November 4, 2021 • 34 mins
After doggedly pursuing law enforcement for years, Johnathan finally gets some relief. Mair Smyth is arrested in Los Angeles, but keeps herself busy awaiting trial. She uses a phony mental illness claim and a pair of crutches to trick a judge into going easy on her. But the folks she’s conned band together and are committed to fighting back. As Johnathan and his fellow victims put it all on the line to see her brought to justice, Mair’s next brazen scam could let her walk away scot-free.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
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, eyewitness accounts, and court records.
She put me in a prison without bars, and I
feel she should be stopped so as not to do
this to anyone else. Long before I meet Mayor Smith
in my downtown Los Angeles apartment building. She lives in
(00:22):
Northern Ireland for almost ten years and scams half a
million dollars from twenty six victims there. Local police plan
to extradite her now that they know where she is.
She's left a trail of devastation in her and Mayor's
own daughter not only witnesses her scam people in Northern Ireland.
I mean she was always a pathological liar, but Mayor
(00:46):
actually tricks her into helping when she's just a child. Oh,
she used me for all sorts of things. I used
to forge signatures. In two thousand nine, when police started investigating,
Mayor flees Northern Ireland for Tennessee and buys her way
back into her other daughter's life. Marianne started sending money
(01:07):
to Courtney's account, but then the money stops. Mayor suddenly
disappears and a group of angry men with guns drawn
show up looking for her. And what did they tell you? Exactly? Well,
they threatened that if we didn't tell them where Marianne was,
they were going to kill Chelsea. They're gonna kill Stephen,
(01:27):
They're gonna kill myself, They're gonna kill Courtney and her
newborn daughter Avery. I'm Jonathan Walton and this is Queen
of the Con Episode seven, The Hunt. I can only
(02:00):
imagine what was going through the mind of Mayor's son
in law Joshua Askavish that night when a group of
belligerent men show up on his doorstep, desperately searching for Mayor.
Josh is a military vet who served in Iraq. He's
seen his share of life threatening situations, but this is
markedly different. It was literally Irish gangsters, mobsters looking for blood.
(02:27):
What made you think they were Irish gangsters? Did they
identify themselves as like we're the Irish mob or what?
What made you think when they spoke? I don't know
if you ever seen the movie The Devil's Own with
Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt, the way he speaks on there,
that's exactly how it was. Stupid. Mom, Mr Burke, you're
only seeing based on him, between you and the money,
(02:49):
it shows me to the bony even think about it.
I mean, it's scared the living hell out of me.
What did these men look like? They were wearing dark clothes,
trash coats, automatic rifles, A couple had black leather gloves on,
one guy had long hair, and three of them they
just kind of stood back. It was the long long
(03:09):
hair that spoke as canna wear Mary Anne was. All
of them had automatic guns, yes, and I will safely
assume they were a K forty sevens. And why did
you think they were looking for her? Well, obviously when
they show up with automatic rifles and you know, speaking Irish, okay,
I knew someone has royally screwed up somewhere along the lines.
(03:32):
And obviously they're not friendly. They're looking for blow or money.
And what were you feeling at that moment? I was
in shock, you know, instant dry them out, just looking
at and going, okay, what the fund did I do?
And then they told you what They asked where mary
Anne was, if she was staying there? And what did
(03:53):
you tell them at that point? Well, at that point
I didn't even know where she was exactly, other than last,
I knew she was somewhere in kid See and were
they happy with that? They left after that, they believed you.
They were quite Larara at first, and then Courtney also
came to the door and told him, looked last, we
knew she was in Tennessee. And they asked how long
ago that was, and that was within a month, and
(04:15):
then they left. Yes, what did you and Courtney stay
to each other as they walked away? And you guys
didn't get shot. We were just in awe. We really
didn't even say anything, just kind of stared, like did
that really just happen. The real tragedy here, though, is
(04:37):
just three years after those men with guns come knocking.
Mare's a strange daughter. Courtney dies at the age of
twenty three of cystic fibrosis, a respiratory illness she was
born with and suffered from her entire life. I knew
that my sister, like she wasn't expected to be alive
(04:58):
for a long time. Chelsea only gets to know Courtney
for a handful of years near the end of her
life growing up, though Courtney is not around. Remember, the
Courts found Mayor to be an unfit mother and awarded
soul custody of Courtney to Mayor's ex husband in Michigan. Nonetheless,
Mayor invokes Courtney's name frequently around Chelsea, and not in
(05:21):
a good way. She would regularly tell me that she'd
wished that I was sick and not my sister. Wow,
that is such a damage in vain as little girl, Jesus,
And how did you deal with it? Did it hurt
you then or did it roll off your back? It
did not roll off my back. I mean I was
(05:42):
severely depressed as a teenager. I had several suicide attempts.
I mean, it was bad. Gosh, I'm so sorry. I
can't even fathom how you got to where you got.
Two Now. More disturbing than what Mayor tells her daughter
Chelsea while being in Northern Ireland is what she gets
(06:02):
her to do. Mayor uses Chelsea and her young cousin
as chills. My mom was like raising money for cystic fibrosis,
like in general, and was making us take buckets around places.
I didn't ever know if she was scamming people, but
when she did things like that, I was like, you're not.
(06:22):
You're not donating money to cystic fibrosis. You and your
cousin were going door to door with buckets collecting money. Wow,
using kids, you know, using young girls, like who would
not give? Right, you're coming around with a bucket, like, oh,
look at this adorable girl. Here you go. It's a
great racket, as deplorable as it is, she knows what works,
(06:46):
and Mayor is equally adapt at refreshing her cons to
keep up with the times, because five years later, after
her daughter Courtney dies of cystic fibrosis, Mayor creates a
go FUNDI page in Los Angeles to raise money in
the name of her dead daughter. She had a child
that had passed away from this disease. It was Mother's
(07:07):
Day and she had decided to start a campaign to
get money and donated to the research of this disease.
Los Angeles filmmaker friend Lozano happily donates. I mean, who
wouldn't It's a good cause, you know, So yeah, I
donated fifty dollars and I shared it on my Facebook
page and say, hey, this is somebody I know. If
(07:28):
you have it in your heart and you have some
extra money, this is a good cost. Of course, it
isn't a good cause, but it is a good con
Mayor Smith raises sixt four hundred and sixty dollars through
her go fund me scam, and when I check with
Assistic Fibrosis Foundation, they tell me they never see a
(07:49):
dime who does that. She used a picture of her
dead daughter. I mean, that's another level. That is another level.
