September 30, 2021 • 35 mins
When reality TV producer Johnathan Walton and his neighbors lose access to their resort-style swimming pool in their Downtown Los Angeles high-rise, they band together to push back against their landlord. At one of their protest parties, Johnathan meets Mair Smyth, a wealthy Irish heiress with a storied past who is battling some serious demons from her family back in Ireland. She dazzles the crowd, dropping in like an angel ready to solve everyone’s problems with the pool and beyond. But is Mair really the sweet savior she appears to be?
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Certain portions of what you're about to hear have been
dramatized based on real life events, eye witness accounts, and
court records. I'm a happily married gay man, but here
(00:20):
I am parked out front of this woman's place at
five o'clock in the morning, just trying to catch a
glimpse of her. 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 gotta let her go.
My buddy Evan thinks I'm obsessed. Hold on, all right, whatever, dude,
(00:42):
she's all you talk about like, this is not normal
to be outside or place like. I'm worried about you.
You're letting her dull your shine. Yeah, I know. I've
been trying to hide it from popular too. You know.
He sees me in mine and put your pops up
and you're flying to your rage. She's like, you promise
me this is over. Well, what are you gonna do?
You're gonna wake up and go to bed every night
thinking about fucking Mayor Smith. I just couldn't help it.
(01:12):
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 seems
so nice when we first met, so kind, so sweet.
But she's the devil. She's the fucking devil. I regret
every meeting her. We all do. I'm Jonathan Walton and
(01:44):
this is Queen of the Con Episode one, The Best Friend.
I'm a reality TV producer. I've worked on twenty seven
different series over the past fourteen years. But the most
spectacular reality show I've ever been a part of had
(02:07):
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
(02:31):
to exert their power over you. She was a vampire,
all right. She offered to help me, and, not knowing
any better, I invited her in. I had just finished
working on season four of Shark Tank in April. Stoplessing
these guys. I've been producing reality television for about five years.
(02:54):
At that point, I moved out to Los Angeles in
two thousand and seven after getting fired from my job
as a TV news reporter in Houston. My good friend
and colleague, Jonathan Ralton is here and let's take a
peek over there. And he's gonna 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,
(03:17):
a welcomed respite of good news sandwich between all the murders,
Carrex and calamity staple of local news. But the station
I worked for suddenly had a regime change and I
got a new boss who didn't think my brand of
(03:38):
journalism belonged on the morning news. The mission visit for
the most popular icecream 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 Freaking Central is interested in a new
(04:01):
show I pitched them called some Stupid Show. It's like
a funny version of sixty Minutes done in thirty a
young Swedish couple gets evicted from their apartment because they
have sex too loud. That's a five minute piece screaming
if you watched on some stupid show. So I moved
out to Los Angeles in late two thousand seven to
(04:21):
make the Comedy Central thing happen, and then bam, the
writers strike thing happens instead. That strike put the kai
bosh on my Comedy Central opportunity, and it also screws
thousands of other producers and show creators out of their
deals at networks and production companies. A really shitty time
(04:45):
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 UFO Hunters for the History Channel, Professional Grade
for h GTV, American Ninja Warrior for NBC, Shark Channel
(05:08):
for ABC. I am having a blast until she comes along. Ready. No,
it's the summer of and it's shaping up to be
a hot one. Another day, A triple digits on the way.
Current temperature is already downtown. The problem is our downtown
(05:31):
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
(05:53):
part of the contract was that the apartments were responsible
for sixty percent 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 ten years. Tina Mensch is
(06:14):
not only a Los Angeles attorney, but she's also a
neighbor of mine. Back in 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 two thousand dollars or something like that,
and when the bill actually came it was like two
(06:35):
hundred and forty thousand dollars, 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 problem is right,
but we're not talking about just any pool. It's heated.
(06:57):
It's heated. Yeah, we could go summing at night. It's warm,
you see, like the steam car. And it's not a
chlorine pool. It's a saltwater pool, which makes it so
much better. Yeah, um, 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, and
it's shaped like what would you describe that shape? It's
like a giant circle, but with like nooks and crannies
(07:18):
on the side so you can hang out with friends.
