October 23, 2024 • 41 mins
It's October 2013, and two police officers in Dublin spot a distressed young girl outside the General Post Office. She’s crying and unable to speak, using her fingers to show she’s 14 years old. They take her to a nearby children’s hospital while trying to figure out who she is. Local media starts speculating about possible sex trafficking as interest in her case grows.
As a month goes by, police decide to release her photo to the public and are quickly flooded with calls from Australia. It turns out this isn’t a vulnerable 14-year-old girl in distress; the woman in the Dublin hospital bed is actually 25-year-old Samantha Azzopardi, a serial con artist. And as the years go by, this wouldn’t be the first alias she’s used to trick her victims.
Paula Bycroft from CJZ Productions is the Executive Producer of the Australian documentary series Con Girl, which details the life and crimes of Samantha Azzopardi. She helps us to tell this story.
You can watch Con Girl here. There’s also a Con Girl podcast series you can listen to here.
THE END BITS
Listen to the episode of No Filter about Samantha Azzopardi here.
Find out more about Mamamia's charity partner RizeUp Australia here.
CREDITS
Guest: Paula Bycroft
Host: Gemma Bath
Producer: Tahli Blackman
Audio Producer: Thom Lion
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
You're listening to a Muma Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waterers.
This podcast was recorded on it's October twenty thirteen in
Dublin Island and two officers doing their rounds spotted dis
stressed and confused young girl wandering outside the General post Office,
a huge building in the city's main thoroughfare. She's crying
(00:37):
and appears lost and bewildered. She doesn't speak to them
at all. Instead, she uses her fingers to show them
she's fourteen years old. They take her to a nearby
children's hospital as they try to work out who she
is and where she came from. Scrunched in a ball
with her knees to her chest, the teenager doesn't cooperate
with any medical examination. Instead, she draws on a piece
(01:00):
of paper an aeroplane across a gun. Perhaps she's been
sex trafficked. The local media muses as police struggle to
identify her, and the media interest in the mystery girl grows.
As a month drags by, police make the decision to
release her photo to the public. They are immediately inundated
(01:22):
with phone calls from Australia. This is not a vulnerable
fourteen year old in a state of distress. The woman
in the Dublin hospital bed is actually a twenty five
year old woman called Samantha as a Party, and she's
a serial con woman. I'm Jimmy Bath and this is
(01:48):
True Crime Conversations Amoma mea podcast exploring the world's most
notorious crimes by speaking to the people who know the
most about them. Her name was Emily and she was
a Russian gymnast. Her name was Anika. She was on
the run and her parents were international spies. Her name
was Harper and she was a seventeen year old o pair.
(02:11):
Her name was Coco and she worked for Elite Model
Management in New York. Samantha as a Party is very
good at telling lies and has lured hundreds of unsuspecting
people into her web. It's unclear why she does it.
She doesn't financially gain anything from most of her victims.
Sometimes she takes their identities, but mostly she just leaves
(02:34):
the people she tricks emotionally broken, feeling a mixture of confusion, shame, guilt,
and sadness for the lies they believed. Over the last
fifteen years, Samantha has faced more than one hundred criminal charges.
She has fifty five convictions worldwide, and she doesn't appear
to be stopping. She doesn't appear to be able to stop.
(02:58):
We know she has at least seventy five different aliases.
Paula Bycroft from CJZ Productions is the executive producer of
the Australian documentary series con Girl, which details the life
and crimes of Samantha. As a party, Paula joins us, now,
do we know much about her origin story? She's obviously Australian.
(03:19):
What other details do we have?
Speaker 3 (03:21):
We know that she was born in Sydney. She grew
up in Campbelltown in western Sydney and she went to
high school there. It's quite hazy the actual details of
her upbringing, but there was definitely there's indications that she
might have had issues as a child which might have
sparked the way she behaved in later life.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
You've produced a series called con Girl about Samantha. How
hard was it to unravel the extent of her lies
and kind of try and put it on screen?
Speaker 3 (03:52):
It took us two years to develop the story. A
producer called Lexie Landsman came to us with the idea
and it was just the kernel of a story then,
but we thought it sounded like an interesting and intriguing story,
And as we dug deeper and deeper into the story,
we were absolutely astounded at the number of alists she had,
the number of people she had duped, and really the
(04:14):
extent of the trauma of some of the victims. So
we actually took at least a year to find victims
who would speak to us, and also victims who were
comfortable enough with our producers to open up. The problem
with being the victim of a con is that you
lose trust in everyone, and that was the hardest part
for all of the victims to agree to trust us
(04:36):
to tell their story.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
I also noticed, even in the ones that did speak
to you, there was a lot of shame, like they
felt quite shameful that they'd fallen for her tricks.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
I think that's the hardest thing for anyone who's the
victim of a con, is the shame because you're embarrassed
that you fell for the con, and you also think
you're the only one. Often a lot of these victims
thought they were the only one who were stupid enough
to be conned by Samantha but unfortunately it happened all
around the world. And as we discovered in the documentary
(05:07):
talking to experts like fear of Tobin, who's a behavioral expert,
anyone can be conned if you get the story right.
So Samantha knew how to craft a story that would
fit that person.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
You follow Hope's story and she met Samantha as Emily
in Perth in twenty eleven. What story was Emily or
Samantha selling at that time and how closely embedded did
she become in her life?
Speaker 3 (05:34):
She became really embedded into Hope's life scarily so actually,
so Samantha was pretending at this point to be a
fifteen year old gymnast called Emily Scaberis, and she claimed
that she was a world champion gymnast from Russia. Now
that might sound outlandish to you and I, but Hope's
a teenage girl as well. She had very few friends.
(05:54):
She'd only moved from New Zealand to Perth recently, so
she didn't have many friends. She was willing to believe
her and to back up her story. Samantha had created
a really elaborate Facebook page of Emily Scaberis as a gymnast,
and she very cleverly dole photos from real gymnasts pages
and put them onto her page. Particularly, we couldn't see
(06:15):
the face so that it looked like Samantha, and Hope
believed that, of course you would. And back in those
days twenty eleven, Facebook was only just starting, so no
one thought, oh, someone can make a fake page back then.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
So Samantha was.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
Really clever even in twenty eleven to be able to
manipulate technology to help her con So she set up
this Facebook page under Emily Scveris the gymnast, and she
convinced Hope that she was a Russian gymnast. After that,
she went to Hope's house many times, became almost like
a sister to Hope. So Samantha, calling herself Emily, told
(06:51):
Hope she was going away to Paris to see her family.
She had a mum and dad and a twin sister
called Chloe. So she went away for a couple of
months and Hope didn't think much of it, and then
she found out again via a Facebook page that Emily's sister, Chloe,
and her mum and dad had all been killed in
a murder suicide. This was posted on the page, and Hope,
(07:13):
of course, is devastated for her friend. At this point,
She's like, oh my god, Emily's lost her sister and
her parents murder suicide.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
How horrendous.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
So she contacted Emily and eventually Hope's family agreed to
adopt Emily because they were so upset for her that
she'd lost her whole family and this murder suicide. So
Emily came back to Perth and joined Hope's family and
was in the throes of being adopted by them. So
it was a very entrenched con So how was her
(07:41):
ruse discovered?
Speaker 2 (07:42):
She kind of comes back, She's telling them, I'm going
to be adopted into your family. But her ruse is
discovered eventually.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Yeah, it took a year. She became really entrenched in
Hope's family. They enrolled her in the local high school.
She went to school for a year basically in Perth,
and it wasn't until March twenty twelve that the school
authorities discovered that Emily's birth certificate was forged and she
was then exposed.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
So she was actually twenty three posing as a fifteen
year old. She'd spent well, yeah, years in Hope's family.
What impact did what she did to that family have.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
It was devastating, and you know, Hope went through what
she described as her first breakup. She felt like it
was her first real proper relationship, not in a sexual way,
just that Emily was like her sister.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
And she absolutely was devastated.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
And the whole family, of course were because they were
duped by this girl who was a woman.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
And it's such a specific jupe, like the details of it.
It's almost like that saying like it can't possibly be
a lie because it's too complicated and it's too intricate.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Absolutely, And we found from all of the experts we
spoke to that actually, the more complicated the lie, the
more likely we are to believe it, because you couldn't
think that someone would possibly make all of those things up,
you know, certainly the murder suicide. Who would say that
and think people are going to believe it and then,
you know, let them be traumatized by your parent trauma.
It was quite astounding, and she continued to do that
(09:19):
over the years to come.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
Well, let's give another example. You also focus in on
Emmy's story and she met Samantha in Sydney in twenty fourteen,
What story did she tell her?
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Emmy's story is quite amazing, and I think of all
of the cons she was probably the most traumatized of anyone.
She went along on a big long rollercoaster ride with Samantha.
So Emmy was just an eighteen year old backpacker from
the America, desperate to come into Australia and in the hostel.
