like a little bit of Jameson Irish whiskey that's 20 bucks a bottle. This was, this is like $300 bottle of Irish whiskey. You know, so it's like, yeah, I'd like to experience what, you know, what the upper crust in Ireland drinks.

even part of the whiskey story is like, oh, it's Irish. I wouldn't be caught dead with anything but Irish whiskey in my place. And she would show, she had a copy of the Irish Constitution framed on her wall, and she would just kind of offhand, it's like, you know, that's my grandfather's signature down there. Or was it grandfather? She told me her great-great-uncle. Something, yeah. But she could have told you something different. I don't remember. But you did see the Irish Constitution. Oh, yeah, and this was part of my family's history was that man...

That signature right there is my, I think she said great, I don't remember who, but my great-grandfather, whatever, someone really old, my bloodline. One of the founders of Ireland. Yeah, right. One of the founders of Ireland, the Thomas Jefferson of Ireland, who, you know, here he is, and that was her identity across the board, I think. But what's interesting is,

Mare didn't tell me she would have those whiskey evenings with you, and you didn't tell me you'd have those whiskey evenings with her. So she didn't tell you. No, and you didn't tell me. Why did you keep this a secret? Because we were having a lot of sex. Just kidding.

Were you sexually attracted to her? No, not at all. Not your type? Not my type. I have a very specific type. And so does Mare, especially when it comes to choosing new BFFs. Looking back, it was kind of like love bombing. The first year of our friendship, Mare wines and dines my husband and me at L.A.'s fanciest restaurants. Every time the check comes, she insists on paying.

She says she has a lot of money, and she says she really, really loves us. We'd hang out almost every evening in our barbecue area, talking till all hours under the cool LA sky. She'd bring me Irish tea and pastries. One night, I confide in her that part of my family had disowned me for being gay. Tears suddenly fill her eyes. To me, more in ghost kind of tears.

"Me too," she says. "Me too. All of a sudden, we weren't just new friends. We were two discarded souls bonding over our painful family circumstances." Mir explains that certain members of her family hate her for abandoning Ireland, and that her uncle recently died, and a 25 million euro inheritance is being divided up, and her cousin Fintan is out to make sure she gets nothing.

She shows me the most hateful text messages from Fintan on her phone that went something like: Mayor openly sobs reading these text messages to me. I feel so bad for her.

And then she tells me something really specific and really weird about her inheritance. She tells the same thing to Tina, too. There's a clause in the inheritance. That if she's convicted of a felony, she gets disinherited. Did you hear that story, too? Yes. Yeah. That if she's convicted of a felony, she doesn't get the inheritance. Right. She told me that, too. She not only told me that, she frantically shows me the email from her barristers in Ireland explaining it to her.

By the way, I have to Google what a barrister is. It's what they call lawyers over there. The email reads something like: "Dear Miss Smith, There is an unusual clause in your Uncle Podrick Clark's will that was brought to my attention by your family barristers stipulating that if any heir is ever convicted of a felony of any kind, they would be disinherited and henceforth ineligible to ever lay claim to any aspect of the Clark estate.

As your barrister, I felt it incumbent upon myself to inform you of this peculiarity lacking in relevance, though it may be. There is still a considerable amount of paperwork to file on your behalf. Your residing stateside certainly slows things up a bit, but we hope to have everything completed by year's end.

I tell Evan about the email. I'm like, holy shit. We're working together, producing a History Channel show called 10 Things You Don't Know with Henry Rollins. Behind these massive walls lie secrets buried for years. Bodies would turn up in Mexico. Wow.

Henry Rollins is so cool. Henry Rollins is awesome. Henry Rollins is awesome, but not as interesting as my new best friend. I tell Evan every amazing and insane thing I'm learning about Mare. She's Irish royalty. She's set to inherit a lot of money.

but she has vindictive family that are all fighting for this money and they're trying to screw her over. It felt like I stepped into like a soap opera all of a sudden. Yep, it really is a soap opera and the plot twists are just beginning.

Mare says early on that she has more than enough money to live on comfortably for the rest of her days, but she's bored with shopping all day and living a life of leisure. And since her cousin Fintan is best friends with the owner of Pacific Islands Travel in Los Angeles, she tells me that Fintan put in a good word and got her a job there.

This is, of course, long before her uncle died and long before Mare and Fintan have a falling out over inheritance. And because I know Fintan now hates Mare and wants to prevent her from getting any of her inheritance, and I know that Fintan is best friends with Mare's employer,

I think for sure Fenton might have his buddy, her employer, set Mare up to make it look like she's stealing from Pacific Islands so she can get convicted of a felony and forfeit millions of dollars in inheritance. Like, I remember you telling me, like, because you even knew, like, the family's names. It's like, and they were, it struck me, they all just sounded so Irish. It was just like Liam McGregor Schmidt and like...

What was the guy's name? What was it? Fintan. Fintan, yeah. Tristan and Dermuid. Yeah, it's like she watched Kate and Leopold and just pulled all the names. But yeah, it was crazy, but it sounded reasonable.

It does sound reasonable, especially to me. I mean, I have no doubt Mare's hateful family will set her up so they can take her millions for themselves. After all, I worked in the news business for 10 years, where stories about husbands knocking their wives off for million-dollar insurance policies happen all the time. Mare laughs at me for suggesting such outlandish things. Don't be silly, Jonathan. My family wouldn't set me up. That's just crazy.

But a couple weeks after that conversation, my phone rings. Hello? You have a collect call from the Century Regional Detention Facility from... Jonathan Ayer! Press 1 to accept. I quickly press 1. It's Mayer, calling me from jail. You were right! I was arrested today to make it look like I stole $200,000 from Pacific Islands! They're trying to get me disinherited!

Coming up this season on Queen of the Con.

One of her big clients was Jennifer Aniston. Wow. So what's sugardaddyforme.com? She had multiple men paying her a monthly fee for sex. She wanted me to go into the sex toy industry with her and I was like, no. Your mother essentially used you as bait in her con. She used me for all sorts of things.

Mayor practiced witchcraft.

Yes. She would tie the chicken wings. She would use a lot of dragon's blood. She portrayed herself as being certified in psychology. I got a call from a detective in Northern Ireland. He'd been looking for Marianne Smith for 10 years. She's left a trail of devastation in her wake. Unruined many lives. Pretty sure she drugged me.

And why would she drug you? So that we could have a bonding experience. She was trying to get a hold of his property. Both of them. It was notorious mirror. She was very good at the smoke and mirrors. She'd keep you spinning and you wouldn't know what was coming next or what was going on. I have 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. You've been scamming us out of money this whole time. I have not, John. You have. I still haven't recovered from her, to tell the truth. I never met a woman that did that to me. My fugitives unit ended up getting Miss Marianne Smythe in custody today. Dude, that's like John Grisham shit. I know. It's insane. She will never touch me again. She will never harm me again until the day I take my last breath.

or she does, whatever happens first. We have a jury in the above entitled action by the defendant, Mary Ann Smith. 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 Aliza 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 Eileen Faxes, Jorge Farragut, Eric Newman, Patrick Darcy, and Amy Phillips. Legal counsel for AYR Media, Gianni Douglas. Executive producer for iHeartRadio, Chandler Mays.

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