And then it's got like this twenty person jacuzzi beside it. Yes,
it's it's an amazing part of living in this complex. Yeah,
so losing it was a tragedy, it felt like. And
the four d plus residents in our building are mad
as hell. I'm not paying thirty three hundred dollars a
(07:40):
month for no pool. Why does the other building to
have access and we don't. We should all stop bang
rank until we get the pulled back. So I pull
a normal ray and I start organizing I stick flyers
up everywhere all around our building that read missed the pool,
(08:00):
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 in everyone's door
and four units and that 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, then,
(08:22):
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 ambrolio, I was like, well, I was piste
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 a hundred neighbors respond to my flyers,
(08:45):
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 dealer who quickly stands out from
the rest. She made quite a splash, didn't she At
(09:07):
the meeting. She did, and she was sitting there. She
was in a very expensive dress and expensive shoes, and
I remember I was drawn to her. She was so
uh majestic. She was. She was she was royal, and
I like strong women. She was strong, and she was opinionated,
(09:30):
and I was immediately drowned 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 Iris, didn't It did sound Iris? Sherry
think so too. She had an accent. Oh yeah, what
(09:52):
did it sound like to you? Irish? Sounded Irish? Oh yeah, Gaelic.
She introduces herself of 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
(10:16):
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
in one big and they're scared of him and shaken
in their boots. So if they get win that he's involved,
we'll get the pool back like that. Yes, yes, I
I remember that. And there's something else something like that.
(10:39):
All he had to do was send something on his
letter head with his name on it, and they had cave. Yeah,
and we were super excited about that. She is very
charismatic and she knew how to keep everybody's attention on her.
She was immediately connected and throwing her connections around in
her confidence made do you believe it? She had just
(11:01):
such a big sense of confidence. And I remember thinking
that night, Um, wow, we solve our problem. Mayor is
going to fix everything. Right. We felt good, Right, we
accomplished something. Mayor tells us all her politician boyfriend can
(11:25):
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
(11:49):
offered to help you get a job. Yeah, I passed
the bar in December of two eleven. 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,
Like I love that, like mother Teresa, like she said.
(12:10):
I remember her saying distinctly to you can send me
your resume. I'll get it to the politician and his
firm is hiring, maybe they'll hire you. I can get
him 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
(12:31):
anything can happen. Yeah, it was kind of magical. Mayor
also offers to help my neighbor Sherry. So, what did
you do for running nightclubs? I was running multiple nightclubs,
strip clubs. I remember you talking about your girls, the strippers,
saying they have, you know, 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
(12:52):
in the Pacific Islands. And she gave you her card,
have them call me. She was the hook up. Yeah,
that's what I That's what I love about her. She
seems so helpful. At that time, Mayor 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,
(13:17):
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 of 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.
(13:39):
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.
(14:02):
And she was funny and clever, and she always had
good stories. And 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. Yes,
(14:27):
I didn't know that the whole Irish political asylum thing.
Mayor 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 in the
eighties under political asylum, and it was overnight, And it
(14:48):
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 uncle's got murdered, my other uncle was
(15:09):
on the run. It took them four weeks to get
us a political assignument, but us kids weren't told until
the night we were told to pack up bag and leave.
I mean, she talked about Ireland a lot and Tina
is enthralled. She and Mayor end up having a lot
of adventures together during their friendship, dangerous downtown Los Angeles adventures.
(15:32):
So we were we were at a bar and we
were drinking, and she started talking to people sitting near us,
and and then I don't remember anything. Well, I woke
up at home with a giant bruise on my forearm.
(15:55):
I you don't remember how you got there. I don't
remember how I got there. All my stuff was into array,
like like when you say yourself was in disarray, as
if someone had searched your apartment. No, like like I
dupped my purse when I came in. I had a
giant bruise on my forearm. I mean it seemed like
I had gotten into a fight. I don't remember coming home.
(16:18):
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 Mayor,
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. And then
you called Mayor. Yes, and she said that she had
(16:40):
the exact same thing. Wow, I did file a police report. Um,
I went to the bar with her. She and I
went to the bar, and I told him I wanted
the surveillance video, that there's got to be surveillance video
that I believed I was drugged, and they refused to
(17:03):
give us anything, and I filed the police report, and
I don't think anything ever came of it. I remember
Mayor saying she saw some guy acting weird and she
was thinking he did it, Like Mayor 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
(17:23):
also felt awful the next day, like not like a hangover. Yeah,
this just made you closer, friends quicker. Yes, it's a
trauma bond. At the same time, Mayor is trauma bonding
with Tina. She's best friend bonding with me. So let's
get started. Mayor Smith is easily the most fascinating person
(17:50):
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
(18:12):
connections to powerful people everywhere. And then there's her family.
What did Mayor 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
five million dollars, but her family in Ireland was trying
(18:36):
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,
(18:58):
this person is my cousin and live 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
(19:20):
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 Fenton. 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
(19:50):
any text messages or emails from any members of her family.