In the first week she arrives in Sydney, she meets
a Swedish girl called Anakadecca immediately befriends her. Anaka says
(09:56):
she's actually quite rich. She's the daughter of you know,
she's a Swedish heiress. Then a few days later she
changes her story and says, actually, I'm not the daughter
of an heiress. I'm the daughter of Interpol agents. So
her parents were spies. Emmy believes her and says, okay,
that's fine, your parents aspise. She starts to weave a
(10:17):
very complicated story for Emmy. She says, you know, my
parents are from Intopol and I have to be protected
at all times, and there's some bad people after me,
and now because you're my friend, they're after you two.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Emmy believes her.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
The reason she believes her is that Anaka also manages
to find out some very intimate things about Emmy thinks
that she thinks she's only ever told her mother, like
she told her mother that she had a safe word
called blue bananas. And if she ever told her mother
in the US blue bananas, that you know, she's in trouble.
And Anika somehow knew that Emmy's safe word was blue bananas.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
So you know, Emmy.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Thought, Okay, this girl really is from Antipol, her parents
are from Intipol. They do know things about me that
no one else would know. So she was drawn in by,
you know, the intricate information that Annaka seemed to find
out about her.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Well, she ends up convincing Emmy to go on the run,
basically saying that these people that were after her are
now after Emmy, and it gets quite serious. She kind
of gets caught up with the police.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
Yeah, I think what she says to Emmy is that, oh,
I have to teach you how to be an Interpol agent.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
I have to teach you how.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
To lie, because that's the only way we can get
around and how we can get away from these mysterious baddies.
So she convinces Emmy to go and get a fake idea,
a fake driver's license under a different name. They then
travel to Brisbane and Anaka has a weird medical episode
and they end up in hospital and the police get
a bit suspicious because they check Emmy's ID and it's
(11:50):
under a different name. I mean, this is one of
her many convoluted stories. So they end up arresting Emmy
for fake ID and put her in prison next minute.
So she's in jail wondering what the hell is going
on and who the hell this woman is, but continues
to sort of hang on with Anika.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
After she gets out.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
From prison, Annik says, Okay, we've got to get to
somewhere safer. So they fly back to Sydney and they
end up living in a shipping container in the outer
suburbs of Sydney, and Anika says to Emmy, this is
a safe house and these people around us are into
poll agents.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
They're going to keep us safe from now on.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
So Emmy's in the freezing cold shipping container, not much food,
no proper running water, and she's continuing to believe the story.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
So they're there for a number of days, you know,
maybe even ten.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Days, yeah, ten days.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
But eventually Emmy is kind of like, I want out,
and she nearly gets out, and then she's kind of
drawn back in.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
So you know, Emmy's starting to question, as we all would,
what the heck's going on. She thinks, I've got to
get out of here. I don't know if I'm you know,
am I.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Imprisoned in here?
Speaker 3 (13:01):
So she starts to spin a lie to Anika and
she says, actually, my visa is about to expire. I
really have to go and sort that out, you know.
So Anika lets her out of the safe house and
Emmy ends up getting to go back to the US.
She gets away, but while she's on the plane, finally
almost safe from you know, Anika's clutches, she gets a
(13:23):
text from Anika saying you're in danger again, And when
she lands in the US, Anaka convinces her to meet
her in Canada.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
So they then end.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
Up traveling to Canada and meeting up another crazy step
in the store.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Well, it just kind of gets weirder from there because
it's almost like she's in one roos and she can
see that that one's ending, and then she starts a
new one in Canada.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
Yeah, so I think she just didn't want to let
go of Emmy. So she convinced her to come to
Canada and help her with one last step. It was
almost like she had the power over her by then,
and she thought, I'm going to get her to come
to Canada.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
See if she'll do that. So she did. Emmy came
to Canada. They met up.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
They went to a hostel and there was a bunch
of Swedish backpackers at this hostel, and this is where
Emmy finally twigged. The Swedish backpack has started to talk
to Anika in Swedish. And remember her backstory was that
she was a Swedish Interpol agent's daughter. The backpackers speak
to her in Swedish and Anaka doesn't understand them, and
Emmy sees this and.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
She says, she doesn't even speak Swedish.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
It was just the final straw that broke the camel's
back for me. So she realizes this is definitely not
a Swedish you know, teenager. So she says, okay, I'm out.
I don't want to be with you anymore. I don't
want to be involved. But Anaka convinces he to do
one last thing, and that was to paint bruises on
her face for her next con. So even at the end,
(14:50):
Emmy was helping her with the next con.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
And this was, you know, back in twenty fourteen. You've
spoken to her in recent years. She's still really affected.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
She's still really affected. She's really bitter. Actually, you know,
she calls Samantha aka you know, Anika the devil. She said,
she made me lose my trust in humanity, She lost
faith in relationships with friends or other people. She's very
wary of meeting new people. Now, she's probably one of
(15:21):
the most damaged of all of the victims because of
the elaborateness of the ruse. And of course she's so
embarrassed and shamed, as they all are. And I think
that's one of the worst things that Samantha does is
make people feel ashamed and embarrassed and shy of telling
their story because of that. And that's the problem is
people don't tell a story. You know, her name never
(15:41):
gets out there. So we've got to keep telling the story.
We have to keep telling the story.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
So she kind of picks up this new con in Canada,
and this one she does end up getting some charges
how quickly does it take for Canada to work out
what's going on?
Speaker 1 (15:55):
It was reasonably quickly.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
She at this point was saying she was a sexual
assault victim and was only fourteen. The bruises on her face,
you know, helped to prove that. Apparently, what they did
is send out her fingerprints across the world, and thankfully
because of the Irish con a little while earlier, the
Irish police had a match for her fingerprints and let
them know that it was Samantha as a party. She's
(16:18):
twenty six, she's not fourteen. So once again she's charged
and she pleads guilty. She always, you know, mostly pleads guilty,
but often she's already spent some time in prison and
is often released fairly quickly. So again similar to the
Irish case, she was deported back to Australia in the end.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
From what you have ascertained in following Samantha's cons do
her schemes and stories get more and more kind of
elaborate as they go on.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Yeah, I think she got more confident as years went on,
and we talked to a few psychological experts, and deception
is her drug. She doesn't do it for money. She
doesn't really do it for any gain. She may, you know,
here and there she's stolen things from people iPads or ID,
but it's never a big financial gain like most cons.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
So Samantha was.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
The thrill of the lie, the thrill of the deception.
And so I think she got more and more confident
and told more and more elaborate lies, and she also
started to do cons more, you know, simultaneously, So she
was trying to run.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
I don't know how she does it.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
How do you have three or four names on the go,
three or four identities on the go.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
It's hard enough with one right, so, you know.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
I can't remember my own life, let alone ten fake
ones at the same time.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
So it was actually a really tricky juggle for her.
And she's obviously pretty smart. She's very tech savvy. She
knows how to manipulate Facebook and Instagram. She knows how
to show people that she has their personal information by
mining information from their Facebook pages. You know, people put
a lot of things out there on social media, and
(17:55):
she used to research that. So I often think she
used her time in prison to research new scams, new cons.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
I know that you said that she's addicted to the deception,
But is there anything else psychologically going on here? Has
she been diagnosed with anything?
Speaker 3 (18:10):
She's had various psychological assessments. I think one of the
problems is how do you assess psychologically someone who's a
compulsive liar, because no one knows when she's telling the truth.
We had a forensic psychiatrist, doctor Richard Bryson, as our expert.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
He looked at all of.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Samantha's cases and all of her backstory, and he came
up with a couple of different diagnoses. Now, he's very
quick to say he didn't meet her and didn't assess
her personally, but he's looked at all of the information.
He says she has a few different things going on.
He believes it's borderline personality disorder, which is where you
have no self identity and you're looking for someone else's
(18:54):
identity almost He also says she has pseudological fantastica, which
is basically pathological lying, where you lie for no reason
apart from the thrill of lying, which seems like it
is the case for Samantha. And then a third disorder,
he says is factitious disorder, which is like it's also
known as Munchausen's where you fake an illness. So often
in her cons she's faking sexual abuse or other illnesses,
(19:19):
so it seems like she's out for pity.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
The other interesting thing to note is that she often
takes on the alias of a teenager, of someone that's
around fourteen fifteen years old, and she's in her twenties.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
Yes, our expert, doctor Fryarson said, maybe something happened in
those teenage years, because she keeps wanting to be somewhere
between fourteen and seventeen. So perhaps something actually traumatic happened
that she wants to go back to and relive, or
she wants to change that life. But as I said,
we don't know for sure because no one knows whether
(19:53):
she's telling the truth. Whenever she's assessed, it's never known
whether she's lying.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
I want to bring in Lucy. She met Samantha in
twenty seventeen in Sydney, so by this point Samantha has
many convictions. Her face is out there, at least in
Ireland and Canada, and but she's not kind of widespread
enough that every single person would know who she is,
especially someone like Lucy who was a backpacker in Australia.
(20:18):
She told Lucy that her name was Layla. What was
the story that she was telling?