Just when I think she can't get any worse than
a dog murderer, she uses her estranged daughter's tragic death
(08:09):
to prey on people's charity. She really is the fucking devil.
I encourage friend to report Mayor to police, which she does,
as do a bunch of other victims of that go
fund me scam. Mayor's ex son in law, Joshua Askavish,
is a guest. What really got to me the most.
(08:31):
It was a picture of Courtney and my daughter Avery.
And that's where really just made my blood boil. The
fact that she's even got the goal to even post
a picture that includes my daughter. Mayor's got the goal,
all right. There's a special place in hell for a
con artist who uses the illness and death of her
(08:51):
own daughter to scam people. As the months pass, every
time I find a new victim and a new scam,
I update the l A p D. This has nothing
(09:12):
to do with your case, they tell me. So I
just try harder to dig up more evidence and find
more victims. It becomes an obsession, and it starts taking
a toll on my life. You are such an extremist
that I was worried that you were harming your marriage.
(09:34):
I was worried you were harming your own mental well being.
You know, because even a good cause taken too far
can do you in. My former TV reporter friend, Eileen
Factus has known me for twenty years, and I really
look up to her today. She runs a bilingual YouTube
channel called kid Time story Time, reading books to kids
(09:56):
using puppets, songs and a thousand voices like a ray
of sunshine, this soul. Wait a minute, oh green bear,
we're in the middle of the story. Yeah, I question.
I've always come to Eileen for advice. She's a real
force for good in my life, and I usually listen
(10:17):
to what she has to say. This time, though I
don't want to hear it. I just felt like you
needed a break. Even if you didn't think you needed
a break, you were going down this rabbit hole, and
I couldn't help but be worried. You were already so
obsessed about it, and obsession about anything is bad, right,
even though it's coming from a good place. But then
(10:40):
at the same time, I see it's doing a number
on you emotionally. You're stressed out, you're not sleeping, you
leave work constantly to do this. I could see your
husband was not happy. He was stressed out about it.
My buddy, Evan is worried about me too, I think
worried about you. As an understatement, Yeah, we'd talk and
(11:01):
you weren't Jonathan anymore. For years you were this just
kind of jovial, funny, easygoing guy, quick to help people.
You know, just everything was light. Life is good, Evan,
you know, like you're always so positive. And that's not
the person I was talking to. And it wasn't just
me that saw this. You were beyond obsessed. Man. I
(11:23):
talked to Pablo about you behind your back, and we
were just like, what the fund are we going to
do about Jonathan? Like Jonathan is gone. He's not only obsessed,
he is talking different, he is angry, he is unhappy.
(11:44):
Anyone who knows you before this, it's a one eight.
It's not you man, you know, and really the thing
that I was. I was to the point where I
was like, I don't know if we can be friends. Listen.
I know my obsession with bringing mary Anne Smith to
justice is hurting me, and at a certain point I
(12:05):
let it go. I try. I try to let it go,
I really do, but I just can't. It gnaws at me.
It haunts my dreams. I would rather die than let
that woman get away with what she did to me
and what she did to all those other people, what
she did to Chelsea. So I doubled down and work
(12:29):
even harder and obsess even more. And thankfully I'm not alone.
I don't know. I looked at it. We're all in
this together at this point, you know. And I do
want to see justice served, and I don't want her
to be It was mostly about keeping her from doing
this to anyone else again. You know. Remember Bob's nanny,
(12:51):
Sarah Coffin, who Mayor tricks Bob into firing while trying
to scam him and adding her name to the titles
of his two multimillion dollar New Poor Beach properties. Sarah
is as passionate and committed to taking down Mayor as
I am, and she didn't even get me financially. You know,
it wasn't about money with me. She really fucked my
(13:12):
head over. She really fucked me up. She ruined this
relationship that I had with this family, like I'd known
them for so long and been closed for so long,
and for her to come in so fast and hard
and just suck everything up incredibly was just amazing to me.
Like that she was that destructive. Funny thing about the
(13:35):
justice system, it's slow, painfully slow. Remember that Pacific Island's
case from seventeen, where Mayor pleads guilty to stealing two
thousand dollars and pays for restitution by scamming me so
she can avoid a five year jail sentence. Even though
Mayor has already pled guilty and served her easily thirty
(13:57):
days behind bars months ago, the case is still going on.
Mayor's attorney is now disputing how much money she actually
stole from Pacific Islands, and there are monthly court appearances
happening that Mayor has to attend to hash everything out.
(14:17):
As soon as I get into this, I act Mayor
Smith has been so deep inside my head for the
past several months. It's high time I get deep inside
of hers. So I organized you everyone who would come.
I'm like, let's go in a crowd and stare that
bitch down and let her know you're not getting away.
(14:40):
I was so grateful to you, because at that point
it was hard getting an adherence, it was hard getting
victims to come forward, and but you jumped on. Remember
you came to all those court appearances for the Pacific
Islands case where we could fucking stare daggers at her.
That was the best. Remember, yes, I do. And one time,
I like me, Heather, Bob friends sitting when Mayor sees
(15:07):
us all sitting in court, smattering of the disparate victims
she conned all together now staring her down, she turns white.
She's saying something to the bailiff and pointing at us like,
god knows what she told the bailiff. Maybe we're like
criminal or something. And then my favorite memory that I'd
(15:27):
played over and over, we were, but she's a criminal.
And also we had every legal right to be there, exactly,
it's a public form. And then remember when so that
that day is over, everyone's walking out and we're walking
behind Mayor and her attorney, and then Mayor is like,
you can tell mayor is like trouble that. We're all there,
(15:49):
you know, and she's not even looking at us. And
then she gets on the elevator with the attorney and
we don't get on the elevator and you kind of
like wave at her. I finger gunned at her. It
was like, yeah, that's what it was. It was a
finger gun look at and then her attorneys like, I'm
gonna tell the judge you did that, and you're like,
(16:10):
what that I waived? That was great. It never felt
less threatened in my life. That was hilarious, and like, oh, okay,
you tell us, you tell the judge and see what happens.