I think there was some crazy email thread with um
the us in she said his name was Fenton. Yes.
So at this point, me and my two neighbors, Sherry
and Tina, know that Mayor Smith is a wealthy Irish
(20:10):
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 pulled is just insane. Subtle variations of Mary Smith's
(20:31):
Irish backstory are quickly spreading around Hollywood. The first story
ever would be that she was, you know, this royalty
from from Ireland and she was waiting on her inheritance.
That was the first thing she would tell everybody. Friend
Luzano is a Los Angeles filmmaker. She meets Mary Smith
back in at a dinner party. What did you like
(20:54):
about her? And I think she was fun to be around,
you know, for some Patty's. She would gonnaze like a
fun some patties and hey, we were with an actually
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
(21:16):
around in the sense of traveling. She's been to different places.
She had nice stories to tell. She was fun, she
was and she is smart. She's a smart person. Did
Mayor ever treat you for dinners and things? Mary did
not treat me for dinners. She did treat me for
two trips to pump Springs. So yeah, in many ways,
she was very fun to be with and to spend
(21:37):
time with her. She 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. What was that like? Did
she like that's pretty impressive? Like not everyone can see you.
You were like five feet away from Kobe Bryant. And
(21:59):
were you impressed? Does she seem like a woman with
a lot of connections along? Oh? Yeah, she would always
tell you that. As the months passed, Mayor Smith and
I get close, really close, and she meets my circle
of friends. She was very well healed, successful woman. She
(22:21):
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 fourteen 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
(22:42):
came to be Mayor'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 not? And how long did I stay with you? Guys? Gosh? Months? Months?
(23:02):
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. So I'm staying with
you 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
(23:24):
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 just
you and her. She knew I was a fan of whiskey.
(23:47):
She was like, oh, you know, like I keep getting
these really expensive bottles of whiskey that I just don't touch.
I'm not gonna drink it. You want to have some
try it out? And I'm like, well, you know, little
Dab will do me. You know, I'll drink your whisky.
You know. I'd take the elevator, I'd go to apartment
and I drink whiskey and we just talk about stuff.
(24:08):
And this was extremely expensive booze. This wasn't just like
a little bit of Jamison Irish whiskey, the twenty bucks
of bottle. This was this is like three bottle of
Irish whiskey. You know. So it's like, yeah, I'd like
I'd like to experience what you know, what the upper
crust in Ireland drinks even part of the whiskey stories,
(24:29):
like oh it's you know, it's Irish. You know, I
wouldn't have I wouldn't be caught dead with anything but
Irish whiskey in my place. And and she would show
she had the copy of the Irish Constitution framed on
her wall, and she would just you know, just kind
of off hands, like, you know, that's my grandfather's signature
down there, or was it grandfather? It was she told
me her great great uncle something. Yeah, she couldn't told
you something different. I don't did see thee and this
(24:52):
was you know, 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, this is one of the
right one of the founders of Ireland. Ireland, you know
that the Thomas Jefferson of Ireland, who you know here
(25:13):
he is And that was her identity across the board,
I think. But what's interesting is May 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 know, and you didn't tell me.
Why did you keep this a secret? Because we were
having a lot of sex. I'm just kidding. Were you
(25:38):
sexually attracted to her? No, not at all. Not your type,
not my type. I have a very specific type, and
so does Mayor, especially when it comes to choosing new BFFs.
Looking back, it was kind of like love bombing. The
first year of our friendship, Mayor wines and dines my
husband and me at l A's fanciest restaurants. Every time
(26:00):
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 l
A sky. She'd bring me Irish tea and pastries. One night,
I confide in her that part of my family had
(26:22):
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. Mary explains that certain members of
(26:45):
her family hate her for abandoning Ireland, and that her
uncle recently died and a million euro inheritance is being
divided up and her cousin Finton is out to make
sure she gets nothing. She shows me the most hateful
text messages from Finton on her phone that went something like,
(27:05):
you facn count You'll never get a bloody farthing the
day you left our family, you left our family's money.
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
(27:27):
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 heard that story too, Yes,
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
(27:49):
the way, I have to google what a barrister is.
It's what they call lawyers over there. The email reads
something like, dear ms Smith, there's an unusual close in
your uncle Padrick 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, that
(28:10):
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 irrelevance though it may be, there is
still a considerable amount of paperwork to file in your behalf.
Your residing state side certainly slows things up a bit
where we hope to have everything completed by year's end.