Speaker 3 (20:23):
So at least in this case, she wasn't pretending to
be a teenager for a change. She told Lucy that
she was Layla and that she was a child psychologist.
But she really wanted Lucy to help her with a
couple of pranks, a couple of surprises. And Lucy is
a sort of fun loving person. She thought, oh, that's cool.
She didn't know anyone in Sydney. She was from France.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
She said, oh, I can help you. I love surprises.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
So she says, okay, I want to prank my brother
and I want you to call him and tell him
we're having a surprise party. So she kind of does
a test with Lucy and says, just pretend we're having
a surprise party and I want him out of the house.
So she does a test where nothing really happens, nothing
goes wrong, but Lucy does a good job. So then
she gets Lucy to do a second strange phone call.
(21:06):
She said, I want you to call my brother's girlfriend.
She's a teacher at this school in Marrickville, and I
want you to say you're a doctor, and you're verifying
that the X rays of this young girl harper Heart
are consistent with that of a thirteen year old girl.
So Lucy had durant and say, I'm just confirming that
these x rays are the X rays of a thirteen
year old girl. She had no idea why she was doing.
(21:27):
It was just a really weird story, and Liucy went, okay, whatever.
You guys are family, you do what you want. Then
it was probably a few months later Lucy gets a
call from New South Wales police. They say are you Lucy?
Did you make this call to school in Marrickville And
she thinks, why would I ring? She couldn't remember. She'd
travel all around Australia since then. She didn't know what
(21:47):
they were talking about. And then she said, oh wait, yes,
I think I did make a call to a school
in mariic for why And the police said, well, let's
tie it up with a kidnapping case. So Lucy, this
French backpacker is suddenly involved in a kidnapping case and
has no idea why.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Well, this is one of those instances of two of
Samantha's alias's kind of overlapping or her using Lucy to
kind of support another con she's doing in another part
of Sydney. So she was pretending to be Harper Heart.
The person on the phone call a thirteen year old girl,
so it's getting even younger exactly.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
So, yes, this is when she starts doing more than
one con at a time and is getting quite convoluted
in crossing them over. So on the one hand, she's
telling Lucy, you know, can you make this call to
a school, It's just a prank. On the other hand,
she actually is pretending to be this thirteen year old
girl Halper Heart at a school for special needs in Merrickville.
She had told the school that she was a victim
(22:46):
of sexual assault and human trafficking. Eventually, this school worked
out that again her birth certificate had been forged, and
police start to investigate, and they track down Lucy's phone
you know, and call her and say do you know
anything about this young girl? We realize her birth certificates forged?
Is she a victim of a pedophile ring? How are
you involved in this? And Lucy is suddenly wrapped up
(23:07):
in a kidnapping case.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
The wild part of this particular story, I mean, every
story that Samantha does is wild, But she had been
faking this thirteen year old Harper Alias at this school
for more than a year.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
Yes, and she pretended not to be able to read,
so she had teachers working really hard with her to
teach her how to read. She had you know, other
teachers helping her through therapy because she was pretending that
she was traumatized and a victim of sexual assault.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
So the workers at this school.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
Ended up being later on when they found out it
was a fake, were really traumatized. You know, one teacher
in particular was absolutely traumatized because she'd worked with this
young girl for a year helping her read, and in
the end she was also duped. And again the shame
and the embarrassment of that.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
You're listening to true crime Conversations with me, Jemma Bass.
I'm speaking with Paula Bycroft, the executive producer of the
documentary con Girl. Up next, samanthas CON's escalate, so Alias's
start to engage children. Well, she ended up Samantha that is,
going to prison for that particular ruse for a year.
(24:20):
She gets out in twenty eighteen and basically just goes
back to her old ways. Yeah, yep, but this time
she does a lot of kind of a pair kind
of ruses. She's kind of doing similar.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
Yes, identities, that's right, I think, you know, our expert
psychiatrist said that maybe she gets to a point where
she can't be a teenager anymore, so she she's evolving
younger children as well.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
We don't know.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
I mean, she was still pretending to be an older teenager,
you know, eighteen, seventeen or eighteen, but she couldn't pretend
she was thirteen anymore. So maybe there was some psychological
reason for suddenly involving kids. The problem is that once
you involve kids, it can be very dangerous. And that's
where it started to lead that her cons weren't just
hurting young women, they were hurting children, or they're about to.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
That's where Georgia comes in, who is a thirteen year
old girl, and she gets tied up with Coco Samantha,
and this was a very different kind of calm like
you were alluding to. She's kind of involving kids and
almost living that abuse kind of persona through a child.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
Yes, and I have to say, poor Georgia was, you know,
a bright eyed, aspiring young model. She had the world
at a feat. She was gorgeous young things. She'd won contests,
you know, modeling contests, dancing competitions, so she felt like
she was ready to spread her wings. She put a
profile on Instagram and received a message from someone called
(25:43):
Coco Palma, who was Samantha. Georgia was so excited. So
Coco Palma, this talent agent, contacted Georgia and said, I
love your look. I think we could get you some work.
I work for a modeling agency in New York. And
of course Georgia had stars in her eyes.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
She was so excited.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
You know, they come from a lovely family on the
Central Coast, very loving family. Her mum Mel said, Okay,
go for it, you can do this, and so the
whole family to Sydney from the Central Coast to meet
with Coco the talent agent and talk about Georgie's prospects.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
So she made this family travel from the Central Coast
across the country to Melbourne.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
And you know, for this family, for a couple of them,
it was their first flight ever. So for them it
was this exciting adventure and they were so thrilled. Georgia
was having her big break and mel brought along you know,
her other daughter, Tiana, who was with her baby. So
it was like a family adventure and this was George's
big chance.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
So you know, they were very excited.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
They trusted Coco because they thought, oh, well, she must
have the money to fly us to Melbourne, obviously, but
then what they saw next started to worry them. Co
Co started to audition Georgia in very strange ways.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
It wasn't really modeling, wasn't.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
No. Coco told Georgia that she could be in a film,
so she wanted to check her acting abilities. So what
she did once there in Melbourne was to send out
to child service offices and have her pretend to be
an abused child. So isn't this ringing bells? This is
likes Samantha, They're in so many other guys is, but
this time she's getting Georgia to do her bidding. So
(27:24):
it's quite distressing. And Georgia starts to say to her, Mum,
this doesn't feel right. I'm not sure what I'm doing here.
It seems a bit weird. And Mel, you know, to
her credit now she says she's sorry she did this.
But Mel at the time said, oh, come on, darling,
this is your one big chance, keep trying give it
a go. We're only here for another few days. To
this day, Mel is very sorry that that happened, but
(27:44):
she was just trying to help her daughter, you know.
Then they start to get a little bit suspicious because
they move from a hotel to hostel, and they think,
why has this fancy New York talent agent moved us
to a hostel. So Mel looks into who booked the
room and they tell her that the room was booked
under the name of Jazz Jarvis, and Mel said, Jazz Jervis.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
That's not Coco Palma.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
So they google the name Jazz Jervis and they find
out that Jazz Jarvis is a Melbourne woman who had
also hired this same woman as an O pair under
a different name.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
So it's all starting to ding ding ding, And at
this point, Coco is out with Georgia alone.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
Yeah, so Coco has taken Georgia out for another audition
in a child services office, and when Mel realizes that
Coco's not who she says she is, she rings Georgia
and Georgie's on her way back and she starts to
get quite distressed and things, I'm with this strange woman.
I don't know who she is, and I don't know
what to do. This is a thirteen year old girl. Mel,
(28:45):
on the other hand, is in the hotel thinking, my
little daughter is with a stranger. I don't know where
she could take her. I don't know what's going to happen.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
When they got back to the hotel, Mel confronts her,
which in all the stories we've told, a lot of
these victims haven't had the opportunity really to kind of
do that. But Mel really goes at her at Samantha,
and it's all filmed, which is amazing.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
Yes, So Mel's mama instinct kicks in. She thinks, Okay,
this strange woman has duped us, duped my daughter and
is with her right now, and I don't know who
she is and I don't know what she might do.
So Mel kind of runs around the hotel room searching
for something that she can protect herself with because she
doesn't know if this woman's going to attack her. Once
she confronts her, she finds a knife and sticks it
(29:30):
under the mattress, ready to grab if she needs it.
So it's actually a really distressing moment. Georgia and co
Co finally walk into the hotel room and Mel sort
of says, who are you?
Speaker 1 (29:42):
We know you're not who you say you are.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
We've discovered that you've booked this hostel under another name,
somebody else's name, and it's not you.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Who are you?
Speaker 3 (29:50):
And what are you doing with my daughter? Tiana, Mel's
other daughter, has the presence of mine to video the
whole thing. And that's actually really an important point in
all of Samantha's cons because she always tries to hide
her face. As we know from the Irish story, she
rarely was photographed. She never liked to be, you know,
whoever she tended to be. She didn't like photos taken.