Absolutely nothing happens. Apparently pointing at someone and making a
(16:30):
sound is perfectly legal in these United States, though it
does intimidate the hell out of Mary Anne Elizabeth Smith
because she doesn't want to face us ever again. So
the next month, she's doing court for another Pacific Island's
restitution hearing. We're all there, finger guns holstered and ready,
(16:52):
but mayor is a no show. Word from the d
a is. Mayor gets out of going to this court
appearance by taking an ber to a mental hospital and
convincing them she's going to kill herself. Of course, they
believe her and admit her for treatment. She gets out
of going to court for a couple of months using
this suicide scam, but the hospital eventually releases her into
(17:16):
the custody of a boarding house for the mentally ill. Yeah,
no one she can scam there, right. I still haven't
recovered fromhem. To tell the truth, I never met a
(17:39):
woman that did that to me. To protect his identity,
we'll call him Ned. He's a seventy nine year old
military vet who's been living at this group home for
the mentally ill about an hour south of Los Angeles
since he finds my blog about Mayor Smith being a
con artist and calls me up and tells me his story.
(18:00):
She came to this group poem somehow she got wind
or something that I wanted to do some things in
Hollywood with some TV shows and stuff like that. So
she kind of came on to me saying since she
wanted to like get involved in me and maybe even
like marriage, you know, and wanted me to sign over
(18:21):
half of all the things I always gonna make in
Hollywood if I things were successful. Wow, I should mention
here that I don't know what Ned's exact mental illnesses.
But I don't think Mayor wants to marry him so
she can own half of his TV show ideas, because
Ned is receiving thousands of dollars in Social Security and
(18:44):
veterans benefits every month, and Mayor is probably in a
hurry to marry Ned so she can start receiving both
when he dies. And forgive me for being morbid here,
but that might not be too far away. So she's
hiding out in Ned's group home for the mentally ill
from me and all the other Los Angeles victims. Meanwhile,
(19:04):
she's targeting Ned, carefully, constructing a house of cards he
can relate to. She told me she was a graduated
with a master's in business degree from Northwestern University, and
we used to talk about I was from Ohio State,
so we used to talk about Ohio State and Northwestern
and the rivalry in the big town and whatnot and
(19:26):
stuff like that, and it was really amazing when it
was like, probably none of that's true, you know, none
of that. No, she never went to college, and it's amazing.
She totally fooled me. Mayor then tries over and over
again to pressure Ned into marriage using sex, or rather
(19:47):
withholding sex. We had a kind of a cross eyed
fantasy kind of sexual relationship a little bit, so she
must have thought that I would, yeah, some leverage. But
we didn't never had any real sex or anything. So
she started with this stuff about signing stuff over and
stuff like that. She just wanted the rights to everything
(20:09):
I had to, you know, half of everything. Wow, and
she was making sex. Continued upon that she wanted me
to sign an agreement on that. Ever, cunning Mayor never
tells Ned her last name, probably because she doesn't want
him googling her and finding my block. Ned just knows
(20:29):
her as Mary Anne. But when she starts pushing Ned
really hard to marry her, he gets curious. When Mayor
isn't looking, he grabs her prescription bottle and discovers her
last name is Smith. She didn't tell me I got
it off for medication thing, and so she didn't tell
(20:51):
me her last name. That came to me the idea
to google her name and your stuff came up. I
just saw that, and I just wanted to thank you.
For some reason. I have a master's degree and two
years around the master's degree in psychology. You know, I
graduated from Ohio State and University. As heard so and
(21:12):
so forth. I just got so frustrated with the whole
thing and I couldn't handle it all by myself. So
I called the FBI. I just flat I called them
and said, google's go. You know she's here, whatevers. I
don't understand what's going on. Do you know what she
was telling other people? No? No, I don't know. I
(21:32):
do not, But I know. I think she tried to
come on there, most of the people there, and find
out their story and stuff, because, like she was, she
used her attractiveness and was friendly with the guys, and
she had them all now the palmer in her hand. Really, yeah,
you know she was sleeping with any of them? I
don't think so. I don't think so, and her and
(21:52):
I never start together either, But I think just the
promise of sex with what I was doing it for
those guys. I never knew I could think less of
Mayor Smith than I already do. But I was wrong.
She's some kind of predator, you know. Yeah, I know.
(22:16):
There is a light at the end of this dark
and depressing tunnel. Though, to quote the great Dr Martin
Luther King Jr. The arc of the moral universe is long,
but it bends towards justice. One year after filing my
police report, Marianne Elizabeth Smith is charged with grand theft
(22:38):
by false pretense for scamming me and Mrs Will I'm
just calling to give you up data on your case.
I'm producing a show shifting gears for the Discovery Channel
in April. When I missed the call that police actually
arrest Mayor at that boarding house for the mentally ill
where she's hiding out, I fuge it is ended up
(23:00):
getting Miss mary Anne's my custody today. It works. This
court should be scheduled in morning. Likely you will be
receiving a subpoena, but I will keep performed once I
get further details regarding the case. All right, time to soon.
I am thrilled, though merriorly spends a few days in
jail after that arrest, because she's released into the custody
(23:22):
of that partyhouse for the mentally ill again to await
a preliminary hearing. I'm still ecstatic because my case is
finally moving forward in the justice system and ship's happening. Hi,
Mr Walton, my name is Jessica Classic. I'm a deputy
dish attorney, the attorney who are actually be handling the
(23:42):
preliminary hearing, the matter of people versus Marianne Elizabeth Smith,
the people versus mary Anne Elizabeth Smith. I just love
the sound of that. I now have the freaking people
on my side. Not to mention diligent and hard working
attorney in the Los Angeles d A's office, Jessica Plastic.
(24:04):
Not a lot of people would look at it first
and think this person was so naive to get the
money to somebody. But when you look deeper into it
and you see the statements that were made and the
level of criminal sophistication, I think it was easy for
me to take kind to your case because I felt
that you were a bleeding heart that kind of got
taken advantage of and I could really relate to that.
(24:24):
So I think immediately when the case was assigned to me,
I was like, I mean justice on this one. You know.
One of the things I learned about the justice system
is a phrase called no prior bad acts, which basically
means a person charged with a crime has to be
prosecuted for that crime, only you're not allowed to bring
(24:47):
up all their former crimes or prior bad acts, which
really sucks because Mayor has been charged with felonies for fraud,
grand theft and for passing bad checks in the past,
and police in an I and are also trying to
extradite her for scamming five hundred thousand from twenty six
victims there and none of that is admissible in court. Yeah, generally,
(25:09):
you can't really use propensity evidence to say that all
of this person did it before, they probably did it
this time. There are certain cases, maybe like domestic violence
or child sexual abuse, where you can make the argument
that it should be able to come in under the
evidence code. But in a case like that, like a
theft case, even though she had a prior bad act,
the judge wouldn't necessary or the jury, i should say,
(25:31):
wouldn't necessarily know about that prior act. It could be
like bifurcated, you know, when you deal with the prior
allegations outside the jury or in a separate trial or hearing.