(28:35):
I tell Evan about the email, I'm like, holy shit.
We're working together producing a History Channel show called Ten
Things You Don't Know with Henry Rawlins. Behind these massive walls,
like secrets buried for years, bodies would turn up in Mexico. Wow,
Henry Rawlins is so cool. Henry Rollins is awesome. Henry
Rawlins is awesome, but not as interesting as my new
(28:57):
best friend. I tell Evan every amazing and insane thing
I'm learning about Mayor. 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
(29:19):
really is a soap opera, and the plot twists are
just beginning. Mayor 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 Finton,
is best friends with the owner of Pacific Islands Travel
in Los Angeles, she tells me that Fenton put in
(29:41):
a good word and got her a job there. This is,
of course, long before her uncle died, and long before
Mayor and Finton have a falling out over inheritance. And
because I know Finton now hates Mayor and wants to
prevent her from getting any of her inheritance, and I
know that Finton his best friends with Mayor's employer, I
(30:03):
think for sure Finton might have his buddy her employer
set Mayor 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 there all. It's just sounded so irish. It was
(30:24):
just like Leam McGregor, Schmidt and like what was the
guy's name, what was it Finton? Yeah, just like who's Tristan?
And yeah, it's like she watched like Kate and Leopold
and like just pulled all the names. But it was crazy,
but it sounded reasonable. It does sound reasonable, especially to me.
(30:46):
I mean, I have no doubt Mayor's hateful family will
set her up so they can take her millions for themselves.
After all, I worked in the news business for ten years,
where stories about husbands knocking their wives off for million
dollars in harrance policies happen all the time. Mayor laughs
at me for suggesting such outlandish things. Don't be silly, Jonathan.
(31:08):
My family wouldn't set me up. That's just crazy. But
a couple of weeks After that conversation, my phone rings.
You have a collect call from the Century Regional Detention
Facility from Jonathan Is Mayor. Press one to accept. I
(31:30):
quickly press one. It's Mayor calling me from jail. You
were right. I was arrested today. My family set me
up to make it look like I stole two hundred
thousand dollars from Pacific Islands. They're trying to get me disinherited.
I told you this would happen, I yelled into the phone.
(31:52):
I fucking told you. Coming up this season on Queen
of the Con, one of her big clients was Jennifer Aniston. Wow,
so what's sugar daddy for me dot com? She had
multiple men paying her a monthly fee for sex. She
(32:13):
wanted me to go into the sex toy industry with her,
and I was like, Dad, No, your mother essentially used
you as bait in her con. She used me for
all sorts of things. I used to forge signatures on papers,
the ship that goes on in Ireland. Here in America,
you'd go to prison. Back in Ireland, you'd get a
pat on the back, opened the door, and here's for
(32:35):
Irish speaking mobsters standing there with automatic assault rifles looking
for Marianne Mayor practiced witchcraft. Yes, she would tie the
chicken wings. She would use a lot of dragon's blood.
You'd portray herself as being certified in psychology. I got
a call from a detective in Northern Ireland. He'd been
looking for marian Smith for ten years. She's left a
(32:55):
trail of devastation in her wik I ruined many nights,
pretty or she drugged me? And why would she drug
you so that we could have a bonding experience. He
was trying to get ahold of his property, both of them.
It was a 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 to what was going on.
(33:18):
I have a poker face. If I don't want you
to see what I'm feeling, you are not going to
know that a mad or angry, or happy or sad.
I've been scamming us out of money this whole time.
You have still having recovered fur to tell the truth.
I never met a woman that did that to me.
My future, as you know, ended up getting Miss Marianne
Smike in custodya to day that's like Risha. She will
(33:43):
never touch Megan, she will never harm Megan until the
day I take my last breath, where she does whatever
happens first Jerry and the Fashion. For exclusive photos and
other Bone material follow at Queen of the Con on
Instagram and if you're enjoying Queen of the Con, tell
(34:05):
your friends about it and leave us a review on
Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Queen of
the Cohn The Irish Heiress is a production of a
y R Media and I Heart Radio hosted by me
Jonathan Walton. Executive producers Jonathan Walton for Jonathan Walton Productions
(34:28):
and Eliza Rosen for a y R Media. Written by
Jonathan Walton, Consulting producer Evan Goldstein, Senior Associate producer Eric Newman.