(30:13):
This video of Coco aka sam was the first time
anyone had seen quite detailed video or photo of her.
So this was a turning point in the cons really,
so thank goodness she took that video.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
And she took a pretty clear photo because as we've said,
like a lot of the photos are a bit fuzzy
and from the side, and she had a very clear
photo and Mel those mama instincts again, she kind of
just blasted it out on social media.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
Yes, so once they confronted Coco kind of continued to
deny that there was anything wrong, continued to hold her
persona as Coco. She ran off and left them there.
They ended up having to get back from Melbourne to
Sydney on their own, paying their own way home. They
were stranded at the airport, but they got back and
Mel decided, Okay, I am going to show this woman's
(31:00):
face so that everyone knows who she is. So it
was kind of a banding together of the mums because
Mel posted it on Facebook, and then Jazz Jarvis, who
was someone who'd also employed Sam under another name, then
put it up on Instagram and it was suddenly an
avalanche of people finding out who she was.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
I think that's one of the hardest parts of the
story to kind of wrap your head around. We live
in a modern world where there's so much technology, and
you kind of think, how does she get away with this,
especially in the police's eyes time and time again. But
she's very clever at keeping off the radar when it
comes to her face on anything.
Speaker 3 (31:36):
Yes, and even in her court appearances. Now you'll notice
if you've seen any photos of her, she always covers
her face with a scarf and sunglasses or you know,
it just hides away. She's very protective of what she
looks like because she can't con people if everyone recognizes her.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Well, it really escalates in late twenty nineteen, once again
she's posing as a teenage opeir for a family with
two young kids, and she basically kidnaps them and takes
them to another town.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Yeah, this was really serious.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
You realize that this could have ended very bad if
the con hadn't been realized. So she was pretending to
be a young o pair. She was looking after two
little kids. It was a French couple who'd only just
moved to Australia. She takes them on what she says
is a little picnic. They think she's just going down,
you know, not far away. She ends up taking these
two small children to Bendigo. When she gets there, it's
(32:31):
another weird thing that happens. She's wearing a school uniform,
so even though in the French couple's eyes, she's just
a no pair, when she gets to Bendigo, she has
a school uniform on and she goes into Headspace, which
is a mental health support service in Bendigo, claiming to
be a forteen year old pregnant girl. While she's there
she's still carrying the kid. She's still got the kids
(32:52):
she's looking after, which is weird in itself. So she's
got the two kids with her. She walks into Headspace,
pretending to be an abused girl. Luckily, finally a staff
member recognizes her photo. Goodness, thank goodness, Finally there's enough
photos out there that people start to recognize who she is,
so they quickly ring the police, and the police turn up.
They end up having to chase her down through the
(33:13):
streets of Bendigo and arresting her in a department store nearby,
and she finally she hands over the kids. Thankfully they're
safe and sound, and she's arrested once again. The parents
of those children are really traumatized by the horse, and
we asked them if they wanted to talk to us
in the documentary, and they just really couldn't because they've.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
Been so traumatized by this.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
And you know, the mom is really scared of even
having her kids babysit or leaving them, so she was
almost stuck at home for years after this because she
was so traumatized by what happened to her kids.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
I can imagine even the mostly women that you did
get on screen, it would have taken so much kind
of support and convincing, and it just goes to show
how how much emotional damage something like this can do
to someone.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
Absolutely, and you know, as I said, they mainly had
shame and embarrassment and feeling isolated because they thought they
were the only ones stupid enough to be duped, when
in fact, you know, she's done it over and over
and over again. And at the end of our documentary series,
we actually get Emmy and Lucy together and it's a
really cathartic moment for both of them because they can
(34:22):
compare notes about what Samantha did to them, and I
think they felt like that was a really healing experience
for them, and they actually hung out together for a
while after that because friends are of a bad situation, absolutely,
because they both felt that this other person. Emmy felt
that Lucy was the only one in the world really
who could understand what she'd been through.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
The kidnapping stint got Samantha prison time again, so she
did about eighteen months for that, which feels not enough
for something like that, and she was released in May
twenty twenty one and went back to her old ways.
She just is there any remorse that we've seen from
Samantha in any of this.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
No, And I think the other hard part is that
she never wants to take any mental health treatment. They've
tried over and over again, I think too, you know,
as part of her set and seeing to recommend psychiatric
treatment mental health therapy. She goes through the motions sometimes,
but she usually a refuses to believe that there's any
(35:22):
diagnosis and doesn't want to be involved in any treatment.
And I think that's the key with Samantha. She'll continue
until she can get help. Well.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Since May twenty twenty one, when she was released, she's
kind of been a fourteen year old abuse victim from France,
she's been a nineteen year old Polish o pair and
then in October we're in October twenty twenty four, she
was in court again. What was the instance now that
has put her in prison again.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
So she's just out of jail on a previous con
She's thirty five years old by now, she's still passing
herself off as a teenager.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
In this case.
Speaker 3 (35:59):
She convisits a young Danish backpacker to stay with her
in different refuge homes around Australia. She claims that her
parents are filmmakers and they're going to be paid to
make a video diary of their travels. So they start
traveling around. Then she tells the Danish backpacker, Oh, the
police are after you, so we have to go and hide.
(36:20):
Let's go to some family violence services in Melbourne. So
she again gets this poor young backpacker on the hook,
takes it to different crisis accommodation around Melbourne. They end
up scamming, or she really ends up scamming twenty thousand
dollars worth of food, clothing, accommodation from you know, domestic
violence sentence. So not only is she scamming that money,
(36:40):
but she's also taking the place with someone.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
Who genuinely needs it. It's awful.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
So she's just gotten out of prison from that.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
She was sentenced to two years jail for that, but
with time already served, she's pretty much eligible for parole again.
So who knows what happens next.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
How many victims, honestly do you think there are out there?
Speaker 3 (36:59):
I think we only scratch the surface, And the police
will even say that, police from around the world say
we have no idea how many other cons she's done.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
She's relentless.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
She's consistent, she's constant, and she's obviously not remorseful. So
I don't think she's going to stop. We know she
has at least seventy five aliases and she's had at
least one hundred charges against her across the world. The
sad thing is that she doesn't look like stopping anytime soon.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
Have we heard anything from her family. Have they come
forward and said anything.
Speaker 3 (37:30):
We tried to approach her family for the series and
they didn't respond, So we don't know a great deal
about her family, apart from the background that she grew
up in southwestern Sydney.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
The experts you spoke to, have they ever seen anything
like this?
Speaker 1 (37:47):
No.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
I think that the forensic psychiatrist in the US said
it's a really rare case. He's never seen this combination
of disorders and even pseudological fantastica. He's said he's only
seen two or three cases in his entire career, and
he's done hundreds of court cases in America.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
I think for so long she's managed to get away
with pretending she's a young teenager. She's now nearing forty.
She's in her mid to late thirties, so I guess
we don't really know where her coms could go because
her default is not going to be an option for
much longer.
Speaker 3 (38:26):
She's a very slight, tiny little thing, so she can
get away with pretending to be a teenager. I don't
know for how much longer. In the Harper Heart con
back at the Marrickville School, she drew freckles on her
face to try and look younger. In this most recent con,
she actually spent some of the money getting freckles tattooed
on her face, wow, to look younger. So she's still trying.
(38:48):
She's still trying to look young and I don't know
how much longer she can continue, but she's going to
keep trying.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
Should we feel sorry for Samantha?
Speaker 3 (38:56):
I feel a little sorry for her and some of
the victims mel for example, George's mum feels sorry for
her because she needs help. She does need help, and
if she agreed to psychological help, I think things might
change for her. But it's very difficult when you're wrapped
up in your own web of lies to extract yourself
from that.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
What do we do from here? We know from her
history that she's not going to stop, you know, she
might stop for a little while while she's in prison,
but she's just going to keep going. Do you think
there's enough people out there that don't know who she
is that she's just going to get away with this
for so much longer.
Speaker 3 (39:30):
I think the more we tell her story, the more
people will know who she is. And for the victims,
that's why they did this series. They want to get
her name out there so that maybe she will be stopped.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
How do you go about telling this story on screen
while also protecting the victims at the center of it, because,
as we've talked about, many of them are still really
affected by their interactions with Samantha.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
One of the things that we were really careful about
was duty of care to our victims. There's been a
lot of stories in the media lately about true crime
shows and not looking after your victims and just using
them as part of the series. We were always really
careful that we gave our victims full psychological ste support before, during,
and after the filming, and we still touch base with
(40:13):
them even now when things come up about Samantha, because
we know they're going to get triggered again. So, you know,
I think whatever show you're making especially true crime shows.
It's all about keeping your victims comfortable and safe and
always feeling psychologically well and okay about telling their story.
And they know that this story was important enough to tell,
(40:34):
but we want to support them while they're doing that.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
Have you had people reach out to you since the show?