Propensity it's like propensity evidence. Generally, a propensity evans, So
you couldn't use somebody's prior theft against them to say
they stole this time, they probably stole this time, but
(25:52):
don't you think you should be able to yes and no.
I would say, you know, once an abuser, always abuser,
Once cheater, always a cheater. You know, there's there's some
things to that, right, but but I feel like a
lot of comes into the domestic violence. Right You're gonna say, oh,
I didn't hit her this time, but now you have
a propensity. You know, that cycle of violence is something
(26:13):
like that. But if I go and steal come from
the store and I'm misidentified as stealing GOM a second time,
should somebody be out to be like, I know what
is you because you did it before? You know, so
it does. Yeah, I mean there are scenario Yeah, I
see what you're saying. But in her case, she had
felony charges for fraud, grant theft, passing bad checks, but
(26:33):
no convictions on those in other states. And the only
reason she had no convictions is if it's your first
felony in another state, um, the judge is very lenient
and a lawyer can talk out and get you community
service or whatever. And you're not convicted. There's a lot
of things that could happen. You know, there could be
a delay bring you know, to an arraignment. It could
be dismissed for that it could be put over for
(26:54):
further investigation. Maybe they didn't feel that they could prove
it beyond a reasonable doubt. Basically, evidence that they had
doesn't mean that the person didn't do it though, or
they wouldn't have been good for it if the evidence
was there. But they're also scams two hundred thousand dollars
from that Pacific Islands travel agency in Los Angeles, and
bringing that case up may not be allowed either, which
(27:17):
could hurt my case because the way she tricked all
that money out of Pacific Islands demonstrates a level of
criminal sophistication that proves she's a con artist. And I
don't know how much you knew about luxury travel, but
I now know more than most. So the only reason
she got caught is because she was on vacation. That's
(27:39):
the only reason they caught her while she was so,
she had this PayPal account that she named Pacific Islands
and she was taking customers payments because she took advantage
of a loophole that exists in luxury travel that when
you pay for your vacation your vacation, they're not paying
for your plane in hotel until the day before you go,
so all that money gets into a big pot. No
(27:59):
one's really keeping track. So she was able to get
in there and get out two grand over two years
by taking payments in her PayPal. No one was the wiser.
They knew they were missing money, they didn't know from where,
because she would fill out all the paperwork correctly and
make it look like the money went into the pot
when it didn't. It went into her PayPal, but they
didn't know. The only reason she got found out she's
on vacation. A customer calls to book another vacation and says, well,
(28:22):
Mayor's out. Talked to this lady, well can I pay
with PayPal like last time? And they're like, we don't
take PayPal. So that triggered an investigation and they caught
her red handed. That is kind of clever to figure
out the lay of the line pretty quickly at that
place and know how you can exploit it. It was
(28:43):
about to the tune about and had she not taken vacation,
like how how much longer would she would have been
five d thousand it would have been a million. They
didn't know. They knew they were missing money. They didn't
know from where, and she was so good at covering
up the paperwork in the tracks. She was their best sale,
this woman. They never suspected her. They loved her. JP
loved her because whenever JP was short on sales, he'd say, Mayor,
(29:05):
we need sales, and she'd bringing a hundred thousand dollars
out of nowhere. But I'm sure now like a lot
of that was fake. Right, let me pull out on
my own accountant. Yeah, Deputy d a Plastic gets the
preliminary hearing set for on that day. A judge is
gonna look at all the evidence and look at Mayor
(29:27):
Smith and decide if there's enough here to go to trial,
or God forbid, decide to dismiss the case entirely. So
much is writing on this day, and Mayor still has
a few unbelievable tricks up her sleeve. As local ABC
News reporter Rob Hayes witnesses firsthand, when Marian Smith showed
(29:51):
up in Elie's criminal courthouse today, she was supporting a
pair of crutches. What happened to your foot? But Jonathan
Walton says, save your sympathy. We knew she was going
to pull something today, but to show up and crutches.
I'll never forget when she did show up on crutches,
but I was gonna get that. She'd been coming to
court just fine for the arrangement and for all the
(30:13):
other hearings. But on the day of the preliminary hearing,
when a judge is going to be deciding if there's
enough for a trial, she comes in. She's on crutches,
and she looks like a homeless bag lady. And it
was more shocking for me than for you, because I
knew her as an Irish heiress, you know, makeup hair clothes,
(30:34):
Jimmy choose, like, that's the Mayor Smith that I knew.
So to see her on crutches that day, with this big, giant,
like beach bag, like a homeless lady, I knew it
was a con. But then I started wondering, is it
obvious it's a con, Like did you believe it for
a second that she legitimately needed crutches. I have to
reserve my comment on that one, and so does Mayor.
(30:56):
She won't talk about her new crutches or anything else
for that man. There a lot of people are accusing
you of scamming them out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Do you have any comments on that? Smith refused to
answer any of our questions, But she'll be facing more
questions in the court room, will she. Though Mayor's attorney
(31:18):
skillfully manages to keep kicking this case down the calendar,
a jury trial is eventually set for November, and one
month before her trial is scheduled to start, Mayor Smith
pulls the most brilliant con of her career, a conduct
sure to rally the jury to her side, a con
(31:40):
that's so insane it just might work. One month before trial,
Mayor files a restraining order against me, claiming I'm threatening
her with violence. She encloses a picture with the filing,
She says, is me stalking her at her church. I'm
(32:02):
forced to spend fifteen hundred dollars on an attorney who
shockingly explains to me, if a judge grants this restraining order,
you won't be allowed in the courtroom to testify against
her during a criminal trial. Could this be Mayor Smith's
checkmate move? Next time, on Queen of the con Mayor
(32:26):
Smith goes to any length to stop me from taking
the stand. Somebody would really have to prove that that
civil restraining order was false, which is a whole separate ball,
and her attorney tries to convince the court that I'm
the perpetrator, but will a jury believe me or con
(32:51):
artist Mary Anne Smith Jury Fashion. For exclusive photos and
other bonus material, follow at Queen of the Khan on
Instagram and if you're enjoying Queen of the Khan, tell
your friends about it and leave us a review on
Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Queen of
(33:20):
the Khan 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
and Eliza Rosen for A y R Media. Written by
Jonathan Walton, Consulting producer Evan Goldstein, Senior Associate producer Eric Newman.
(33:43):
Sound designed by baked ZD Media, mixed and mastered by
Elliott Herman, Audio engineering by Elliot Herman, Studio engineering by
Chris McMasters. Voice acting performed by Tim Cunningham, Neil Goldstein
and Carmel O'Reilly lee Goal Council for A y R Media.