Sound designed by baked ZD Media, mixed and mastered by
Elliott Herman, Audio engineering by Elliott Herman, Studio engineering by
(34:49):
Chris McMasters. Voice acting performed by Eileen Faxis, jorgey Farragut,
Eric Newman, Patrick Darcy and Amy Phillips Legal counsel for
a y R Media. Gianni Douglas, Executive producer for I
Heart Radio. Chandler Maids m.
Certain portions of what you're about to hear have been
dramatized based on real life events, eye witness accounts, and
court records. I'm a happily married gay man, but here
(00:20):
I am parked out front of this woman's place at
five o'clock in the morning, just trying to catch a
glimpse of her. 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 gotta let her go.
My buddy Evan thinks I'm obsessed. Hold on, all right, whatever, dude,
(00:42):
she's all you talk about like, this is not normal
to be outside or place like. I'm worried about you.
You're letting her dull your shine. Yeah, I know. I've
been trying to hide it from popular too. You know.
He sees me in mine and put your pops up
and you're flying to your rage. She's like, you promise
me this is over. Well, what are you gonna do?
You're gonna wake up and go to bed every night
thinking about fucking Mayor Smith. I just couldn't help it.
(01:12):
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 seems
so nice when we first met, so kind, so sweet.
But she's the devil. She's the fucking devil. I regret
every meeting her. We all do. I'm Jonathan Walton and
(01:44):
this is Queen of the Con Episode one, The Best Friend.
I'm a reality TV producer. I've worked on twenty seven
different series over the past fourteen years. But the most
spectacular reality show I've ever been a part of had
(02:07):
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
(02:31):
to exert their power over you. She was a vampire,
all right. She offered to help me, and, not knowing
any better, I invited her in. I had just finished
working on season four of Shark Tank in April. Stoplessing
these guys. I've been producing reality television for about five years.
(02:54):
At that point, I moved out to Los Angeles in
two thousand and seven after getting fired from my job
as a TV news reporter in Houston. My good friend
and colleague, Jonathan Ralton is here and let's take a
peek over there. And he's gonna 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,
(03:17):
a welcomed respite of good news sandwich between all the murders,
Carrex and calamity staple of local news. But the station
I worked for suddenly had a regime change and I
got a new boss who didn't think my brand of
(03:38):
journalism belonged on the morning news. The mission visit for
the most popular icecream 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 Freaking Central is interested in a new
(04:01):
show I pitched them called some Stupid Show. It's like
a funny version of sixty Minutes done in thirty a
young Swedish couple gets evicted from their apartment because they
have sex too loud. That's a five minute piece screaming
if you watched on some stupid show. So I moved
out to Los Angeles in late two thousand seven to
(04:21):
make the Comedy Central thing happen, and then bam, the
writers strike thing happens instead. That strike put the kai
bosh on my Comedy Central opportunity, and it also screws
thousands of other producers and show creators out of their
deals at networks and production companies. A really shitty time
(04:45):
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 UFO Hunters for the History Channel, Professional Grade
for h GTV, American Ninja Warrior for NBC, Shark Channel
(05:08):
for ABC. I am having a blast until she comes along. Ready. No,
it's the summer of and it's shaping up to be
a hot one. Another day, A triple digits on the way.
Current temperature is already downtown. The problem is our downtown
(05:31):
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
(05:53):
part of the contract was that the apartments were responsible
for sixty percent 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 ten years. Tina Mensch is
(06:14):
not only a Los Angeles attorney, but she's also a
neighbor of mine. Back in 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 two thousand dollars or something like that,
and when the bill actually came it was like two
(06:35):
hundred and forty thousand dollars, 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 problem is right,
but we're not talking about just any pool. It's heated.
(06:57):
It's heated. Yeah, we could go summing at night. It's warm,
you see, like the steam car. And it's not a
chlorine pool. It's a saltwater pool, which makes it so
much better. Yeah, um, 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, and
it's shaped like what would you describe that shape? It's
like a giant circle, but with like nooks and crannies
(07:18):
on the side so you can hang out with friends.
And then it's got like this twenty person jacuzzi beside it. Yes,
it's it's an amazing part of living in this complex. Yeah,
so losing it was a tragedy, it felt like. And
the four d plus residents in our building are mad
as hell. I'm not paying thirty three hundred dollars a
(07:40):
month for no pool. Why does the other building to
have access and we don't. We should all stop bang
rank until we get the pulled back. So I pull
a normal ray and I start organizing I stick flyers
up everywhere all around our building that read missed the pool,
(08:00):
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 in everyone's door
and four units and that 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, then,
(08:22):
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 ambrolio, I was like, well, I was piste
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 a hundred neighbors respond to my flyers,
(08:45):
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 dealer who quickly stands out from
the rest. She made quite a splash, didn't she At
(09:07):
the meeting. She did, and she was sitting there. She
was in a very expensive dress and expensive shoes, and
I remember I was drawn to her. She was so
uh majestic. She was. She was she was royal, and
I like strong women. She was strong, and she was opinionated,
(09:30):
and I was immediately drowned 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 Iris, didn't It did sound Iris? Sherry
think so too. She had an accent. Oh yeah, what
(09:52):
did it sound like to you? Irish? Sounded Irish? Oh yeah, Gaelic.