Speaker 3 (40:39):
More victims, A couple of people who've met Samantha that
thankfully nothing bad happened to them, But we had quite
a few other backpackers contact us and say I think
I met that girl while I was backpacking around Sydney,
an Irish backpacker and a couple of other international backpackers.
Thankfully they weren't con to the extent that you know
Emmy and Lucy and others were, but she certainly obviously
(41:00):
tries it at every opportunity, so yeah, she's always looking
for that next con.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
Thanks to Paula for helping us to tell this story.
True Crime Conversations is a Muma mea podcast hosted and
produced by me Jemma Bath and Tarlie Blackman, with audio
design by Tom Lyon. Thanks so much for listening. I'll
be back next week with another True Crime Conversation
You're listening to a Muma Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waterers.
This podcast was recorded on it's October twenty thirteen in
Dublin Island and two officers doing their rounds spotted dis
stressed and confused young girl wandering outside the General post Office,
a huge building in the city's main thoroughfare. She's crying
(00:37):
and appears lost and bewildered. She doesn't speak to them
at all. Instead, she uses her fingers to show them
she's fourteen years old. They take her to a nearby
children's hospital as they try to work out who she
is and where she came from. Scrunched in a ball
with her knees to her chest, the teenager doesn't cooperate
with any medical examination. Instead, she draws on a piece
(01:00):
of paper an aeroplane across a gun. Perhaps she's been
sex trafficked. The local media muses as police struggle to
identify her, and the media interest in the mystery girl grows.
As a month drags by, police make the decision to
release her photo to the public. They are immediately inundated
(01:22):
with phone calls from Australia. This is not a vulnerable
fourteen year old in a state of distress. The woman
in the Dublin hospital bed is actually a twenty five
year old woman called Samantha as a Party, and she's
a serial con woman. I'm Jimmy Bath and this is
(01:48):
True Crime Conversations Amoma mea podcast exploring the world's most
notorious crimes by speaking to the people who know the
most about them. Her name was Emily and she was
a Russian gymnast. Her name was Anika. She was on
the run and her parents were international spies. Her name
was Harper and she was a seventeen year old o pair.
(02:11):
Her name was Coco and she worked for Elite Model
Management in New York. Samantha as a Party is very
good at telling lies and has lured hundreds of unsuspecting
people into her web. It's unclear why she does it.
She doesn't financially gain anything from most of her victims.
Sometimes she takes their identities, but mostly she just leaves
(02:34):
the people she tricks emotionally broken, feeling a mixture of confusion, shame, guilt,
and sadness for the lies they believed. Over the last
fifteen years, Samantha has faced more than one hundred criminal charges.
She has fifty five convictions worldwide, and she doesn't appear
to be stopping. She doesn't appear to be able to stop.
(02:58):
We know she has at least seventy five different aliases.
Paula Bycroft from CJZ Productions is the executive producer of
the Australian documentary series con Girl, which details the life
and crimes of Samantha. As a party, Paula joins us, now,
do we know much about her origin story? She's obviously Australian.
(03:19):
What other details do we have?
Speaker 3 (03:21):
We know that she was born in Sydney. She grew
up in Campbelltown in western Sydney and she went to
high school there. It's quite hazy the actual details of
her upbringing, but there was definitely there's indications that she
might have had issues as a child which might have
sparked the way she behaved in later life.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
You've produced a series called con Girl about Samantha. How
hard was it to unravel the extent of her lies
and kind of try and put it on screen?
Speaker 3 (03:52):
It took us two years to develop the story. A
producer called Lexie Landsman came to us with the idea
and it was just the kernel of a story then,
but we thought it sounded like an interesting and intriguing story,
And as we dug deeper and deeper into the story,
we were absolutely astounded at the number of alists she had,
the number of people she had duped, and really the
(04:14):
extent of the trauma of some of the victims. So
we actually took at least a year to find victims
who would speak to us, and also victims who were
comfortable enough with our producers to open up. The problem
with being the victim of a con is that you
lose trust in everyone, and that was the hardest part
for all of the victims to agree to trust us
(04:36):
to tell their story.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
I also noticed, even in the ones that did speak
to you, there was a lot of shame, like they
felt quite shameful that they'd fallen for her tricks.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
I think that's the hardest thing for anyone who's the
victim of a con, is the shame because you're embarrassed
that you fell for the con, and you also think
you're the only one. Often a lot of these victims
thought they were the only one who were stupid enough
to be conned by Samantha but unfortunately it happened all
around the world. And as we discovered in the documentary
(05:07):
talking to experts like fear of Tobin, who's a behavioral expert,
anyone can be conned if you get the story right.
So Samantha knew how to craft a story that would
fit that person.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
You follow Hope's story and she met Samantha as Emily
in Perth in twenty eleven. What story was Emily or
Samantha selling at that time and how closely embedded did
she become in her life?
Speaker 3 (05:34):
She became really embedded into Hope's life scarily so actually,
so Samantha was pretending at this point to be a
fifteen year old gymnast called Emily Scaberis, and she claimed
that she was a world champion gymnast from Russia. Now
that might sound outlandish to you and I, but Hope's
a teenage girl as well. She had very few friends.
(05:54):
She'd only moved from New Zealand to Perth recently, so
she didn't have many friends. She was willing to believe
her and to back up her story. Samantha had created
a really elaborate Facebook page of Emily Scaberis as a gymnast,
and she very cleverly dole photos from real gymnasts pages
and put them onto her page. Particularly, we couldn't see
(06:15):
the face so that it looked like Samantha, and Hope
believed that, of course you would. And back in those
days twenty eleven, Facebook was only just starting, so no
one thought, oh, someone can make a fake page back then.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
So Samantha was.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
Really clever even in twenty eleven to be able to
manipulate technology to help her con So she set up
this Facebook page under Emily Scveris the gymnast, and she
convinced Hope that she was a Russian gymnast. After that,
she went to Hope's house many times, became almost like
a sister to Hope. So Samantha, calling herself Emily, told
(06:51):
Hope she was going away to Paris to see her family.
She had a mum and dad and a twin sister
called Chloe. So she went away for a couple of
months and Hope didn't think much of it, and then
she found out again via a Facebook page that Emily's sister, Chloe,
and her mum and dad had all been killed in
a murder suicide. This was posted on the page, and Hope,
(07:13):
of course, is devastated for her friend. At this point,
She's like, oh my god, Emily's lost her sister and
her parents murder suicide.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
How horrendous.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
So she contacted Emily and eventually Hope's family agreed to
adopt Emily because they were so upset for her that
she'd lost her whole family and this murder suicide. So
Emily came back to Perth and joined Hope's family and
was in the throes of being adopted by them. So
it was a very entrenched con So how was her
(07:41):
ruse discovered?
Speaker 2 (07:42):
She kind of comes back, She's telling them, I'm going
to be adopted into your family. But her ruse is
discovered eventually.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Yeah, it took a year. She became really entrenched in
Hope's family. They enrolled her in the local high school.
She went to school for a year basically in Perth,
and it wasn't until March twenty twelve that the school
authorities discovered that Emily's birth certificate was forged and she
was then exposed.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
So she was actually twenty three posing as a fifteen
year old. She'd spent well, yeah, years in Hope's family.
What impact did what she did to that family have.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
It was devastating, and you know, Hope went through what
she described as her first breakup. She felt like it
was her first real proper relationship, not in a sexual way,
just that Emily was like her sister.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
And she absolutely was devastated.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
And the whole family, of course were because they were
duped by this girl who was a woman.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
And it's such a specific jupe, like the details of it.
It's almost like that saying like it can't possibly be
a lie because it's too complicated and it's too intricate.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Absolutely, And we found from all of the experts we
spoke to that actually, the more complicated the lie, the
more likely we are to believe it, because you couldn't
think that someone would possibly make all of those things up,
you know, certainly the murder suicide. Who would say that
and think people are going to believe it and then,
you know, let them be traumatized by your parent trauma.
It was quite astounding, and she continued to do that
(09:19):
over the years to come.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
Well, let's give another example. You also focus in on
Emmy's story and she met Samantha in Sydney in twenty fourteen,
What story did she tell her?
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Emmy's story is quite amazing, and I think of all
of the cons she was probably the most traumatized of anyone.
She went along on a big long rollercoaster ride with Samantha.
So Emmy was just an eighteen year old backpacker from
the America, desperate to come into Australia and in the hostel.
In the first week she arrives in Sydney, she meets
a Swedish girl called Anakadecca immediately befriends her. Anaka says
(09:56):
she's actually quite rich. She's the daughter of you know,
she's a Swedish heiress. Then a few days later she
changes her story and says, actually, I'm not the daughter
of an heiress. I'm the daughter of Interpol agents. So
her parents were spies. Emmy believes her and says, okay,
that's fine, your parents aspise. She starts to weave a
(10:17):
very complicated story for Emmy. She says, you know, my
parents are from Intopol and I have to be protected
at all times, and there's some bad people after me,
and now because you're my friend, they're after you two.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Emmy believes her.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
The reason she believes her is that Anaka also manages
to find out some very intimate things about Emmy thinks
that she thinks she's only ever told her mother, like
she told her mother that she had a safe word
called blue bananas. And if she ever told her mother
in the US blue bananas, that you know, she's in trouble.