Gianni Douglas, Executive producer for I Heart Radio Chandler Mays,
Certain portions of what you're about to hear have been
dramatized based on real life events, eyewitness accounts, and court records.
She put me in a prison without bars, and I
feel she should be stopped so as not to do
this to anyone else. Long before I meet Mayor Smith
in my downtown Los Angeles apartment building. She lives in
(00:22):
Northern Ireland for almost ten years and scams half a
million dollars from twenty six victims there. Local police plan
to extradite her now that they know where she is.
She's left a trail of devastation in her and Mayor's
own daughter not only witnesses her scam people in Northern Ireland.
I mean she was always a pathological liar, but Mayor
(00:46):
actually tricks her into helping when she's just a child. Oh,
she used me for all sorts of things. I used
to forge signatures. In two thousand nine, when police started investigating,
Mayor flees Northern Ireland for Tennessee and buys her way
back into her other daughter's life. Marianne started sending money
(01:07):
to Courtney's account, but then the money stops. Mayor suddenly
disappears and a group of angry men with guns drawn
show up looking for her. And what did they tell you? Exactly? Well,
they threatened that if we didn't tell them where Marianne was,
they were going to kill Chelsea. They're gonna kill Stephen,
(01:27):
They're gonna kill myself, They're gonna kill Courtney and her
newborn daughter Avery. I'm Jonathan Walton and this is Queen
of the Con Episode seven, The Hunt. I can only
(02:00):
imagine what was going through the mind of Mayor's son
in law Joshua Askavish that night when a group of
belligerent men show up on his doorstep, desperately searching for Mayor.
Josh is a military vet who served in Iraq. He's
seen his share of life threatening situations, but this is
markedly different. It was literally Irish gangsters, mobsters looking for blood.
(02:27):
What made you think they were Irish gangsters? Did they
identify themselves as like we're the Irish mob or what?
What made you think when they spoke? I don't know
if you ever seen the movie The Devil's Own with
Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt, the way he speaks on there,
that's exactly how it was. Stupid. Mom, Mr Burke, you're
only seeing based on him, between you and the money,
(02:49):
it shows me to the bony even think about it.
I mean, it's scared the living hell out of me.
What did these men look like? They were wearing dark clothes,
trash coats, automatic rifles, A couple had black leather gloves on,
one guy had long hair, and three of them they
just kind of stood back. It was the long long
(03:09):
hair that spoke as canna wear Mary Anne was. All
of them had automatic guns, yes, and I will safely
assume they were a K forty sevens. And why did
you think they were looking for her? Well, obviously when
they show up with automatic rifles and you know, speaking Irish, okay,
I knew someone has royally screwed up somewhere along the lines.
(03:32):
And obviously they're not friendly. They're looking for blow or money.
And what were you feeling at that moment? I was
in shock, you know, instant dry them out, just looking
at and going, okay, what the fund did I do?
And then they told you what They asked where mary
Anne was, if she was staying there? And what did
(03:53):
you tell them at that point? Well, at that point
I didn't even know where she was exactly, other than last,
I knew she was somewhere in kid See and were
they happy with that? They left after that, they believed you.
They were quite Larara at first, and then Courtney also
came to the door and told him, looked last, we
knew she was in Tennessee. And they asked how long
ago that was, and that was within a month, and
(04:15):
then they left. Yes, what did you and Courtney stay
to each other as they walked away? And you guys
didn't get shot. We were just in awe. We really
didn't even say anything, just kind of stared, like did
that really just happen. The real tragedy here, though, is
(04:37):
just three years after those men with guns come knocking.
Mare's a strange daughter. Courtney dies at the age of
twenty three of cystic fibrosis, a respiratory illness she was
born with and suffered from her entire life. I knew
that my sister, like she wasn't expected to be alive
(04:58):
for a long time. Chelsea only gets to know Courtney
for a handful of years near the end of her
life growing up, though Courtney is not around. Remember, the
Courts found Mayor to be an unfit mother and awarded
soul custody of Courtney to Mayor's ex husband in Michigan. Nonetheless,
Mayor invokes Courtney's name frequently around Chelsea, and not in
(05:21):
a good way. She would regularly tell me that she'd
wished that I was sick and not my sister. Wow,
that is such a damage in vain as little girl, Jesus,
And how did you deal with it? Did it hurt
you then or did it roll off your back? It
did not roll off my back. I mean I was
(05:42):
severely depressed as a teenager. I had several suicide attempts.
I mean, it was bad. Gosh, I'm so sorry. I
can't even fathom how you got to where you got.
Two Now. More disturbing than what Mayor tells her daughter
Chelsea while being in Northern Ireland is what she gets
(06:02):
her to do. Mayor uses Chelsea and her young cousin
as chills. My mom was like raising money for cystic fibrosis,
like in general, and was making us take buckets around places.
I didn't ever know if she was scamming people, but
when she did things like that, I was like, you're not.
(06:22):
You're not donating money to cystic fibrosis. You and your
cousin were going door to door with buckets collecting money. Wow,
using kids, you know, using young girls, like who would
not give? Right, you're coming around with a bucket, like, oh,
look at this adorable girl. Here you go. It's a
great racket, as deplorable as it is, she knows what works,
(06:46):
and Mayor is equally adapt at refreshing her cons to
keep up with the times, because five years later, after
her daughter Courtney dies of cystic fibrosis, Mayor creates a
go FUNDI page in Los Angeles to raise money in
the name of her dead daughter. She had a child
that had passed away from this disease. It was Mother's
(07:07):
Day and she had decided to start a campaign to
get money and donated to the research of this disease.
Los Angeles filmmaker friend Lozano happily donates. I mean, who
wouldn't It's a good cause, you know, So yeah, I
donated fifty dollars and I shared it on my Facebook
page and say, hey, this is somebody I know. If
(07:28):
you have it in your heart and you have some
extra money, this is a good cost. Of course, it
isn't a good cause, but it is a good con
Mayor Smith raises sixt four hundred and sixty dollars through
her go fund me scam, and when I check with
Assistic Fibrosis Foundation, they tell me they never see a
(07:49):
dime who does that. She used a picture of her
dead daughter. I mean, that's another level. That is another level.
Just when I think she can't get any worse than
a dog murderer, she uses her estranged daughter's tragic death
(08:09):
to prey on people's charity. She really is the fucking devil.
I encourage friend to report Mayor to police, which she does,
as do a bunch of other victims of that go
fund me scam. Mayor's ex son in law, Joshua Askavish,
is a guest. What really got to me the most.