She introduces herself of 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
(10:16):
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
in one big and they're scared of him and shaken
in their boots. So if they get win that he's involved,
we'll get the pool back like that. Yes, yes, I
I remember that. And there's something else something like that.
(10:39):
All he had to do was send something on his
letter head with his name on it, and they had cave. Yeah,
and we were super excited about that. She is very
charismatic and she knew how to keep everybody's attention on her.
She was immediately connected and throwing her connections around in
her confidence made do you believe it? She had just
(11:01):
such a big sense of confidence. And I remember thinking
that night, Um, wow, we solve our problem. Mayor is
going to fix everything. Right. We felt good, Right, we
accomplished something. Mayor tells us all her politician boyfriend can
(11:25):
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
(11:49):
offered to help you get a job. Yeah, I passed
the bar in December of two eleven. 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,
Like I love that, like mother Teresa, like she said.
(12:10):
I remember her saying distinctly to you can send me
your resume. I'll get it to the politician and his
firm is hiring, maybe they'll hire you. I can get
him 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
(12:31):
anything can happen. Yeah, it was kind of magical. Mayor
also offers to help my neighbor Sherry. So, what did
you do for running nightclubs? I was running multiple nightclubs,
strip clubs. I remember you talking about your girls, the strippers,
saying they have, you know, 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
(12:52):
in the Pacific Islands. And she gave you her card,
have them call me. She was the hook up. Yeah,
that's what I That's what I love about her. She
seems so helpful. At that time, Mayor 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,
(13:17):
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 of 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.
(13:39):
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.
(14:02):
And she was funny and clever, and she always had
good stories. And 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. Yes,
(14:27):
I didn't know that the whole Irish political asylum thing.
Mayor 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 in the
eighties under political asylum, and it was overnight, And it
(14:48):
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 uncle's got murdered, my other uncle was
(15:09):
on the run. It took them four weeks to get
us a political assignument, but us kids weren't told until
the night we were told to pack up bag and leave.
I mean, she talked about Ireland a lot and Tina
is enthralled. She and Mayor end up having a lot
of adventures together during their friendship, dangerous downtown Los Angeles adventures.
(15:32):
So we were we were at a bar and we
were drinking, and she started talking to people sitting near us,
and and then I don't remember anything. Well, I woke
up at home with a giant bruise on my forearm.
(15:55):
I you don't remember how you got there. I don't
remember how I got there. All my stuff was into array,
like like when you say yourself was in disarray, as
if someone had searched your apartment. No, like like I
dupped my purse when I came in. I had a
giant bruise on my forearm. I mean it seemed like
I had gotten into a fight. I don't remember coming home.
(16:18):
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 Mayor,
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. And then
you called Mayor. Yes, and she said that she had
(16:40):
the exact same thing. Wow, I did file a police report. Um,
I went to the bar with her. She and I
went to the bar, and I told him I wanted
the surveillance video, that there's got to be surveillance video
that I believed I was drugged, and they refused to
(17:03):
give us anything, and I filed the police report, and
I don't think anything ever came of it. I remember
Mayor saying she saw some guy acting weird and she
was thinking he did it, Like Mayor 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
(17:23):
also felt awful the next day, like not like a hangover. Yeah,
this just made you closer, friends quicker. Yes, it's a
trauma bond. At the same time, Mayor is trauma bonding
with Tina. She's best friend bonding with me. So let's
get started. Mayor Smith is easily the most fascinating person
(17:50):
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
(18:12):
connections to powerful people everywhere. And then there's her family.
What did Mayor 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
five million dollars, but her family in Ireland was trying
(18:36):
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,
(18:58):
this person is my cousin and live 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
(19:20):
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 Fenton. 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
(19:50):
any text messages or emails from any members of her family.
I think there was some crazy email thread with um
the us in she said his name was Fenton. Yes.