And Anika somehow knew that Emmy's safe word was blue bananas.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
So you know, Emmy.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Thought, Okay, this girl really is from Antipol, her parents
are from Intipol. They do know things about me that
no one else would know. So she was drawn in by,
you know, the intricate information that Annaka seemed to find
out about her.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Well, she ends up convincing Emmy to go on the run,
basically saying that these people that were after her are
now after Emmy, and it gets quite serious. She kind
of gets caught up with the police.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
Yeah, I think what she says to Emmy is that, oh,
I have to teach you how to be an Interpol agent.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
I have to teach you how.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
To lie, because that's the only way we can get
around and how we can get away from these mysterious baddies.
So she convinces Emmy to go and get a fake idea,
a fake driver's license under a different name. They then
travel to Brisbane and Anaka has a weird medical episode
and they end up in hospital and the police get
a bit suspicious because they check Emmy's ID and it's
(11:50):
under a different name. I mean, this is one of
her many convoluted stories. So they end up arresting Emmy
for fake ID and put her in prison next minute.
So she's in jail wondering what the hell is going
on and who the hell this woman is, but continues
to sort of hang on with Anika.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
After she gets out.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
From prison, Annik says, Okay, we've got to get to
somewhere safer. So they fly back to Sydney and they
end up living in a shipping container in the outer
suburbs of Sydney, and Anika says to Emmy, this is
a safe house and these people around us are into
poll agents.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
They're going to keep us safe from now on.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
So Emmy's in the freezing cold shipping container, not much food,
no proper running water, and she's continuing to believe the story.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
So they're there for a number of days, you know,
maybe even ten.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Days, yeah, ten days.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
But eventually Emmy is kind of like, I want out,
and she nearly gets out, and then she's kind of
drawn back in.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
So you know, Emmy's starting to question, as we all would,
what the heck's going on. She thinks, I've got to
get out of here. I don't know if I'm you know,
am I.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Imprisoned in here?
Speaker 3 (13:01):
So she starts to spin a lie to Anika and
she says, actually, my visa is about to expire. I
really have to go and sort that out, you know.
So Anika lets her out of the safe house and
Emmy ends up getting to go back to the US.
She gets away, but while she's on the plane, finally
almost safe from you know, Anika's clutches, she gets a
(13:23):
text from Anika saying you're in danger again, And when
she lands in the US, Anaka convinces her to meet
her in Canada.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
So they then end.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
Up traveling to Canada and meeting up another crazy step
in the store.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Well, it just kind of gets weirder from there because
it's almost like she's in one roos and she can
see that that one's ending, and then she starts a
new one in Canada.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
Yeah, so I think she just didn't want to let
go of Emmy. So she convinced her to come to
Canada and help her with one last step. It was
almost like she had the power over her by then,
and she thought, I'm going to get her to come
to Canada.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
See if she'll do that. So she did. Emmy came
to Canada. They met up.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
They went to a hostel and there was a bunch
of Swedish backpackers at this hostel, and this is where
Emmy finally twigged. The Swedish backpack has started to talk
to Anika in Swedish. And remember her backstory was that
she was a Swedish Interpol agent's daughter. The backpackers speak
to her in Swedish and Anaka doesn't understand them, and
Emmy sees this and.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
She says, she doesn't even speak Swedish.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
It was just the final straw that broke the camel's
back for me. So she realizes this is definitely not
a Swedish you know, teenager. So she says, okay, I'm out.
I don't want to be with you anymore. I don't
want to be involved. But Anaka convinces he to do
one last thing, and that was to paint bruises on
her face for her next con. So even at the end,
(14:50):
Emmy was helping her with the next con.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
And this was, you know, back in twenty fourteen. You've
spoken to her in recent years. She's still really affected.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
She's still really affected. She's really bitter. Actually, you know,
she calls Samantha aka you know, Anika the devil. She said,
she made me lose my trust in humanity, She lost
faith in relationships with friends or other people. She's very
wary of meeting new people. Now, she's probably one of
(15:21):
the most damaged of all of the victims because of
the elaborateness of the ruse. And of course she's so
embarrassed and shamed, as they all are. And I think
that's one of the worst things that Samantha does is
make people feel ashamed and embarrassed and shy of telling
their story because of that. And that's the problem is
people don't tell a story. You know, her name never
(15:41):
gets out there. So we've got to keep telling the story.
We have to keep telling the story.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
So she kind of picks up this new con in Canada,
and this one she does end up getting some charges
how quickly does it take for Canada to work out
what's going on?
Speaker 1 (15:55):
It was reasonably quickly.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
She at this point was saying she was a sexual
assault victim and was only fourteen. The bruises on her face,
you know, helped to prove that. Apparently, what they did
is send out her fingerprints across the world, and thankfully
because of the Irish con a little while earlier, the
Irish police had a match for her fingerprints and let
them know that it was Samantha as a party. She's
(16:18):
twenty six, she's not fourteen. So once again she's charged
and she pleads guilty. She always, you know, mostly pleads guilty,
but often she's already spent some time in prison and
is often released fairly quickly. So again similar to the
Irish case, she was deported back to Australia in the end.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
From what you have ascertained in following Samantha's cons do
her schemes and stories get more and more kind of
elaborate as they go on.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Yeah, I think she got more confident as years went on,
and we talked to a few psychological experts, and deception
is her drug. She doesn't do it for money. She
doesn't really do it for any gain. She may, you know,
here and there she's stolen things from people iPads or ID,
but it's never a big financial gain like most cons.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
So Samantha was.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
The thrill of the lie, the thrill of the deception.
And so I think she got more and more confident
and told more and more elaborate lies, and she also
started to do cons more, you know, simultaneously, So she
was trying to run.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
I don't know how she does it.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
How do you have three or four names on the go,
three or four identities on the go.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
It's hard enough with one right, so, you know.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
I can't remember my own life, let alone ten fake
ones at the same time.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
So it was actually a really tricky juggle for her.
And she's obviously pretty smart. She's very tech savvy. She
knows how to manipulate Facebook and Instagram. She knows how
to show people that she has their personal information by
mining information from their Facebook pages. You know, people put
a lot of things out there on social media, and
(17:55):
she used to research that. So I often think she
used her time in prison to research new scams, new cons.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
I know that you said that she's addicted to the deception,
But is there anything else psychologically going on here? Has
she been diagnosed with anything?
Speaker 3 (18:10):
She's had various psychological assessments. I think one of the
problems is how do you assess psychologically someone who's a
compulsive liar, because no one knows when she's telling the truth.
We had a forensic psychiatrist, doctor Richard Bryson, as our expert.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
He looked at all of.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Samantha's cases and all of her backstory, and he came
up with a couple of different diagnoses. Now, he's very
quick to say he didn't meet her and didn't assess
her personally, but he's looked at all of the information.
He says she has a few different things going on.
He believes it's borderline personality disorder, which is where you
have no self identity and you're looking for someone else's
(18:54):
identity almost He also says she has pseudological fantastica, which
is basically pathological lying, where you lie for no reason
apart from the thrill of lying, which seems like it
is the case for Samantha. And then a third disorder,
he says is factitious disorder, which is like it's also
known as Munchausen's where you fake an illness. So often
in her cons she's faking sexual abuse or other illnesses,
(19:19):
so it seems like she's out for pity.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
The other interesting thing to note is that she often
takes on the alias of a teenager, of someone that's
around fourteen fifteen years old, and she's in her twenties.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
Yes, our expert, doctor Fryarson said, maybe something happened in
those teenage years, because she keeps wanting to be somewhere
between fourteen and seventeen. So perhaps something actually traumatic happened
that she wants to go back to and relive, or
she wants to change that life. But as I said,
we don't know for sure because no one knows whether
(19:53):
she's telling the truth. Whenever she's assessed, it's never known
whether she's lying.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
I want to bring in Lucy. She met Samantha in
twenty seventeen in Sydney, so by this point Samantha has
many convictions. Her face is out there, at least in
Ireland and Canada, and but she's not kind of widespread
enough that every single person would know who she is,
especially someone like Lucy who was a backpacker in Australia.
(20:18):
She told Lucy that her name was Layla. What was
the story that she was telling?
Speaker 3 (20:23):
So at least in this case, she wasn't pretending to
be a teenager for a change. She told Lucy that
she was Layla and that she was a child psychologist.
But she really wanted Lucy to help her with a
couple of pranks, a couple of surprises. And Lucy is
a sort of fun loving person. She thought, oh, that's cool.
She didn't know anyone in Sydney. She was from France.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
She said, oh, I can help you. I love surprises.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
So she says, okay, I want to prank my brother
and I want you to call him and tell him
we're having a surprise party. So she kind of does
a test with Lucy and says, just pretend we're having
a surprise party and I want him out of the house.