(08:31):
It was a picture of Courtney and my daughter Avery.
And that's where really just made my blood boil. The
fact that she's even got the goal to even post
a picture that includes my daughter. Mayor's got the goal,
all right. There's a special place in hell for a
con artist who uses the illness and death of her
(08:51):
own daughter to scam people. As the months pass, every
time I find a new victim and a new scam,
I update the l A p D. This has nothing
(09:12):
to do with your case, they tell me. So I
just try harder to dig up more evidence and find
more victims. It becomes an obsession, and it starts taking
a toll on my life. You are such an extremist
that I was worried that you were harming your marriage.
(09:34):
I was worried you were harming your own mental well being.
You know, because even a good cause taken too far
can do you in. My former TV reporter friend, Eileen
Factus has known me for twenty years, and I really
look up to her today. She runs a bilingual YouTube
channel called kid Time story Time, reading books to kids
(09:56):
using puppets, songs and a thousand voices like a ray
of sunshine, this soul. Wait a minute, oh green bear,
we're in the middle of the story. Yeah, I question.
I've always come to Eileen for advice. She's a real
force for good in my life, and I usually listen
(10:17):
to what she has to say. This time, though I
don't want to hear it. I just felt like you
needed a break. Even if you didn't think you needed
a break, you were going down this rabbit hole, and
I couldn't help but be worried. You were already so
obsessed about it, and obsession about anything is bad, right,
even though it's coming from a good place. But then
(10:40):
at the same time, I see it's doing a number
on you emotionally. You're stressed out, you're not sleeping, you
leave work constantly to do this. I could see your
husband was not happy. He was stressed out about it.
My buddy, Evan is worried about me too, I think
worried about you. As an understatement, Yeah, we'd talk and
(11:01):
you weren't Jonathan anymore. For years you were this just
kind of jovial, funny, easygoing guy, quick to help people.
You know, just everything was light. Life is good, Evan,
you know, like you're always so positive. And that's not
the person I was talking to. And it wasn't just
me that saw this. You were beyond obsessed. Man. I
(11:23):
talked to Pablo about you behind your back, and we
were just like, what the fund are we going to
do about Jonathan? Like Jonathan is gone. He's not only obsessed,
he is talking different, he is angry, he is unhappy.
(11:44):
Anyone who knows you before this, it's a one eight.
It's not you man, you know, and really the thing
that I was. I was to the point where I
was like, I don't know if we can be friends. Listen.
I know my obsession with bringing mary Anne Smith to
justice is hurting me, and at a certain point I
(12:05):
let it go. I try. I try to let it go,
I really do, but I just can't. It gnaws at me.
It haunts my dreams. I would rather die than let
that woman get away with what she did to me
and what she did to all those other people, what
she did to Chelsea. So I doubled down and work
(12:29):
even harder and obsess even more. And thankfully I'm not alone.
I don't know. I looked at it. We're all in
this together at this point, you know. And I do
want to see justice served, and I don't want her
to be It was mostly about keeping her from doing
this to anyone else again. You know. Remember Bob's nanny,
(12:51):
Sarah Coffin, who Mayor tricks Bob into firing while trying
to scam him and adding her name to the titles
of his two multimillion dollar New Poor Beach properties. Sarah
is as passionate and committed to taking down Mayor as
I am, and she didn't even get me financially. You know,
it wasn't about money with me. She really fucked my
(13:12):
head over. She really fucked me up. She ruined this
relationship that I had with this family, like I'd known
them for so long and been closed for so long,
and for her to come in so fast and hard
and just suck everything up incredibly was just amazing to me.
Like that she was that destructive. Funny thing about the
(13:35):
justice system, it's slow, painfully slow. Remember that Pacific Island's
case from seventeen, where Mayor pleads guilty to stealing two
thousand dollars and pays for restitution by scamming me so
she can avoid a five year jail sentence. Even though
Mayor has already pled guilty and served her easily thirty
(13:57):
days behind bars months ago, the case is still going on.
Mayor's attorney is now disputing how much money she actually
stole from Pacific Islands, and there are monthly court appearances
happening that Mayor has to attend to hash everything out.
(14:17):
As soon as I get into this, I act Mayor
Smith has been so deep inside my head for the
past several months. It's high time I get deep inside
of hers. So I organized you everyone who would come.
I'm like, let's go in a crowd and stare that
bitch down and let her know you're not getting away.
(14:40):
I was so grateful to you, because at that point
it was hard getting an adherence, it was hard getting
victims to come forward, and but you jumped on. Remember
you came to all those court appearances for the Pacific
Islands case where we could fucking stare daggers at her.
That was the best. Remember, yes, I do. And one time,
I like me, Heather, Bob friends sitting when Mayor sees
(15:07):
us all sitting in court, smattering of the disparate victims
she conned all together now staring her down, she turns white.
She's saying something to the bailiff and pointing at us like,
god knows what she told the bailiff. Maybe we're like
criminal or something. And then my favorite memory that I'd
(15:27):
played over and over, we were, but she's a criminal.
And also we had every legal right to be there, exactly,
it's a public form. And then remember when so that
that day is over, everyone's walking out and we're walking
behind Mayor and her attorney, and then Mayor is like,
you can tell mayor is like trouble that. We're all there,
(15:49):
you know, and she's not even looking at us. And
then she gets on the elevator with the attorney and
we don't get on the elevator and you kind of
like wave at her. I finger gunned at her. It
was like, yeah, that's what it was. It was a
finger gun look at and then her attorneys like, I'm
gonna tell the judge you did that, and you're like,
(16:10):
what that I waived? That was great. It never felt
less threatened in my life. That was hilarious, and like, oh, okay,
you tell us, you tell the judge and see what happens.
Absolutely nothing happens. Apparently pointing at someone and making a
(16:30):
sound is perfectly legal in these United States, though it
does intimidate the hell out of Mary Anne Elizabeth Smith
because she doesn't want to face us ever again. So
the next month, she's doing court for another Pacific Island's
restitution hearing. We're all there, finger guns holstered and ready,
(16:52):
but mayor is a no show. Word from the d
a is. Mayor gets out of going to this court
appearance by taking an ber to a mental hospital and
convincing them she's going to kill herself. Of course, they
believe her and admit her for treatment. She gets out
of going to court for a couple of months using
this suicide scam, but the hospital eventually releases her into
(17:16):
the custody of a boarding house for the mentally ill. Yeah,
no one she can scam there, right. I still haven't
recovered fromhem. To tell the truth, I never met a
(17:39):
woman that did that to me. To protect his identity,
we'll call him Ned. He's a seventy nine year old
military vet who's been living at this group home for
the mentally ill about an hour south of Los Angeles
since he finds my blog about Mayor Smith being a
con artist and calls me up and tells me his story.