So at this point, me and my two neighbors, Sherry
and Tina, know that Mayor Smith is a wealthy Irish
(20:10):
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 pulled is just insane. Subtle variations of Mary Smith's
(20:31):
Irish backstory are quickly spreading around Hollywood. The first story
ever would be that she was, you know, this royalty
from from Ireland and she was waiting on her inheritance.
That was the first thing she would tell everybody. Friend
Luzano is a Los Angeles filmmaker. She meets Mary Smith
back in at a dinner party. What did you like
(20:54):
about her? And I think she was fun to be around,
you know, for some Patty's. She would gonnaze like a
fun some patties and hey, we were with an actually
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
(21:16):
around in the sense of traveling. She's been to different places.
She had nice stories to tell. She was fun, she
was and she is smart. She's a smart person. Did
Mayor ever treat you for dinners and things? Mary did
not treat me for dinners. She did treat me for
two trips to pump Springs. So yeah, in many ways,
she was very fun to be with and to spend
(21:37):
time with her. She 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. What was that like? Did
she like that's pretty impressive? Like not everyone can see you.
You were like five feet away from Kobe Bryant. And
(21:59):
were you impressed? Does she seem like a woman with
a lot of connections along? Oh? Yeah, she would always
tell you that. As the months passed, Mayor Smith and
I get close, really close, and she meets my circle
of friends. She was very well healed, successful woman. She
(22:21):
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 fourteen 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
(22:42):
came to be Mayor'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 not? And how long did I stay with you? Guys? Gosh? Months? Months?
(23:02):
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. So I'm staying with
you 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
(23:24):
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 just
you and her. She knew I was a fan of whiskey.
(23:47):
She was like, oh, you know, like I keep getting
these really expensive bottles of whiskey that I just don't touch.
I'm not gonna drink it. You want to have some
try it out? And I'm like, well, you know, little
Dab will do me. You know, I'll drink your whisky.
You know. I'd take the elevator, I'd go to apartment
and I drink whiskey and we just talk about stuff.
(24:08):
And this was extremely expensive booze. This wasn't just like
a little bit of Jamison Irish whiskey, the twenty bucks
of bottle. This was this is like three bottle of
Irish whiskey. You know. So it's like, yeah, I'd like
I'd like to experience what you know, what the upper
crust in Ireland drinks even part of the whiskey stories,
(24:29):
like oh it's you know, it's Irish. You know, I
wouldn't have I wouldn't be caught dead with anything but
Irish whiskey in my place. And and she would show
she had the copy of the Irish Constitution framed on
her wall, and she would just you know, just kind
of off hands, like, you know, that's my grandfather's signature
down there, or was it grandfather? It was she told
me her great great uncle something. Yeah, she couldn't told
you something different. I don't did see thee and this
(24:52):
was you know, 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, this is one of the
right one of the founders of Ireland. Ireland, you know
that the Thomas Jefferson of Ireland, who you know here
(25:13):
he is And that was her identity across the board,
I think. But what's interesting is May 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 know, and you didn't tell me.
Why did you keep this a secret? Because we were
having a lot of sex. I'm just kidding. Were you
(25:38):
sexually attracted to her? No, not at all. Not your type,
not my type. I have a very specific type, and
so does Mayor, especially when it comes to choosing new BFFs.
Looking back, it was kind of like love bombing. The
first year of our friendship, Mayor wines and dines my
husband and me at l A's fanciest restaurants. Every time
(26:00):
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 l
A sky. She'd bring me Irish tea and pastries. One night,
I confide in her that part of my family had
(26:22):
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. Mary explains that certain members of
(26:45):
her family hate her for abandoning Ireland, and that her
uncle recently died and a million euro inheritance is being
divided up and her cousin Finton is out to make
sure she gets nothing. She shows me the most hateful
text messages from Finton on her phone that went something like,
(27:05):
you facn count You'll never get a bloody farthing the
day you left our family, you left our family's money.
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
(27:27):
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 heard that story too, Yes,
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
(27:49):
the way, I have to google what a barrister is.
It's what they call lawyers over there. The email reads
something like, dear ms Smith, there's an unusual close in
your uncle Padrick 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, that
(28:10):
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 irrelevance though it may be, there is
still a considerable amount of paperwork to file in your behalf.
Your residing state side certainly slows things up a bit
where we hope to have everything completed by year's end.
(28:35):
I tell Evan about the email, I'm like, holy shit.