So she does a test where nothing really happens, nothing
goes wrong, but Lucy does a good job. So then
she gets Lucy to do a second strange phone call.
(21:06):
She said, I want you to call my brother's girlfriend.
She's a teacher at this school in Marrickville, and I
want you to say you're a doctor, and you're verifying
that the X rays of this young girl harper Heart
are consistent with that of a thirteen year old girl.
So Lucy had durant and say, I'm just confirming that
these x rays are the X rays of a thirteen
year old girl. She had no idea why she was doing.
(21:27):
It was just a really weird story, and Liucy went, okay, whatever.
You guys are family, you do what you want. Then
it was probably a few months later Lucy gets a
call from New South Wales police. They say are you Lucy?
Did you make this call to school in Marrickville And
she thinks, why would I ring? She couldn't remember. She'd
travel all around Australia since then. She didn't know what
(21:47):
they were talking about. And then she said, oh wait, yes,
I think I did make a call to a school
in mariic for why And the police said, well, let's
tie it up with a kidnapping case. So Lucy, this
French backpacker is suddenly involved in a kidnapping case and
has no idea why.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Well, this is one of those instances of two of
Samantha's alias's kind of overlapping or her using Lucy to
kind of support another con she's doing in another part
of Sydney. So she was pretending to be Harper Heart.
The person on the phone call a thirteen year old girl,
so it's getting even younger exactly.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
So, yes, this is when she starts doing more than
one con at a time and is getting quite convoluted
in crossing them over. So on the one hand, she's
telling Lucy, you know, can you make this call to
a school, It's just a prank. On the other hand,
she actually is pretending to be this thirteen year old
girl Halper Heart at a school for special needs in Merrickville.
She had told the school that she was a victim
(22:46):
of sexual assault and human trafficking. Eventually, this school worked
out that again her birth certificate had been forged, and
police start to investigate, and they track down Lucy's phone
you know, and call her and say do you know
anything about this young girl? We realize her birth certificates forged?
Is she a victim of a pedophile ring? How are
you involved in this? And Lucy is suddenly wrapped up
(23:07):
in a kidnapping case.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
The wild part of this particular story, I mean, every
story that Samantha does is wild, But she had been
faking this thirteen year old Harper Alias at this school
for more than a year.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
Yes, and she pretended not to be able to read,
so she had teachers working really hard with her to
teach her how to read. She had you know, other
teachers helping her through therapy because she was pretending that
she was traumatized and a victim of sexual assault.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
So the workers at this school.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
Ended up being later on when they found out it
was a fake, were really traumatized. You know, one teacher
in particular was absolutely traumatized because she'd worked with this
young girl for a year helping her read, and in
the end she was also duped. And again the shame
and the embarrassment of that.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
You're listening to true crime Conversations with me, Jemma Bass.
I'm speaking with Paula Bycroft, the executive producer of the
documentary con Girl. Up next, samanthas CON's escalate, so Alias's
start to engage children. Well, she ended up Samantha that is,
going to prison for that particular ruse for a year.
(24:20):
She gets out in twenty eighteen and basically just goes
back to her old ways. Yeah, yep, but this time
she does a lot of kind of a pair kind
of ruses. She's kind of doing similar.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
Yes, identities, that's right, I think, you know, our expert
psychiatrist said that maybe she gets to a point where
she can't be a teenager anymore, so she she's evolving
younger children as well.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
We don't know.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
I mean, she was still pretending to be an older teenager,
you know, eighteen, seventeen or eighteen, but she couldn't pretend
she was thirteen anymore. So maybe there was some psychological
reason for suddenly involving kids. The problem is that once
you involve kids, it can be very dangerous. And that's
where it started to lead that her cons weren't just
hurting young women, they were hurting children, or they're about to.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
That's where Georgia comes in, who is a thirteen year
old girl, and she gets tied up with Coco Samantha,
and this was a very different kind of calm like
you were alluding to. She's kind of involving kids and
almost living that abuse kind of persona through a child.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
Yes, and I have to say, poor Georgia was, you know,
a bright eyed, aspiring young model. She had the world
at a feat. She was gorgeous young things. She'd won contests,
you know, modeling contests, dancing competitions, so she felt like
she was ready to spread her wings. She put a
profile on Instagram and received a message from someone called
(25:43):
Coco Palma, who was Samantha. Georgia was so excited. So
Coco Palma, this talent agent, contacted Georgia and said, I
love your look. I think we could get you some work.
I work for a modeling agency in New York. And
of course Georgia had stars in her eyes.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
She was so excited.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
You know, they come from a lovely family on the
Central Coast, very loving family. Her mum Mel said, Okay,
go for it, you can do this, and so the
whole family to Sydney from the Central Coast to meet
with Coco the talent agent and talk about Georgie's prospects.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
So she made this family travel from the Central Coast
across the country to Melbourne.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
And you know, for this family, for a couple of them,
it was their first flight ever. So for them it
was this exciting adventure and they were so thrilled. Georgia
was having her big break and mel brought along you know,
her other daughter, Tiana, who was with her baby. So
it was like a family adventure and this was George's
big chance.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
So you know, they were very excited.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
They trusted Coco because they thought, oh, well, she must
have the money to fly us to Melbourne, obviously, but
then what they saw next started to worry them. Co
Co started to audition Georgia in very strange ways.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
It wasn't really modeling, wasn't.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
No. Coco told Georgia that she could be in a film,
so she wanted to check her acting abilities. So what
she did once there in Melbourne was to send out
to child service offices and have her pretend to be
an abused child. So isn't this ringing bells? This is
likes Samantha, They're in so many other guys is, but
this time she's getting Georgia to do her bidding. So
(27:24):
it's quite distressing. And Georgia starts to say to her, Mum,
this doesn't feel right. I'm not sure what I'm doing here.
It seems a bit weird. And Mel, you know, to
her credit now she says she's sorry she did this.
But Mel at the time said, oh, come on, darling,
this is your one big chance, keep trying give it
a go. We're only here for another few days. To
this day, Mel is very sorry that that happened, but
(27:44):
she was just trying to help her daughter, you know.
Then they start to get a little bit suspicious because
they move from a hotel to hostel, and they think,
why has this fancy New York talent agent moved us
to a hostel. So Mel looks into who booked the
room and they tell her that the room was booked
under the name of Jazz Jarvis, and Mel said, Jazz Jervis.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
That's not Coco Palma.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
So they google the name Jazz Jervis and they find
out that Jazz Jarvis is a Melbourne woman who had
also hired this same woman as an O pair under
a different name.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
So it's all starting to ding ding ding, And at
this point, Coco is out with Georgia alone.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
Yeah, so Coco has taken Georgia out for another audition
in a child services office, and when Mel realizes that
Coco's not who she says she is, she rings Georgia
and Georgie's on her way back and she starts to
get quite distressed and things, I'm with this strange woman.
I don't know who she is, and I don't know
what to do. This is a thirteen year old girl. Mel,
(28:45):
on the other hand, is in the hotel thinking, my
little daughter is with a stranger. I don't know where
she could take her. I don't know what's going to happen.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
When they got back to the hotel, Mel confronts her,
which in all the stories we've told, a lot of
these victims haven't had the opportunity really to kind of
do that. But Mel really goes at her at Samantha,
and it's all filmed, which is amazing.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
Yes, So Mel's mama instinct kicks in. She thinks, Okay,
this strange woman has duped us, duped my daughter and
is with her right now, and I don't know who
she is and I don't know what she might do.
So Mel kind of runs around the hotel room searching
for something that she can protect herself with because she
doesn't know if this woman's going to attack her. Once
she confronts her, she finds a knife and sticks it
(29:30):
under the mattress, ready to grab if she needs it.
So it's actually a really distressing moment. Georgia and co
Co finally walk into the hotel room and Mel sort
of says, who are you?
Speaker 1 (29:42):
We know you're not who you say you are.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
We've discovered that you've booked this hostel under another name,
somebody else's name, and it's not you.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Who are you?
Speaker 3 (29:50):
And what are you doing with my daughter? Tiana, Mel's
other daughter, has the presence of mine to video the
whole thing. And that's actually really an important point in
all of Samantha's cons because she always tries to hide
her face. As we know from the Irish story, she
rarely was photographed. She never liked to be, you know,
whoever she tended to be. She didn't like photos taken.
(30:13):
This video of Coco aka sam was the first time
anyone had seen quite detailed video or photo of her.
So this was a turning point in the cons really,
so thank goodness she took that video.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
And she took a pretty clear photo because as we've said,
like a lot of the photos are a bit fuzzy
and from the side, and she had a very clear
photo and Mel those mama instincts again, she kind of
just blasted it out on social media.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
Yes, so once they confronted Coco kind of continued to
deny that there was anything wrong, continued to hold her
persona as Coco. She ran off and left them there.