(18:00):
She came to this group poem somehow she got wind
or something that I wanted to do some things in
Hollywood with some TV shows and stuff like that. So
she kind of came on to me saying since she
wanted to like get involved in me and maybe even
like marriage, you know, and wanted me to sign over
(18:21):
half of all the things I always gonna make in
Hollywood if I things were successful. Wow, I should mention
here that I don't know what Ned's exact mental illnesses.
But I don't think Mayor wants to marry him so
she can own half of his TV show ideas, because
Ned is receiving thousands of dollars in Social Security and
(18:44):
veterans benefits every month, and Mayor is probably in a
hurry to marry Ned so she can start receiving both
when he dies. And forgive me for being morbid here,
but that might not be too far away. So she's
hiding out in Ned's group home for the mentally ill
from me and all the other Los Angeles victims. Meanwhile,
(19:04):
she's targeting Ned, carefully, constructing a house of cards he
can relate to. She told me she was a graduated
with a master's in business degree from Northwestern University, and
we used to talk about I was from Ohio State,
so we used to talk about Ohio State and Northwestern
and the rivalry in the big town and whatnot and
(19:26):
stuff like that, and it was really amazing when it
was like, probably none of that's true, you know, none
of that. No, she never went to college, and it's amazing.
She totally fooled me. Mayor then tries over and over
again to pressure Ned into marriage using sex, or rather
(19:47):
withholding sex. We had a kind of a cross eyed
fantasy kind of sexual relationship a little bit, so she
must have thought that I would, yeah, some leverage. But
we didn't never had any real sex or anything. So
she started with this stuff about signing stuff over and
stuff like that. She just wanted the rights to everything
(20:09):
I had to, you know, half of everything. Wow, and
she was making sex. Continued upon that she wanted me
to sign an agreement on that. Ever, cunning Mayor never
tells Ned her last name, probably because she doesn't want
him googling her and finding my block. Ned just knows
(20:29):
her as Mary Anne. But when she starts pushing Ned
really hard to marry her, he gets curious. When Mayor
isn't looking, he grabs her prescription bottle and discovers her
last name is Smith. She didn't tell me I got
it off for medication thing, and so she didn't tell
(20:51):
me her last name. That came to me the idea
to google her name and your stuff came up. I
just saw that, and I just wanted to thank you.
For some reason. I have a master's degree and two
years around the master's degree in psychology. You know, I
graduated from Ohio State and University. As heard so and
(21:12):
so forth. I just got so frustrated with the whole
thing and I couldn't handle it all by myself. So
I called the FBI. I just flat I called them
and said, google's go. You know she's here, whatevers. I
don't understand what's going on. Do you know what she
was telling other people? No? No, I don't know. I
(21:32):
do not, But I know. I think she tried to
come on there, most of the people there, and find
out their story and stuff, because, like she was, she
used her attractiveness and was friendly with the guys, and
she had them all now the palmer in her hand. Really, yeah,
you know she was sleeping with any of them? I
don't think so. I don't think so, and her and
(21:52):
I never start together either, But I think just the
promise of sex with what I was doing it for
those guys. I never knew I could think less of
Mayor Smith than I already do. But I was wrong.
She's some kind of predator, you know. Yeah, I know.
(22:16):
There is a light at the end of this dark
and depressing tunnel. Though, to quote the great Dr Martin
Luther King Jr. The arc of the moral universe is long,
but it bends towards justice. One year after filing my
police report, Marianne Elizabeth Smith is charged with grand theft
(22:38):
by false pretense for scamming me and Mrs Will I'm
just calling to give you up data on your case.
I'm producing a show shifting gears for the Discovery Channel
in April. When I missed the call that police actually
arrest Mayor at that boarding house for the mentally ill
where she's hiding out, I fuge it is ended up
(23:00):
getting Miss mary Anne's my custody today. It works. This
court should be scheduled in morning. Likely you will be
receiving a subpoena, but I will keep performed once I
get further details regarding the case. All right, time to soon.
I am thrilled, though merriorly spends a few days in
jail after that arrest, because she's released into the custody
(23:22):
of that partyhouse for the mentally ill again to await
a preliminary hearing. I'm still ecstatic because my case is
finally moving forward in the justice system and ship's happening. Hi,
Mr Walton, my name is Jessica Classic. I'm a deputy
dish attorney, the attorney who are actually be handling the
(23:42):
preliminary hearing, the matter of people versus Marianne Elizabeth Smith,
the people versus mary Anne Elizabeth Smith. I just love
the sound of that. I now have the freaking people
on my side. Not to mention diligent and hard working
attorney in the Los Angeles d A's office, Jessica Plastic.
(24:04):
Not a lot of people would look at it first
and think this person was so naive to get the
money to somebody. But when you look deeper into it
and you see the statements that were made and the
level of criminal sophistication, I think it was easy for
me to take kind to your case because I felt
that you were a bleeding heart that kind of got
taken advantage of and I could really relate to that.
(24:24):
So I think immediately when the case was assigned to me,
I was like, I mean justice on this one. You know.
One of the things I learned about the justice system
is a phrase called no prior bad acts, which basically
means a person charged with a crime has to be
prosecuted for that crime, only you're not allowed to bring
(24:47):
up all their former crimes or prior bad acts, which
really sucks because Mayor has been charged with felonies for fraud,
grand theft and for passing bad checks in the past,
and police in an I and are also trying to
extradite her for scamming five hundred thousand from twenty six
victims there and none of that is admissible in court. Yeah, generally,
(25:09):
you can't really use propensity evidence to say that all
of this person did it before, they probably did it
this time. There are certain cases, maybe like domestic violence
or child sexual abuse, where you can make the argument
that it should be able to come in under the
evidence code. But in a case like that, like a
theft case, even though she had a prior bad act,
the judge wouldn't necessary or the jury, i should say,
(25:31):
wouldn't necessarily know about that prior act. It could be
like bifurcated, you know, when you deal with the prior
allegations outside the jury or in a separate trial or hearing.
Propensity it's like propensity evidence. Generally, a propensity evans, So
you couldn't use somebody's prior theft against them to say
they stole this time, they probably stole this time, but
(25:52):
don't you think you should be able to yes and no.