We're working together producing a History Channel show called Ten
Things You Don't Know with Henry Rawlins. Behind these massive walls,
like secrets buried for years, bodies would turn up in Mexico. Wow,
Henry Rawlins is so cool. Henry Rollins is awesome. Henry
Rawlins is awesome, but not as interesting as my new
(28:57):
best friend. I tell Evan every amazing and insane thing
I'm learning about Mayor. 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
(29:19):
really is a soap opera, and the plot twists are
just beginning. Mayor 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 Finton,
is best friends with the owner of Pacific Islands Travel
in Los Angeles, she tells me that Fenton put in
(29:41):
a good word and got her a job there. This is,
of course, long before her uncle died, and long before
Mayor and Finton have a falling out over inheritance. And
because I know Finton now hates Mayor and wants to
prevent her from getting any of her inheritance, and I
know that Finton his best friends with Mayor's employer, I
(30:03):
think for sure Finton might have his buddy her employer
set Mayor 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 there all. It's just sounded so irish. It was
(30:24):
just like Leam McGregor, Schmidt and like what was the
guy's name, what was it Finton? Yeah, just like who's Tristan?
And yeah, it's like she watched like Kate and Leopold
and like just pulled all the names. But it was crazy,
but it sounded reasonable. It does sound reasonable, especially to me.
(30:46):
I mean, I have no doubt Mayor's hateful family will
set her up so they can take her millions for themselves.
After all, I worked in the news business for ten years,
where stories about husbands knocking their wives off for million
dollars in harrance policies happen all the time. Mayor laughs
at me for suggesting such outlandish things. Don't be silly, Jonathan.
(31:08):
My family wouldn't set me up. That's just crazy. But
a couple of weeks After that conversation, my phone rings.
You have a collect call from the Century Regional Detention
Facility from Jonathan Is Mayor. Press one to accept. I
(31:30):
quickly press one. It's Mayor calling me from jail. You
were right. I was arrested today. My family set me
up to make it look like I stole two hundred
thousand dollars from Pacific Islands. They're trying to get me disinherited.
I told you this would happen, I yelled into the phone.
(31:52):
I fucking told you. Coming up this season on Queen
of the Con, one of her big clients was Jennifer Aniston. Wow,
so what's sugar daddy for me dot com? She had
multiple men paying her a monthly fee for sex. She
(32:13):
wanted me to go into the sex toy industry with her,
and I was like, Dad, No, your mother essentially used
you as bait in her con. She used me for
all sorts of things. I used to forge signatures on papers,
the ship that goes on in Ireland. Here in America,
you'd go to prison. Back in Ireland, you'd get a
pat on the back, opened the door, and here's for
(32:35):
Irish speaking mobsters standing there with automatic assault rifles looking
for Marianne Mayor practiced witchcraft. Yes, she would tie the
chicken wings. She would use a lot of dragon's blood.
You'd portray herself as being certified in psychology. I got
a call from a detective in Northern Ireland. He'd been
looking for marian Smith for ten years. She's left a
(32:55):
trail of devastation in her wik I ruined many nights,
pretty or she drugged me? And why would she drug
you so that we could have a bonding experience. He
was trying to get ahold of his property, both of them.
It was a 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 to what was going on.
(33:18):
I have a poker face. If I don't want you
to see what I'm feeling, you are not going to
know that a mad or angry, or happy or sad.
I've been scamming us out of money this whole time.
You have still having recovered fur to tell the truth.
I never met a woman that did that to me.
My future, as you know, ended up getting Miss Marianne
Smike in custodya to day that's like Risha. She will
(33:43):
never touch Megan, she will never harm Megan until the
day I take my last breath, where she does whatever
happens first Jerry and the Fashion. For exclusive photos and
other Bone material follow at Queen of the Con on
Instagram and if you're enjoying Queen of the Con, tell
(34:05):
your friends about it and leave us a review on
Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Queen of
the Cohn The Irish Heiress is a production of a
y R Media and I Heart Radio hosted by me
Jonathan Walton. Executive producers Jonathan Walton for Jonathan Walton Productions
(34:28):
and Eliza Rosen for a y R Media. Written by
Jonathan Walton, Consulting producer Evan Goldstein, Senior Associate producer Eric Newman.
Sound designed by baked ZD Media, mixed and mastered by
Elliott Herman, Audio engineering by Elliott Herman, Studio engineering by
(34:49):
Chris McMasters. Voice acting performed by Eileen Faxis, jorgey Farragut,
Eric Newman, Patrick Darcy and Amy Phillips Legal counsel for
a y R Media. Gianni Douglas, Executive producer for I
Heart Radio. Chandler Maids m.
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