They ended up having to get back from Melbourne to
Sydney on their own, paying their own way home. They
were stranded at the airport, but they got back and
Mel decided, Okay, I am going to show this woman's
(31:00):
face so that everyone knows who she is. So it
was kind of a banding together of the mums because
Mel posted it on Facebook, and then Jazz Jarvis, who
was someone who'd also employed Sam under another name, then
put it up on Instagram and it was suddenly an
avalanche of people finding out who she was.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
I think that's one of the hardest parts of the
story to kind of wrap your head around. We live
in a modern world where there's so much technology, and
you kind of think, how does she get away with this,
especially in the police's eyes time and time again. But
she's very clever at keeping off the radar when it
comes to her face on anything.
Speaker 3 (31:36):
Yes, and even in her court appearances. Now you'll notice
if you've seen any photos of her, she always covers
her face with a scarf and sunglasses or you know,
it just hides away. She's very protective of what she
looks like because she can't con people if everyone recognizes her.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Well, it really escalates in late twenty nineteen, once again
she's posing as a teenage opeir for a family with
two young kids, and she basically kidnaps them and takes
them to another town.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Yeah, this was really serious.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
You realize that this could have ended very bad if
the con hadn't been realized. So she was pretending to
be a young o pair. She was looking after two
little kids. It was a French couple who'd only just
moved to Australia. She takes them on what she says
is a little picnic. They think she's just going down,
you know, not far away. She ends up taking these
two small children to Bendigo. When she gets there, it's
(32:31):
another weird thing that happens. She's wearing a school uniform,
so even though in the French couple's eyes, she's just
a no pair, when she gets to Bendigo, she has
a school uniform on and she goes into Headspace, which
is a mental health support service in Bendigo, claiming to
be a forteen year old pregnant girl. While she's there
she's still carrying the kid. She's still got the kids
(32:52):
she's looking after, which is weird in itself. So she's
got the two kids with her. She walks into Headspace,
pretending to be an abused girl. Luckily, finally a staff
member recognizes her photo. Goodness, thank goodness, Finally there's enough
photos out there that people start to recognize who she is,
so they quickly ring the police, and the police turn up.
They end up having to chase her down through the
(33:13):
streets of Bendigo and arresting her in a department store nearby,
and she finally she hands over the kids. Thankfully they're
safe and sound, and she's arrested once again. The parents
of those children are really traumatized by the horse, and
we asked them if they wanted to talk to us
in the documentary, and they just really couldn't because they've.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
Been so traumatized by this.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
And you know, the mom is really scared of even
having her kids babysit or leaving them, so she was
almost stuck at home for years after this because she
was so traumatized by what happened to her kids.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
I can imagine even the mostly women that you did
get on screen, it would have taken so much kind
of support and convincing, and it just goes to show
how how much emotional damage something like this can do
to someone.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
Absolutely, and you know, as I said, they mainly had
shame and embarrassment and feeling isolated because they thought they
were the only ones stupid enough to be duped, when
in fact, you know, she's done it over and over
and over again. And at the end of our documentary series,
we actually get Emmy and Lucy together and it's a
really cathartic moment for both of them because they can
(34:22):
compare notes about what Samantha did to them, and I
think they felt like that was a really healing experience
for them, and they actually hung out together for a
while after that because friends are of a bad situation, absolutely,
because they both felt that this other person. Emmy felt
that Lucy was the only one in the world really
who could understand what she'd been through.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
The kidnapping stint got Samantha prison time again, so she
did about eighteen months for that, which feels not enough
for something like that, and she was released in May
twenty twenty one and went back to her old ways.
She just is there any remorse that we've seen from
Samantha in any of this.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
No, And I think the other hard part is that
she never wants to take any mental health treatment. They've
tried over and over again, I think too, you know,
as part of her set and seeing to recommend psychiatric
treatment mental health therapy. She goes through the motions sometimes,
but she usually a refuses to believe that there's any
(35:22):
diagnosis and doesn't want to be involved in any treatment.
And I think that's the key with Samantha. She'll continue
until she can get help. Well.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Since May twenty twenty one, when she was released, she's
kind of been a fourteen year old abuse victim from France,
she's been a nineteen year old Polish o pair and
then in October we're in October twenty twenty four, she
was in court again. What was the instance now that
has put her in prison again.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
So she's just out of jail on a previous con
She's thirty five years old by now, she's still passing
herself off as a teenager.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
In this case.
Speaker 3 (35:59):
She convisits a young Danish backpacker to stay with her
in different refuge homes around Australia. She claims that her
parents are filmmakers and they're going to be paid to
make a video diary of their travels. So they start
traveling around. Then she tells the Danish backpacker, Oh, the
police are after you, so we have to go and hide.
(36:20):
Let's go to some family violence services in Melbourne. So
she again gets this poor young backpacker on the hook,
takes it to different crisis accommodation around Melbourne. They end
up scamming, or she really ends up scamming twenty thousand
dollars worth of food, clothing, accommodation from you know, domestic
violence sentence. So not only is she scamming that money,
(36:40):
but she's also taking the place with someone.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
Who genuinely needs it. It's awful.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
So she's just gotten out of prison from that.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
She was sentenced to two years jail for that, but
with time already served, she's pretty much eligible for parole again.
So who knows what happens next.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
How many victims, honestly do you think there are out there?
Speaker 3 (36:59):
I think we only scratch the surface, And the police
will even say that, police from around the world say
we have no idea how many other cons she's done.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
She's relentless.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
She's consistent, she's constant, and she's obviously not remorseful. So
I don't think she's going to stop. We know she
has at least seventy five aliases and she's had at
least one hundred charges against her across the world. The
sad thing is that she doesn't look like stopping anytime soon.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
Have we heard anything from her family. Have they come
forward and said anything.
Speaker 3 (37:30):
We tried to approach her family for the series and
they didn't respond, So we don't know a great deal
about her family, apart from the background that she grew
up in southwestern Sydney.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
The experts you spoke to, have they ever seen anything
like this?
Speaker 1 (37:47):
No.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
I think that the forensic psychiatrist in the US said
it's a really rare case. He's never seen this combination
of disorders and even pseudological fantastica. He's said he's only
seen two or three cases in his entire career, and
he's done hundreds of court cases in America.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
I think for so long she's managed to get away
with pretending she's a young teenager. She's now nearing forty.
She's in her mid to late thirties, so I guess
we don't really know where her coms could go because
her default is not going to be an option for
much longer.
Speaker 3 (38:26):
She's a very slight, tiny little thing, so she can
get away with pretending to be a teenager. I don't
know for how much longer. In the Harper Heart con
back at the Marrickville School, she drew freckles on her
face to try and look younger. In this most recent con,
she actually spent some of the money getting freckles tattooed
on her face, wow, to look younger. So she's still trying.
(38:48):
She's still trying to look young and I don't know
how much longer she can continue, but she's going to
keep trying.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
Should we feel sorry for Samantha?
Speaker 3 (38:56):
I feel a little sorry for her and some of
the victims mel for example, George's mum feels sorry for
her because she needs help. She does need help, and
if she agreed to psychological help, I think things might
change for her. But it's very difficult when you're wrapped
up in your own web of lies to extract yourself
from that.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
What do we do from here? We know from her
history that she's not going to stop, you know, she
might stop for a little while while she's in prison,
but she's just going to keep going. Do you think
there's enough people out there that don't know who she
is that she's just going to get away with this
for so much longer.
Speaker 3 (39:30):
I think the more we tell her story, the more
people will know who she is. And for the victims,
that's why they did this series. They want to get
her name out there so that maybe she will be stopped.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
How do you go about telling this story on screen
while also protecting the victims at the center of it, because,
as we've talked about, many of them are still really
affected by their interactions with Samantha.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
One of the things that we were really careful about
was duty of care to our victims. There's been a
lot of stories in the media lately about true crime
shows and not looking after your victims and just using
them as part of the series. We were always really
careful that we gave our victims full psychological ste support before, during,
and after the filming, and we still touch base with
(40:13):
them even now when things come up about Samantha, because
we know they're going to get triggered again. So, you know,
I think whatever show you're making especially true crime shows.
It's all about keeping your victims comfortable and safe and
always feeling psychologically well and okay about telling their story.
And they know that this story was important enough to tell,
(40:34):
but we want to support them while they're doing that.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
Have you had people reach out to you since the show?
Speaker 3 (40:39):
More victims, A couple of people who've met Samantha that
thankfully nothing bad happened to them, But we had quite
a few other backpackers contact us and say I think
I met that girl while I was backpacking around Sydney,
an Irish backpacker and a couple of other international backpackers.
Thankfully they weren't con to the extent that you know
Emmy and Lucy and others were, but she certainly obviously
(41:00):
tries it at every opportunity, so yeah, she's always looking
for that next con.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
Thanks to Paula for helping us to tell this story.
True Crime Conversations is a Muma mea podcast hosted and
produced by me Jemma Bath and Tarlie Blackman, with audio
design by Tom Lyon. Thanks so much for listening. I'll
be back next week with another True Crime Conversation
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