I would say, you know, once an abuser, always abuser,
Once cheater, always a cheater. You know, there's there's some
things to that, right, but but I feel like a
lot of comes into the domestic violence. Right You're gonna say, oh,
I didn't hit her this time, but now you have
a propensity. You know, that cycle of violence is something
(26:13):
like that. But if I go and steal come from
the store and I'm misidentified as stealing GOM a second time,
should somebody be out to be like, I know what
is you because you did it before? You know, so
it does. Yeah, I mean there are scenario Yeah, I
see what you're saying. But in her case, she had
felony charges for fraud, grant theft, passing bad checks, but
(26:33):
no convictions on those in other states. And the only
reason she had no convictions is if it's your first
felony in another state, um, the judge is very lenient
and a lawyer can talk out and get you community
service or whatever. And you're not convicted. There's a lot
of things that could happen. You know, there could be
a delay bring you know, to an arraignment. It could
be dismissed for that it could be put over for
(26:54):
further investigation. Maybe they didn't feel that they could prove
it beyond a reasonable doubt. Basically, evidence that they had
doesn't mean that the person didn't do it though, or
they wouldn't have been good for it if the evidence
was there. But they're also scams two hundred thousand dollars
from that Pacific Islands travel agency in Los Angeles, and
bringing that case up may not be allowed either, which
(27:17):
could hurt my case because the way she tricked all
that money out of Pacific Islands demonstrates a level of
criminal sophistication that proves she's a con artist. And I
don't know how much you knew about luxury travel, but
I now know more than most. So the only reason
she got caught is because she was on vacation. That's
(27:39):
the only reason they caught her while she was so,
she had this PayPal account that she named Pacific Islands
and she was taking customers payments because she took advantage
of a loophole that exists in luxury travel that when
you pay for your vacation your vacation, they're not paying
for your plane in hotel until the day before you go,
so all that money gets into a big pot. No
(27:59):
one's really keeping track. So she was able to get
in there and get out two grand over two years
by taking payments in her PayPal. No one was the wiser.
They knew they were missing money, they didn't know from where,
because she would fill out all the paperwork correctly and
make it look like the money went into the pot
when it didn't. It went into her PayPal, but they
didn't know. The only reason she got found out she's
on vacation. A customer calls to book another vacation and says, well,
(28:22):
Mayor's out. Talked to this lady, well can I pay
with PayPal like last time? And they're like, we don't
take PayPal. So that triggered an investigation and they caught
her red handed. That is kind of clever to figure
out the lay of the line pretty quickly at that
place and know how you can exploit it. It was
(28:43):
about to the tune about and had she not taken vacation,
like how how much longer would she would have been
five d thousand it would have been a million. They
didn't know. They knew they were missing money. They didn't
know from where, and she was so good at covering
up the paperwork in the tracks. She was their best sale,
this woman. They never suspected her. They loved her. JP
loved her because whenever JP was short on sales, he'd say, Mayor,
(29:05):
we need sales, and she'd bringing a hundred thousand dollars
out of nowhere. But I'm sure now like a lot
of that was fake. Right, let me pull out on
my own accountant. Yeah, Deputy d a Plastic gets the
preliminary hearing set for on that day. A judge is
gonna look at all the evidence and look at Mayor
(29:27):
Smith and decide if there's enough here to go to trial,
or God forbid, decide to dismiss the case entirely. So
much is writing on this day, and Mayor still has
a few unbelievable tricks up her sleeve. As local ABC
News reporter Rob Hayes witnesses firsthand, when Marian Smith showed
(29:51):
up in Elie's criminal courthouse today, she was supporting a
pair of crutches. What happened to your foot? But Jonathan
Walton says, save your sympathy. We knew she was going
to pull something today, but to show up and crutches.
I'll never forget when she did show up on crutches,
but I was gonna get that. She'd been coming to
court just fine for the arrangement and for all the
(30:13):
other hearings. But on the day of the preliminary hearing,
when a judge is going to be deciding if there's
enough for a trial, she comes in. She's on crutches,
and she looks like a homeless bag lady. And it
was more shocking for me than for you, because I
knew her as an Irish heiress, you know, makeup hair clothes,
(30:34):
Jimmy choose, like, that's the Mayor Smith that I knew.
So to see her on crutches that day, with this big, giant,
like beach bag, like a homeless lady, I knew it
was a con. But then I started wondering, is it
obvious it's a con, Like did you believe it for
a second that she legitimately needed crutches. I have to
reserve my comment on that one, and so does Mayor.
(30:56):
She won't talk about her new crutches or anything else
for that man. There a lot of people are accusing
you of scamming them out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Do you have any comments on that? Smith refused to
answer any of our questions, But she'll be facing more
questions in the court room, will she. Though Mayor's attorney
(31:18):
skillfully manages to keep kicking this case down the calendar,
a jury trial is eventually set for November, and one
month before her trial is scheduled to start, Mayor Smith
pulls the most brilliant con of her career, a conduct
sure to rally the jury to her side, a con
(31:40):
that's so insane it just might work. One month before trial,
Mayor files a restraining order against me, claiming I'm threatening
her with violence. She encloses a picture with the filing,
She says, is me stalking her at her church. I'm
(32:02):
forced to spend fifteen hundred dollars on an attorney who
shockingly explains to me, if a judge grants this restraining order,
you won't be allowed in the courtroom to testify against
her during a criminal trial. Could this be Mayor Smith's
checkmate move? Next time, on Queen of the con Mayor
(32:26):
Smith goes to any length to stop me from taking
the stand. Somebody would really have to prove that that
civil restraining order was false, which is a whole separate ball,
and her attorney tries to convince the court that I'm
the perpetrator, but will a jury believe me or con
(32:51):
artist Mary Anne Smith Jury Fashion. For exclusive photos and
other bonus material, follow at Queen of the Khan on
Instagram and if you're enjoying Queen of the Khan, tell
your friends about it and leave us a review on
Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Queen of
(33:20):
the Khan 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
and Eliza Rosen for A y R Media. Written by
Jonathan Walton, Consulting producer Evan Goldstein, Senior Associate producer Eric Newman.
(33:43):
Sound designed by baked ZD Media, mixed and mastered by
Elliott Herman, Audio engineering by Elliot Herman, Studio engineering by
Chris McMasters. Voice acting performed by Tim Cunningham, Neil Goldstein
and Carmel O'Reilly lee Goal Council for A y R Media.
Gianni Douglas, Executive producer for I Heart Radio Chandler Mays,
Popular Podcasts
1. Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
2. Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
3. Crime Junkie
If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people.